The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird

http://www.vfp62.com/SR-71.html

by jaxc • 16 years ago

333 87 16 years ago

scdlbx• 16 years ago

The author states that he graduated high school in 1966 and that he built a model of the the SR-71 when he was 10, presumably 1958 if he graduated at 18. He also states that the SR-71 was designed in 1960. Some of this doesn't quite seem right.

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

There is a Colonel Walter L. Watson though:

http://scafricanamerican.com/public/pdf/honorees/112004.pdf

The story feels a little strange though, the amount of 'mystic' connection between the plane and the pilot would make me worried if someone that prone to it would be piloting a 747 I'm a passenger on.

The pilot would be 'Brian Shul' http://www.sleddriver.com/

dasil003• 16 years ago

The story feels a little strange though, the amount of 'mystic' connection between the plane and the pilot would make me worried if someone that prone to it would be piloting a 747 I'm a passenger on.

Really? "Mysticism" scares you so much that you'd rather your flight be piloted by a clock punching union man then what the Air Force deemed to be one of the best?

jrockway8• 16 years ago

Don't worry. Commercial airliners will make various loud noises to prevent the pilots from getting too distracted with flying and forgetting about those mountains that are coming up.

ctkrohn• 16 years ago

Perhaps he built an A-12 model. This was the direct predecessor of the SR-71, designed in the 50s. A very similar aircraft:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12

unexpected• 16 years ago

This is true, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's a smoking gun- "concept models" come out long before the actual plane is built. I remember playing a computer game called "F-22 Raptor" in 1997, and the plane officially entered service in 2005.

JunkDNA• 16 years ago

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. As a kid, I built a model that was supposed to be the "super secret stealth fighter" before people knew what it looked like. It was based on all the leaked reports of what the aircraft might look like. In the end, it was similar but not identical to the actual plane (owing to the fact that nobody predicted how jagged it was going to be). In fact, it looked a bit like a miniature SR-71.

jbyers2• 16 years ago

http://www.sleddriver.com/biography.html

joss82• 16 years ago

But he seems like the kind of guy who graduates at 16.

amichail• 16 years ago

If this plane looked ugly, would anyone care that it is the fastest plane ever made?

hugh32• 16 years ago

Possibly not. The X-15 (while arguably a rocket with wings rather than an aeroplane) was much faster and less pretty, and you won't find so many nine-year-olds with posters of it.

stcredzero5• 16 years ago

Posters!? [starts Googling]

jrockway8• 16 years ago

It also never flew a real mission. The SR-71 was a real airplane that could take off, fly a mission, and land. The X-15 had to be ferried into space by another aircraft, then it flew around for a while, and then it could destroy part of itself, and finally land.

Pretty or not, the SR-71 was a lot more practical.

mixmax• 16 years ago

There was a saying on the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks department where this plane was designed: "If she looks beautiful, she'll fly beautifully"

thejake• 16 years ago

This reads a bit like fan fiction. Anyone know its authenticity?

bittersweet• 16 years ago

It seems to be from the book 'Sled Driver' by Brian Shul [1] according to the following website [2], on which I found the same article of the parent link.

I'm a bit confused though, as I have read the part about the groundspeed check before, I found it again here [3]. This version is longer and worded more beautifully in my opinion. The poster below that is mentioning that it's from the same book so I'm a bit confused.

[1] https://galleryonepublishing.com/sleddriver/index.html [2] http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2007/11/19/sr-71-now-that-was-s... [3] http://www.expressjetpilots.com/the-pipe/showthread.php?3197...

lotharbot• 16 years ago

I like the more complete version of the "ground speed check" story (which I heard from Brian Shul directly): he says he and Walt hadn't really "clicked" yet, that they were just kinda co-inhabitants of the same jet but not really a team, until that moment. It was when Brian was about to ask the question, and the radio clicked on and Walt asked the exact same question, that he felt they finally became a team.

For those concerned with the level of "mysticism" in this: Brian Shul is a remarkable pilot from a technical perspective. But do you really want to read his technical descriptions of flight? He's done a good job of describing the sensations in a way non-pilots can understand.

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

It must be a pilot thing. I've read a bunch of books by Richard Bach, and he falls in to this 'mode' quite a few times as well.

Agreed that it's a way to take it out of the technical area, but I don't think the story needs embellishing, it is already more than powerful enough by itself.

Great read anyway, be sure to check the story linked elsewhere in this thread as well.

decode• 16 years ago

You can read the full version of the story here:

http://blog.johnwurth.com/?p=110

jbyers2• 16 years ago

Definitely worth reading, more detail on that incident that the parent article. And just awesome.

fizx2• 16 years ago

I just wanted to chime in that the reason I'm a programmer today is that my grandpa helped program the navigation systems on the SR-71. I found that slightly inspirational :)

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

That's so cool. Imagine, most of us don't even have dad programmers, and you have a granddad programmer and one working on such interesting stuff to boot.

Is he still alive today? And if so does he still work with computers?

fizx2• 16 years ago

He passed (at 82, I believe) about seven years ago. It was both sad and not sad, as he lived a long and amazing life.

He programmed the guidance systems of one of the Titan series rockets. He also was in the Navy in WWII. At one point, his destroyer was sunk, and spent a few days in the open ocean before being rescued. He was also present at the Japanese surrender ceremony.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of learning to play chess with him over Christmas vacation. He was a truly kind man, and an inspiration to many.

blasdel• 16 years ago

I'm a third-generation programmer too.

My dad's dad was a programmer, as a desk-captain in the Navy right after WWII. He was still programming well into his retirement in the early nineties, writing little database apps for his PC. My dad started programming while working on his PhD at Berkley in the early sixties, well before UNIX.

