What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

by skellertor • 9 years ago

225 147 9 years ago

onesun2• 9 years ago

I didn't make it past the first lovely sentence. "With a sleek needle nose and a swept double-delta wing with two prominent nacelles, the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend."

SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.

kevincennis3• 9 years ago

You stopped reading the entire article because they dropped an "of"?

cyberferret6• 9 years ago

I must admit that I picked up on the "SR-1" typo. If this was my local daily rag article, I could forgive, but for a technical publication that is supposed to give us accurate, meaningful data, that immediately sows some distrust that the rest of the information in the article may be suspect. Grammatical errors I can forgive to a certain extent, but getting the designation of the aircraft wrong that is the feature of the article? That is sloppy editing.

jpeanuts• 9 years ago

I'm more bothered by the tautology. What is an unswept delta-wing supposed to look like?

onesun2• 9 years ago

I wrote that with a bit of sarcasm, but yes, it was hard for me to take this article seriously, even though I did manage to finish it.

ProAm4• 9 years ago

Good old hacker news where people would rather discuss how the article was written instead of the content it contains.

dang• 9 years ago

Please don't posture over the community while being part of it. There are tons of substantive comments in this thread alone. Your superiority to others is, at a minimum, off topic.

SamReidHughes• 9 years ago

I didn't notice those typos the first time I read the article. Maybe it's really easy to misread letter-number combinations like that if you're already expecting it to be a certain number.

mikeokner2• 9 years ago

My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912704...

jksmith• 9 years ago

Fuck yeah, that is a badass story. Thanks for link!

Retric• 9 years ago

That ones great, but I always like the question of how slow it could fly:

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-sr-71-blackbirds-most-...

theoh• 9 years ago

See also a story about testing the minimum airspeed on a single engine, from the book "Contrails over the Mojave": https://books.google.ie/books?id=NTU9BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT114&lpg=P...

justsomedood• 9 years ago

I think every SR-71 story I've read has been engrossing, and this one is no exception. Thanks for the link!

strictnein5• 9 years ago

A good one (although some may dislike it):

On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing.

The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirage to hold on. The reconnaissance systems officer (RCO, the other guy in the plane) then informed the pilot that the code had been transmitted and they went back up to full speed and left the Mirage quickly behind.

The code that the RCO transmitted? The middle finger.

mixmastamyk• 9 years ago

How does a middle finger get transmitted? Had ascii art handy?

badosu3• 9 years ago

America, f\\k yeah!

...

Sarcasm aside, wouldn't this be a severe case of violation of sovereignity? I find it hard to believe such a stupid act could have been performed without making news or retaliations.

(By stupid act I mean entering unpermitted airspace, the pilot's actions are irrelevant)

autokad2• 9 years ago

has anyone been in the airforce in the late 70s? My dad died on active duty in the airforce, and I heard second hand stories and was wondering how common they were.

in particular, he said they kept notes on everyone and turned them in (not sure to whom), in order to prevent russian espianage. For example, if you saw someone order something from a vending machine, it was up to you to write down who, what item they selected, etc. presumably these were checked for patterns.

godelmachine2• 9 years ago

Nice one!! Did he transmit the middle finger in Morse code or what?

cyberferret6• 9 years ago

That story is out of Brian Schul's book (he used to be an SR-71 pilot). I am lucky enough that years ago, a girl who had a crush on me bought me that book. Its out of print now, and I've seen copies on eBay for > $1000.

Next to Ben Rich's "Skunk Works", it is one of the best books on the SR-71 that I have ever read.

gbrown_• 9 years ago

Its out of print now, and I've seen copies on eBay for > $1000.

For the rest of us there's this great talk from Brain Schul which covers this story and a few others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigZsFypdyI

da02• 9 years ago

What happened to the girl? Did you marry her? That was a good, thoughtful gift.

dboreham• 9 years ago

Wow. $1000!! I own two copies because I thought I had lost mine and so bought a second for $10 or so. Then I found the first one.

botskonet• 9 years ago

I have it on my Amazon wishlist. It's going for close to $500 right now.

godelmachine2• 9 years ago

Please suggest some more books on SR 71 BlackBird & SkunkWorks

jonah4• 9 years ago

One of my favorites.

Here's Brian Shul telling the story live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI

dgritsko• 9 years ago

That was great, you can tell he really loves telling that story. Here's an excerpt from an interview with him [1] where he discusses telling it:

When I'm doing a talk, if I don't tell that speed check story, they run me out of town. I tried that one year, I thought, I've been speaking at this air museum for 10 years now, I'm gonna change it up this year. People lost their minds. I realized hey, Elvis has to sing Love Me Tender at the end of every show, I gotta tell that story no matter how many times I tell it.
And there's always people who've never heard it. I told it at an FBI conference the other day, out of 800 people I swear 700 had never heard it, and they were falling out of their chairs.

