Small and low footprint but massive purple flames taking off. When I was stationed at Beale one of the things a lot of people loved to do was sit on the hills above the flight line and watch the engine burnoff after she landed. They had a pad the plane would taxi to and they would then open the engines up and burn the remaining fuel off. It was a hell of a light and sound show! We would call it the sound of freedom.
I was at Beale in the 80s, too, and used to love to watch the SR (aka "the sled") take off. Its pilots were considered the elite, which really griped the U-2 pilots also stationed there. The sled was very touchy, and the only-half-humorous joke used to be that the maintenance crews always prepared two sleds for every mission, because one would certainly break down and the other one probably would, too. It burned so much fuel that it had to be refueled after takeoff, again when it reached the mission area, again when it left the mission area, and again before it arrived back at base. Everything you've heard about its speed was true; when it flew from RAF Mildenhall in England back to its home base at Beale (in CA), the pilots would say it arrived before it left.
The U-2 pilots, meanwhile, flew their trusty, reliable planes on 9-hour missions (without refueling) at 60,000 feet without breakdowns and without fanfare. If you really wanted to enrage a U-2 pilot, you could ask him if he was hoping to upgrade to an SR-71.