What are those two little dents on the nose of the SR-71 Blackbird?
Richard “Butch” Sheffield earned his nickname from the distinctive haircut he sported during the 1960s. When his daughter would visit him at the Udvar Air and Space Smithsonian Museum in Virginia, the nose of the SR-71 Blackbird was what Butch would consistently point to. The dimples on the aircraft’s nose were what he would indicate while saying, “This is really important, but I can’t talk about it.”
He would smile.
“I could just tell he wanted to tell me, but he didn’t.”
Richard “Butch” Sheffield and Bob Spencer participated in one of the SR-71’s most crucial missions when they successfully got the SA-5 Missile Signal while flying within inches of the Russian border. Getting that signal proved vital for the SR-71’s defense systems.
The SR-71 maintained an unblemished record—no Blackbird was ever shot down, and enemy forces never even came close to achieving this. What made this impossible was the combination of the aircraft’s exceptional speed and sophisticated defense capabilities.
In former Blackbird pilot Col. Richard H. Graham’s book SR-71 The Complete Illustrated History of THE BLACKBIRD The World’s Highest, Fastest Plane, he explains that the nose section provided the SR-71 with multiple capabilities: radar-imaging through the advanced synthetic aperture radar system (ASARS), photographic imagery via the optical bar camera (OBC), or ballast installation. The nose section was held on by four-massive fasteners.
However, her doubt remained unanswered.
“What are those two little dents on the nose of the SR-71 Blackbird?”
“I’m assuming you’re talking about the two “dents” in the Chinese at the front part of the nose, one on each side? Those aren’t dents; those were put there on purpose for the more advanced ECM systems the Blackbird got in the ’70s and ’80s,” says Kelly Pedron, an aviation expert, on Quora.
“There weren’t any good places to put the ECM receivers in the front of the aircraft, so those “dents” were put in the chine to allow the installation of ECM receivers there. If you’ll notice, the flat part of the “dent” is facing about 60 degrees forward in order to cover that quadrant of the airspace around the aircraft. Earlier models of the SR, including the A-12, were more concerned with attack radar signals from the rear, so front-mounted ECM receivers weren’t as necessary at the time. With the advent of more advanced Soviet SAM systems, like the S-200 and S-300, a forward warning receiver and jammer were required, hence the development of the so-called ECM “dents” in the nose.”
Pedron concludes,
“So, yes, those were put there on purpose; nobody accidentally taxied an SR-71 into a solid object.”
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Photo by Linda Sheffield Miller and the U.S. Air Force