[1] https://newatlas.com/brian-shul-interview-sr-71-blackbird-pi...

manigandham• 9 years ago

Might as well link to the full talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigZsFypdyI

It's a great speech about overcoming his war injuries and getting to fly on of the most special planes in history, along with actually documenting most of it himself.

dmoy• 9 years ago

It's a running gag on some websites now (apparently including hacker news) that whenever there's a mention of the sr71, that story gets posted.

I still read it every time too.

gxs• 9 years ago

Every single time this story is posted I take a moment to read it. Truly a bad-ass story in the purest, most distilled essence of the phrase.

mrec• 9 years ago

Not badass-plane exactly, but Bill Weaver's story is another cracker. His SR-71 disintegrated around him (no ejection) at Mach 3.18 and 78,000 feet. He was back in the cockpit two weeks later.

https://theaviationist.com/2015/03/17/sr-71-mid-air-disinteg...

scrooched_moose• 9 years ago

My favorite fact: If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile.

lylejohnson• 9 years ago

The first I remember reading about the "Blackbird" was in the _The Uncanny X-Men_, during the Claremont & Byrne run in the early 80's. Their jet was modeled on the SR-71, although I don't recall if they explicitly mentioned that model number.

kevincennis3• 9 years ago

For anyone who's interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works" – about Lockheed's famous operation that designed the SR-71, U-2, F-117 (stealth fighter), etc.

regulation_d• 9 years ago

I really wish I could get ahold of Brian Shul's Sled Driver.

jfoutz• 9 years ago

Yes. it's also interesting that it's from the point of view of a guy who worked on something like 17 planes over the course of their career. I think that's very rare now.

nether• 9 years ago

It's possible with job hopping, or program hopping within the same company. You just won't be working on that aircraft start to finish. I worked on 7 aircraft from 2005-2015.

lentil• 9 years ago

Agreed. I would also recommend this conference talk on the subject by Nickolas Means, it was very well done: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLBzScQzZ83I81fnpqX2AkYD5c5...

josephcooney3• 9 years ago

I also really enjoyed this book, and wrote up some notes on what I took away from it that I thought could apply to software engineering https://jcooney.net/post/2017/08/03/skunkworks.html

strictnein5• 9 years ago

If you like the SR-71, and are interested in other Skunk Works projects like the U-2 and F-117, the book Skunk Works is a great read (and also a great audio book).

https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/...

joshvm• 9 years ago

Also if you're in the DC area, it's really worth going to the National Air & Space Museum, as well as their 'oversize' Udvar Hazy centre. The out of town place is special and hardly gets any tourists, even though they have an SR-71 and the Shuttle, Discovery. Other things include an X-15, the Enola Gay (feels weird if you've visited Hiroshima too), an exhibit on the Keyhole satellite program, a U2 and tons more. I don't think they have an F117, sadly.

jotm• 9 years ago

" The U-2 can still fly higher than the Global Hawk, carry a greater payload, and its sensors have more of a slant range. The Global Hawk also lacks de-icing equipment and countermeasures against Russian SAMs. We may be entering the age of drones, but old-fashioned piloted planes can still do a thing or two."

Why not just copy the U2 and make an improved, unmanned version?

katastic2• 9 years ago

Probably because:

- The U2 uses old parts that aren't wildly/cheaply available anymore.

- The Global Hawk doesn't have a person in it. So they can send them into more dangerous situations without worrying. Which means they likely want a cheaper robot version. (Though, before RnD costs which skyrocketed, the price appeared to be only about 10mil cheaper.)

- New sensor modules have a different footprint that the shell can be designed around than a plane designed in the 70's. Also, more computer aided design into the entire thing.

- More fuel economy means more air time. (Additionally no fatigued pilot means more air time.) I know you said "remove the pilot" but the point is the entire thing can be designed for more air time, and more efficient fuel use.

Of course, often the most obvious answer is simply: Money. Tax payer dollars are "Free", and there's political power to be had in rewarding "your" defense contractor the ability to make brand new, amazing, super, bells-and-whistle aircraft. (::cough::F-35::cough::) And there's no ego boost for simply upgrading existing planes. (::cough::A-10::cough::)

Since every new program seems to be full of cost overruns I really wonder if they intentionally do that. They low-ball it, pocket the surplus "costs" as long as they can until congress gets pissed and then magically "fix" the product with a "modest" cash-influx bill from congress to finally finish it off. Because it's politically dangerous to be a congressperson that voted for this failed product that then has to be repealed. So they could, in essence, "fail" at making their product up until the point where it's just under "repeal time" and pocket all that cash.

