My job was to maintain, inspect, launch and recover the SR-71 Blackbird. From the moment I found out I was to be assigned to the secret Blackbird, to the day I left the organization, it was a love affair to last a lifetime. Each and every launch was a sight to behold. The ...
Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird first flew in 1964 and was decommissioned in 1999. Not known until the mid nineties is that the SR-71 was developed from the top secret Lockheed A-12. The A-12, project Oxcart, was build for the CIA as high speed and high alti
The Science Museum of Virginia is home to SR-71A #61-7968. This specific aircraft first flew on October 10, 1966 and logged 2,279 flight hours prior to its last…
The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is the fastest jet ever built, a machine so far ahead of its time even its own pilots thought it looked more like a spaceship than an airplane. It is an engineering marvel, powered by innovative engines that operated most efficiently at Mach 3.2, its typical...
The Lockheed Martin SR-71 “Blackbird” is one of the most unique and iconic aircraft of all time. Developed in the 1960s to fly faster and higher than all other airplanes and missiles of the time, the SR-71 holds world records for sustained altitude (85,069 feet) and speed (2,193.2...
SR-71 #953 fell apart in midair, and crashed on the ground east of Death Valley near the village of Shoshone, California. Most of the wreckage of the Blackbird hit the ground atop an underground stream and took down high voltage electrical lines, blacking out several of the nearby towns....
Question 1: What was the mission of the SR-71 Blackbird? Matthew Burchette — Museum of Flight:The Blackbird was developed as a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. It was outfitted with an advanced synthetic aperture radar system, an optical bar camera...
Reaching over Mach 3, the SR-71 Blackbird was a high-altitude, strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Veteran pilot “Buz” Carpenter explains the fastest jet ever.
for several more years, the Air Force officially retired the SR-71 in 1998 with NASA following suit in 1999. Over the course of its impressive career, the SR-71 Blackbird logged tens of thousands of hours in flight, with about a quarter of its total hours spent flying at Mach 3 or ...
000 feet however, physiological failure is instantaneous and fatal. There are some who will read this and think that only the crew of the space shuttle would face a more drastic risk. This is not true. At that altitude, the physiological risk to the shuttle and the Blackbird crews is ...