My mom's stepmom was an early non-technical employee of a computer accounting startup in the seventies (shared mainframes!), grew more and more technical as they transitioned to PCs, and eventually became the CEO. The company sold to Intuit a while back and she was a VP there for a few years. My mom started programming around the same time, her high school had access to a PDP somewhere.

My parents met when they both worked at a PC database vendor (Condor) in the early eighties, got married, and founded a startup together by poaching one of their customers (which lasted about 20 years).

malbs2• 16 years ago

Third generation programmer here too.

My grandfather worked on the guidance systems for the Australian missile program run out of Woomera.

Both my uncles are programmers, and my mother is a programmer too.

It's kind of the 'family trade'

stcredzero5• 16 years ago

Slightly? The account was so moving in its description of supreme, beautiful engineering achievement, I f-in cried -- no joke.

jrockway8• 16 years ago

What's really sad is that 70s-era technology is better than what we have today. No more SR-71. No more Concorde.

barmstrong• 16 years ago

I know what you mean....this is the kind of stuff I want to build at least once before I die. Something that is so good it's in another class and changes the world.

RevRal• 16 years ago

Sup "my grandpa was an engineer/programmer for the blackbird" buddy :). Maybe they knew each other !

Did he like to hold cool confidential information over your head, too? Like how fast the blackbird could really go?

whalesalad• 16 years ago

That is pretty exciting and inspirational :) I owe a lot of what I do today to my parents/grandparents as well... pretty much everyone on my dad's side of the family has worked or is currently still working for Lockheed at their Skunk Works plant (the guys that did the SR-71) in Palmdale, CA.

My dad and grandpa were both illustrators, drawing out schematics and stuff for Lockheed. I really think a lot of my design abilities are genetic, and I owe it to my dads side of the family.

signa11• 16 years ago

i find this [http://www.sunlakesaeroclub.org/updates_web_data/050828/SR71...] to be even more amazing...

jacquesm6• 16 years ago

Wow. That's just plain scary. It also makes me appreciate more why high jet fighter suits look like space suits, without it the guy would have surely been dead.

Another interesting bit: "The SR-71 had a turning radius of about 100 mi. at that speed and altitude".

And "The ejection seat had never left the airplane; I had been ripped out of it by the extreme forces, seat belt and shoulder harness still fastened.". Just wow...

What a pity his buddy didn't make it.

kalmi10• 16 years ago

  "Bill! Bill! Are you there?"
  "Yeah, George. What's the matter?"
  "Thank God! I thought you might have left."

The rear cockpit of the SR-71 has no forward visibility--only a small window on each side--and George couldn't see me. A big red light on the master-warning panel in the rear cockpit had illuminated just as we rotated, stating, "Pilot Ejected." Fortunately, the cause was a misadjusted micro switch, not my departure.

drtse4• 16 years ago

Nice video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1250fZuhUg

Issues with fuel reported in the story @3:09.

zandor• 16 years ago

If anyone is interested in a bit more of the history behind the aircraft (also the U-2 and the F-117), do check out Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir... by Ben Rich

It's a great read!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003

michael_nielsen• 16 years ago

Seconded, it's a fascinating book, both as a memoir of how to do fantastically ambitious engineering, and also how to manage a remarkable group of engineers. The analogue for the web would be something like reading an account of Google written by Page or Brin.

mhd• 16 years ago

I'm not a big plane or car nut, but the SR-71 just emanated cool. Having a modified carbon copy as the X-Men's "Blackbird" certainly helped...

steadicat• 16 years ago

The speeds mentioned in this article (Mach 3.5+), are significantly higher than the official airspeed records, set by the SR-71 itself (about Mach 2.9):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_aircraft

Fascinating.

pedrocr• 16 years ago

You're calculating it with speed of sound at sea level. At 80,000 feet the 3,530 km/h speed record is Mach 3.289 according to wolframalpha, still bellow the 3.45 claimed in the article. Although it is understandable that this mission wouldn't count for a speed record.

kreneskyp• 16 years ago

I've loved this plane since I read about it in popular science as a grade school kid. I still remember this line from the article, "after it lands it so hot you can fry an egg on the fuselage".

ajtaylor• 16 years ago

"With all inlet doors tightly shut, at 3.24 Mach, the J-58s are more like ramjets now, gulping 100,000 cubic feet of air per second."

Wow... what an awesome job to be able to fly one of these birds!

I had a friend in Boston who first flew fighters (F-16 IIRC) and then managed to switch over to the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Apparently it is not common to switch between the two types of platforms. It's a shame he was retired from the AF or I would have begged a ride. :-)

Ben65• 16 years ago

If you'd like to get a close look at one, there's one in the SAC museum, just outside of Omaha, NE.

http://www.sasmuseum.com/2008/11/21/sr-71a-blackbird/

gvb• 16 years ago

There is also one in the AirZoo in Kalamazoo, MI. http://www.airzoo.org/ http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?menu_id=3

Picture of the SR-71: http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?menu_id=108

It is a very nice museum, well worth some visits.

cullenking• 16 years ago

Add in a M-21 (predecessor, nearly the same but built to launch an unmanned drone) plus the cockpit of an SR-71 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA. I enjoyed seeing this last year, remembering the narrative. I could almost see the fuel dripping from the plane!

mambodog• 16 years ago

All I can say about that page is thanks Readability for actually making it readable/viewable! (What's going on with the massive images?)

SpacemanSpiff• 16 years ago

some great blackbird info on this site, including the flight manual! http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/

scharan• 16 years ago

Reading this article was the most interesting experience I have had in a long time. The passion and feel of the description and the imagery being described really resonated with my geeky soul. RIP SR-71. You are a truly magnificent creation.

The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird

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