[edit]

Here's a quote on Wikipedia that lines up partially with my comment about costs to fly:

"Secretary stated: "The Global Hawk is essential to national security; there are no alternatives to Global Hawk which provide acceptable capability at less cost; Global Hawk costs $220M less per year than the U-2 to operate on a comparable mission; the U-2 cannot simultaneously carry the same sensors as the Global Hawk; and if funding must be reduced, Global Hawk has a higher priority over other programs."[21]"

tonteldoos2• 9 years ago

I'm struggling to find it now, but there's a saying attributed to some well known military figure (paraphrasing slightly):

There are two stages to any defence procurement project - too soon to tell, and too late to stop.

EDIT:

Found it. A Ernest Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's First Law: "There are only two phases of a program. The first is 'It's too early to tell.' The second: 'It's too late to stop.'

strictnein5• 9 years ago

The U-2 was developed in 18 months with COTS goods and requires a finesse to fly that I think would be tough to replicate with computers.

And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.

cellularmitosis• 9 years ago

"tough to replicate with computers"

I was under the impression that computers can fly planes which are impossible for humans to fly (e.g. the F-117, or any fighter with forward-swept wings). Since the U-2 is much closer to a "conventional" aircraft, and can be stick-flown by a human, wouldn't it be a walk in the park for a compute to fly it?

jandrese• 9 years ago

The U-2 is basically a F-104 with glider wings. The landing gear situation is something only crazy cold war people would approve of.

It's a testament to the engineering that what was by all rights a quick hack job has managed to stand the test of time.

Gargoyle• 9 years ago

The U-2 is so difficult to fly that it requires external sensors to land. AKA another pilot racing down the runway in a chase car radioing instructions to the pilot in the plane.

https://jalopnik.com/5537629/the-140-mph-chase-cars-of-the-u...

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

Because it would be designed by engineers using computers and would eventually become so over-engineered that it would be a money sink and never fly in any real missions.

ProAm4• 9 years ago

If you are interested in how the Pentagon, Air Force and Navy decides to fund and build aircraft, I highly recommend reading this book [1]. It's about the father of the A-10, F15 (sort of), F-16 and FA-18. Fascinating read about how the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics. (it's about the life of John Boyd, not just how aircraft a chosen but its covered quite a bit in the book)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

Uhhrrr2• 9 years ago

I second this book recommendation. Reading one of Boyd's more epic slide decks might be interesting to some: http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf

The priority placed on tight OODA loops jibes well with the Lean Startup doctrine, I think. Of course, since there's always an aggressive competitor for resources in Boyd's field, he emphasizes messing up their OODA loop as well.

Terr_2• 9 years ago

the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics

There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

wallace_f3• 9 years ago

Also, note the Vanguard rocket. We lost the space race due to politics. We had the people who knew how to build it--who later built the Saturn V--and after they did, were promptly kicked out.

The Soviets had childish, despicable politics of their own going on, with important rocket engineers like Korolev being accused by his colleague Glushko of treason, sending Korolev to the gulag for Glushko's professional advantage.[1]

Korolev went on to help design to Tupolev tu-2, a formidable bomber in WWII, from prison. Later he was Chief Designer of the Soviet's rocket program before dying of cancer (had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized).

Maybe the reason we see no signs of life in the universe is that all life evolves to conquer itself.

1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment

WalterBright2• 9 years ago

That book (i.e. Boyd's story) is amazing. I had no idea what he'd done. For anyone interested in military aviation, it's a must read.

nyolfen• 9 years ago

this is a bit tangential, but my grandfather flew U-2's in the late 50s over china. a few months ago my aunt sent me a photocopy of a small essay he wrote about some of his experiences during his time flying, and particularly technical details about flying them. i transcribed it and put it on my blog here:

https://hyperstition.al/u2-james-black/

hudibras• 9 years ago

My guess is there is a secret successor (manned or unmanned) to the SR-71 already flying right now.

leeoniya• 9 years ago

i highly recommend reading this guy's hunt for the wrecked A-12 (the CIA's early variant of the SR-71):

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...

jonah4• 9 years ago

He has a number of great pieces on his site.

