The SR-71 Blackbird
The SR-71 spy plane, the most advanced member of the Blackbird family, which also included the A-12 and YF-12, was designed by a Lockheed team led by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, then vice president of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Company Projects, better known as the “Skunk Works” and now part of Lockheed Martin. The Blackbird made its first flight on Dec. 22, 1964.
The Blackbird was built to fly at extreme speeds and altitudes. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour. As a result, locking onto it with radar was extraordinarily difficult for hostile fighters and even for the best American aircraft, as we have already explained.
SR-71 exiting Chinese airspace
A claim later confirmed by Jerry Hart, a former U.S. Navy F-4B Phantom II pilot.
“During the Vietnam War, the Navy kept at least 2 fighters airborne in the northern Gulf of Tonkin 24/7/365 flying a mission called BARCAP (Barrier Combat Air Patrol) as part of the first line of defense for the carrier(s) to the south operating on Yankee Station and sometimes Dixie Station. The other part of the first line of defense was provided by a heavily armed guided missile cruiser, radio callsign ‘Red Crown,’ whose Air Intercept Controllers (AICs) controlled the fighters and any others operating in the northern Gulf.”
“The BARCAP was usually a very boring mission of drilling around in a racetrack pattern east of communist North Vietnam and south of the island of Hainan owned by communist China for several hours until relieved on station by another section (2 aircraft) of fighters.”
“I was leading a section of F-4Bs on BARCAP one bright, severe, clear Chamber of Commerce day when ‘Red Crown’ gave us a heads-up call of a friendly who would be coming at us from the north. That could only mean one thing. An SR-71 would be exiting Chinese airspace from over Hainan Island, coming right over us.”
The F-4 Phantom II radar screen goes black because of the high speed of the Blackbird
“We were cruising around saving gas at about 25,000 feet. I turned us toward the north to see if we could pick him up on radar and possibly see him as he passed overhead. After running the antenna up in elevation as far as it would go, my RIO was able to paint a target and quickly locked it up.”
“I watched in amazement as the Vc circle [on the radar display], which told us the relative closing velocity of the target started rapidly winding up far higher than I had ever seen it before. Then the B trace, which indicated the target’s position relative to the nose of our aircraft, began to dither back and forth rapidly before slamming to the side of the scope, and the screen went completely black. We never could get it to work again.”
Hart concludes,
“We thought we could at least see it fly overhead as it passed us. Nope. Too high, even for us to see with the naked eye. I had once seen another aircraft at 56 nautical miles verified by radar, so I knew my eyes weren’t the problem.”
Photos by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force
