After all, they fraudulently possibly told their comrades that the United States was a lazy country that probably couldn’t even cook for itself
The SR-71, commonly but unofficially called the “Blackbird,” was a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft capable of flying at speeds above Mach 3. It was developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A programs.
An SR-71 first flew on December 22, 1964, and the first operational aircraft was delivered in January 1966 to the 4200th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, later redesignated the 9th, at Beale Air Force Base in California.
The Blackbird was unlike any aircraft that had existed before it. “Everything had to be invented. Everything,” Skunk Works legendary aircraft designer Kelly Johnson recalled in an interesting article that appeared on the Lockheed Martin website.
The SR-71 could fly faster than 2,000 miles per hour. While some aircraft of that period could briefly approach such speeds using afterburners, the Blackbird was able to sustain record-breaking performance for extended periods. At those extreme speeds, air friction produced enough heat to destroy a conventional aircraft structure.
Because temperatures along the aircraft’s leading edges rose beyond 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, engineers faced major challenges related to heat resistance, design, and materials. Titanium alloy became the only practical choice for the airframe because it combined high strength, relatively low weight, and the ability to withstand extreme temperatures.
Titanium turned out to be a very difficult material to use in aircraft construction. Because the alloy was brittle and could crack or shatter if handled improperly, it caused major problems on the Skunk Works assembly line and required Lockheed machinists to undergo specialized training. Engineers also discovered that standard cadmium-plated steel tools made the titanium more brittle upon contact, so they had to create an entirely new set of tools made from titanium instead.
More importantly, the United States lacked the required ore, and the Soviet Union—its Cold War rival—was the world’s primary source of it.
During the Cold War, titanium was so essential to the United States’ effort to outmatch the Soviet Union that America secretly obtained the metal from its own adversary. In 1960, Washington needed surveillance aircraft capable of flying high enough to avoid detection over Soviet territory. To build what later became the famous SR-71 Blackbird, Lockheed needed an aircraft that was both lightweight and strong enough to carry additional fuel for long-distance missions. Titanium was the only material suited to those demands, and the Soviet Union was the only source able to supply it in the necessary amounts.
The United States used intermediaries in developing countries and front companies to secretly obtain the ore needed to build the SR-71.
“The airplane is 92% titanium inside and out. Back when they were building the airplane, the United States didn’t have the ore supplies—an ore called rutile ore. It’s a very sandy soil, and it’s only found in very few parts of the world. The major supplier of the ore was the USSR. Working through Third World countries and bogus operations, they were able to get the rutile ore shipped to the United States to build the SR-71,” famous former SR-71 pilot Colonel Rich Graham said in an interesting article that appeared on BBC.
According to the video, one of those cover operations involved telling the Soviets that the titanium was being purchased for pizza ovens.
The Soviets readily accepted the claim that the United States needed titanium for thousands of pizza ovens. They may have found the story believable because of negative stereotypes suggesting Americans were so dependent on convenience food that they hardly cooked for themselves and instead went out to buy pizza.
This marked a crucial point in the rivalry between two superpowers, each determined to overcome the other. In the end, by using intermediaries and front companies, the United States, “managed to unobtrusively purchase the base metal from one of the world’s leading exporters – the Soviet Union,” according to the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich, a Lockheed Martin engineer involved in the SR-71 program. “The Russians never had an inkling of how they were actually contributing to the creation of the airplane being rushed into construction to spy on their homeland.”
Andriy Brodskyy contributed to this article.
Check out Habubrats SR-71 and Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder Facebook pages for further Blackbird photos and stories.
Photo by U.S. Air Force and CIA