I'd also recommend "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans"

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...

cagey• 9 years ago

++ I recall this being a great read triggered by previous discussion[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12019567

sizzzzlerz• 9 years ago

You can talk about the unobtainium skin, the Pratt-Whitney engines, the radar-bouncing fuselage angles but what really made it such a bad ass plane was Kelly Johnson and his team.

DoofusOfDeath• 9 years ago

I enjoy science-fiction, but I'm not an aircraft aficionado. What makes the SR-71 so awesome to me is that it looks like about the coolest spacecraft I could have imagined when I was 10 years old. And it still looks that way to me.

ProAm4• 9 years ago

Yeah, child hood memories with GI Joe come to mind [1]

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/8c/a7/0a8ca767c485d88869af...

kevin_thibedeau• 9 years ago

I had a coworker once who claimed that he got a ride on one before it was declassified. Apparently he was waiting at an air station to go home on leave and was constantly being bumped from flights by higher ranks. A "special" fight came in that he could get on, though, after signing some paperwork to keep quiet about it.

mikeash3• 9 years ago

That sounds extremely unlikely. My understanding is that both crew members were essential, so you couldn't just put a warm body in the back seat and let the pilot do all the work. The back seat had all the navigation equipment, for one.

sandworm101• 9 years ago

What the OP forgets to mention is that the 71 was not intended initially as a surveillance aircraft. It was meant as an interceptor. The phoenix missile system, of f14 fame, was initially meant for an SR71/Oxcart-type airframe. This thing was mean to shoot down valkyrie-class bombers. That image of mach3/4 aircraft chasing each other down never really happened.

mikeash3• 9 years ago

Sort of. The A-12 came first. That was more or less a single-seat SR-71, built for the CIA as a spy plane. The Air Force wanted a high-speed interceptor, Lockheed proposed a variant of the A-12, and the YF-12 was born, but never got beyond three prototypes because it ended up being unnecessary. The SR-71 was the Air Force spy plane version of the A-12, enlarged to carry more fuel and two crew.

The interceptor variant is definitely interesting, but it's a side branch of the spy plane lineage.

AdmiralAsshat• 9 years ago

I always preferred the SR-77 Blackbird, myself.

cyberferret6• 9 years ago

"Blackbird" was the moniker for the SR-71. I've never heard of the SR-77. Either you have information on a super secret skunk works project, or else I suspect you might be taking the mickey out of the editors of the article for their SR-1 typo?

undersuit• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(comics) apparently.

tonteldoos2• 9 years ago

I've read (unsure if factual, can't find a source right now) that the plane's original designation was to be RS-71 (because reconnaissance).

At some point, in a speech or introduction, some high ranking official misread that as SR-71, and after that all documentation was updated to show this new designation.

doug1001• 9 years ago

i can remember watching these take off/land at Kadena air base in Okinawa while i was stationed in Camp Hansen (USMC).

We assume they were flying recon missions over North Korea. They would take off then quickly bank almost 180 degrees

we referred to them as "Habu" because that's how the locals called them, which is the name of the large black (and extremely poisonous) snake indigenous to the island.

i recall reading that the SR-71 was originally designed as a strategic interceptor, rather than a long-range recon bird.

pklausler• 9 years ago

The thing that really amazes me is that these badass planes were designed with slide rules, drafting tables, and wind tunnels. No fluid-flow simulations; these things predate the CDC6600. The engineering was as badass as the product.

asmithmd1• 9 years ago

And no wind tunnel can produce Mach 3 flows. Test pilots had to slowly expand the flight envelope of prototype aircraft.

hector_ka• 9 years ago

Check this out https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/htf/ Back in the day they could test up to Mach 7. Not it is a test bed for hybrid electric planes.

grkvlt2• 9 years ago

Supersonic wind tunnels have existed since the 1920s and Mach 3+ versions were built in Germany during World War 2 for the V2 project. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_wind_tunnel

thule• 9 years ago

I met a gentleman around 20-25 years ago that told me the story of the "$500 hammer". Years ago the press went crazy that the government was overpaying for tools for military projects. This guy gave me "the rest of the story". The cost for tooling is what it should be for a limited run of "special metal" tools. I'm guessing the tool manufacturer had to shutdown their normal operations to supply Skunkworks with all new tools. It would have cost a fortune. Not to mention the secrecy surrounding why some company wanted titanium tools. I don't recall if he mentioned the tools were make of titanium, but he did mention that the chrome bake on normal tools had caused problems on the SR-71 project. I'm glad to see that this little tidbit of information was covered in the article.

jloughry• 9 years ago

The backstory is related in Skunk Works by Ben Rich [1]; cadmium-plated tools caused embrittlement in titanium skin panels; it took them a while to track down the cause but eventually they purged the Burbank factory of everything that was cadmium plated to solve the production problem.

