Blackbird test pilot Robert J. Gilliland, with a Lockheed SR-71A. Gilliland is wearing an S901J full-pressure suit made by “Northeast Manufacturing” (the David Clark Co.) (Lockheed Martin) The SR-71A Blackbird is a Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft designed and built by Lockheed’...
In 1976, the Air Force flew Lockheed Martin's SR-71 Blackbird from New York to London in less than two hours — at speeds exceeding Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound. The Blackbird, still the second-fastest manned plane in history, flew for more than 30 years and outpaced an...
1960s: Too Quick to Capture – the SR-71 Blackbird and D-21 Drone As radar and anti-air systems caught up to the U-2, work had already begun on an aircraft to improve intelligence-gathering, one that would fly faster than any crewed, airbreathing aircraft before or since, at greater a...
“In college as soon as pictures of the Blackbird showed up, I had one hanging on my wall,” Steve Justice. Steve’s room is pictured from 1976 with his SR-71 Blackbird poster hanging in the top right-hand corner. Kelly Johnson, founder of the Skunk Works, pictured in the late 1930s...
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Learn about the creation of the Blackbird, the world's fastest plane, by Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works team at Lockheed Martin.