There was an eerie look to the plane, otherworldly maybe. That was in flight. The one I saw in a static display lost that magic. There was just something about the look of it when flying.
Had the privilege of seeing one fly in 1981 at Fairchild AFB. The SR-71 had shown up and was supposed to fly a year earlier....on May 18th, 1980. That was cancelled by the eruption of Mt. St Helens. They had to stick it in a hangar and store it for several days because they weren’t sure if the ash would damage the engines.
The next year, it did fly. I happened to be working for a college radio station and got a press pass to be in front of the crowd to watch it taxi, then be on the press stand when it did its flybys. It did two slow flybys, then the announcer said the next flyby would be with afterburners.
I have to tell you...I KNEW that pilot was a show-off. He took that thing down to about 5 feet above the runway. Right in front of show center, he lit the cans. I instantly saw the multi-diamond shockwave pattern develop and the ROAR...wow. He tilted that beautiful bird to a 45-degree angle and immediately took off out of there at that angle for as far as the eye could see.
25 minutes later, as people were leaving, they announced the Blackbird had just landed at Beale AFB...over 670 miles away. They had to have gone supersonic at some point.