[1] Ben Rich and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1996. ISBN 0-316-74300-3.

Abishek_Muthian• 9 years ago

Guys, I thought NASA is not supposed to disclose it's military affiliations publicly?

"As reported in PM, NASA is currently the revisiting the supersonic spy plane concept. It recently awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Skunk to test the feasibility of the SR-2, a supersonic drone that would fly almost twice the speed of the Blackbird. The idea is that speed would play the role that stealth once did in beating enemy air defense network. "

matt_wulfeck• 9 years ago

Q: what counter measures did the blackbird have against surface-to-air missiles?

A: it would simply fly faster than them.

What ana amazing piece of engineering.

ufmace2• 9 years ago

Cool post, I didn't know the part where the plane was retired shortly after the Soviets managed to put together an aircraft and missile combo, along with well-organized operations, that could plausibly shoot down the SR-71.

throwaway4563212• 9 years ago

Consider that not much more than a decade before the SR-71 project started the state of the art in plane design was canvas over a wooden frame with a V12 engine that went at 300mph.

How much technology did they have to invent from first principles to build a plane which flew at Mach 3 at the edge of space? Using slide rules and chalk boards?

throwaway4563212• 9 years ago

I read the Ben Rich book "Skunk Works" about 15 years ago. I've never forgotten the ending.

Towards the end of his life Kelly Johnson suffered from dementia.

They wheeled him out on a runway and there was a fly-past of SR-71s.

Ben asks Kelly "Did you see that? They were saluting you!" I was bawling when I read first that and I am tearing up now. Talk about Epic Men.

amenghra• 9 years ago

The hunt for the A-12[0], "its sneaky black older brother", is a fun read.

[0] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...

oasisbob• 9 years ago

Oh no! That site is such a fun magnificent time suck. I lost the link, guess it's time to take another dive back in.

cyberferret6• 9 years ago

A nice video tour of the SR-71 cockpit (front and rear) by a former pilot. A must watch for any Blackbird enthusiast. - https://youtu.be/tj9UwKQKE3A

sdfjkl• 9 years ago

the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend.

Does nobody proofread these articles anymore? A missing word in the first sentence. This sort of sloppy publishing really doesn't leave a good first impression with the reader.

doctorRetro• 9 years ago

Oh good, I'm not the only one who gets really bothered by this! I hate seeing these kinds of errors. It happens to everyone, I understand that. But when you're an internationally read journal, you should really be holding yourself to a higher standard than, say, the twice-a-week village newspaper or your aunt's emails.

sytelus• 9 years ago

One of the most amazing fact I'd learned was that invisibility to radars was not mostly due to the absorbing material but rather a specific geometry of the plane! The materials certainly enhanced it but it was still like 25% or so contribution. Even more amazing fact was that this possibility was first discussed in a Russian research paper but that was never followed through because it was too complex to compute such shape and no one believed it would actually work. The folks at Stunkworks got hold of the paper, hired a mathematician and used computers to do the computation to actually find the shape that would have invisibility property to radars. No one in army at the time believed that some special shape can just become invisible to radar. They did the demo to army to prove it and landed their contract. Considering all these was in 1960s, its just amazing.

vlehto• 9 years ago

because it was too complex to compute such shape and no one believed it would actually work

I don't want to put down your enthusiasm, but this is not very exact info. Stealth design never makes the plane invisible, it just increases the detection distance or the power requirement of the radar.

You get relatively long way by simply avoiding corner reflectors. There are rumors that Avro Vulcan used to disappear from friendly radars accidentally just because of that.

One of the features that increases stealth is the radar. Because radars tend to show on radar. SR-71 had "side looking radar" which might have been optimized not to show the array towards any hostile ground stations.

engi_nerd• 9 years ago

Those side looking radars were primarily used for gathering imagery through synthetic aperture radar mapping.

mikeash3• 9 years ago

Unfortunately they didn't quite count on the radar reflectivity of the exhaust plume, which apparently made it a pretty big target in the end: https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/sr-71.htm

zaarn• 9 years ago

I think I learned about this plane through the abridged version of Hellsing Ultimate... and then sucking up every detail about it I could... Quite an amazing piece of engineering indeed.

"Do you even read my christmas list?"

valuearb• 9 years ago

The M-21 was the most bad-ass of the bad-asses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

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