The world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft
Throughout its nearly 24-year operational career, the SR-71 Blackbird remained the fastest and highest-flying aircraft in the world. Cruising at 80,000 feet, it could survey roughly 100,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface in a single hour.
The Blackbird could cross Vietnam in just eight minutes. Its sophisticated electronic countermeasures were so advanced that versions remain in use on other aircraft today, while much of the technology is still classified. The aircraft also featured nitrogen-filled tires and was constructed largely from one of the world’s most expensive metals.
Combining extraordinary speed, groundbreaking innovation, and exceptional secrecy, the SR-71 had no real equal among the aircraft of its era—and it remains the fastest aircraft ever built.
First public display since the record-setting speed record
According to Paul Crickmore’s Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Missions – The Missing Chapters, Blackbird pilot Buz Carpenter and RSO John Murphy had their 1977 temporary duty assignment at Mildenhall, United Kingdom, extended so they could participate in the open house celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee.
The event marked the first public display of an SR-71 since the aircraft set a record in 1976 by flying from New York to London in less than two hours.
Carpenter recalls;
“The SR-71 would be part of the static display but roped off so that people could not touch the aircraft. We were advised that, indeed, the Russians were coming. To prevent the Russians or anybody else from exploiting the display. No sensors were left on the aircraft, all fuel had been removed from the tanks, and the plane was heat-soaked to an ambient temperature to prevent infrared cameras from discovering the aircraft’s secrets, internal structure, and support systems. We four crewmembers, Buz Carpenter, John Murphy, JT Vida, and Tom Alison, were standing around the aircraft, answering questions from the crowd when, sure enough, the Russians showed up in numbers. They took numerous regular and infrared photos. Some of the Russians even had hidden microscopes.”
“They were a sight to see coming up like a convoy of quails.”
Bringing an SR-71 Blackbird to Vladivostok
“It looks like the Salvation Army had outed them. Their dress sense was from a 1930s movie about American mobsters. They were wearing double-breasted suits made from a rougher cloth than one normally sees.”
“The head of the Soviet delegation is a former MiG-23 fighter pilot who’s quite relaxed and talkative in his demeanor. He asked John and me to drop in on Vladivostok (the USSR) as a gesture of peaceful relationship.”
“We just quipped, ‘Please forward that request to our state department,’ Buz Carpenter.”
Check out Born into the Wild Blue Yonder Facebook page for further Blackbird photos and stories.
The book Ohio to Supersonic: Flying the SR-71 Blackbird to the secret world of the Skunk Works by Colonel Richard “E.” Butch Sheffield and Linda Marie Sheffield is available to order here.
Photos by NASA and U.S. Air Force
