Lockheed test pilots Bill Weaver and Jim Zwayer on Jan. 26, 1966… were flying the #952 at Mach 3.18, at 78,800 feet when a serious engine unstart and the subsequent “instantaneous loss of engine thrust” occurred…
During the Cold War, there was an urgent requirement for a new reconnaissance aircraft capable of avoiding enemy radar, and the customer needed it quickly. At Lockheed Martin’s advanced development division, known as Skunk Works, efforts had already begun on an innovative aircraft designed to enhance intelligence-gathering, one that would achieve speeds faster than any previously built aircraft, operate at higher altitudes, and maintain a minimal radar profile. The team faced this formidable challenge, and the aircraft made its inaugural flight on December 22, 1964. Thus, the iconic SR-71 Blackbird was created.
Linda Sheffield Miller, the daughter of Col. Richard (Butch) Sheffield, who served as an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer, shared on her Facebook page, Habubrats: ‘The first Blackbird accident that occurred that required the pilot and the RSO to eject happened before the SR-71 was turned over to the Air Force. Lockheed test pilots Bill Weaver and Jim Zwayer on Jan. 26, 1966… were flying the #952 at Mach 3.18 at 78,800 feet when a serious engine unstart and the subsequent “instantaneous loss of engine thrust” occurred. The engine will not return—Bill tried to communicate with Jim in the backseat, but the Intercom connection was all garbled. Bill made the first supersonic parachute jump [in an SR-71].’
The following is what Alex Fox Rudinski wrote about the crash on Medium.com.
‘Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird… It’s a plane!
‘Well, not anymore, at least.
‘Now, it’s Bill!, limp-rag unconscious, falling from the top of the sky. He looks the same as dead. But Bill must know some powerful gods because he’s starting to come around. Give him space; this won’t be a pleasant awakening.
‘Bill returns to utter bafflement. Inside his helmet, perhaps he cocks his head to the side with the earnest inquisitiveness of a confused German Shepard. Something isn’t right.
‘It’s like his stream of consciousness experience turned over too many pages at once: he knows he’s missed something in between. Bill was in an airplane; now, he’s definitely not. The little he remembers is bad.
‘His brain, though not yet operational, does its best to help him explain: Bill, it informs himself with a doctor’s solemnity, I’m afraid you must be dead. Fortunately, Bill was not dead. But his friend Jim was.’
Bill successfully landed in New Mexico. Jim Zwayer broke his neck and died as a result of the accident.
Linda recalls, ‘My father, Butch Sheffield, was there that day in the flight control tower; he was the one who called in to report the accident. Little more than a year after this accident, my father also bailed out of the SR-71. He remembered what happened to Jim, and he survived the ejection.’
Photo by U.S. Air Force
