There is a mystique about these planes. For the public, it is a mystique built on flying speed, altitude, and the secrecy that shrouded the Blackbird. For the crew members, it likely comes from being almost astronauts. Preparations for an SR flight in many ways resembled the launch process for a space mission.
The oxygen purged nitrogen from their bloodstreams and prevented the high-altitude problem of severe cramping. They also underwent an abbreviated physical before being helped into their helmeted flight suits, garments nearly the same as those worn by early astronauts.
A seven-person ground crew strapped them into the SR and gave the plane a detailed preflight examination. A truckload of crew members trailed it down the runway on takeoff, visually confirming that all systems were go. Finally, the crew would be alone. Even though they were at 80, feet and clipping along at three times the speed of sound, there was little sensation of speed, says Elliott.
At that altitude, there were no visual clues as to their progress. Once on the ground again, the plane would cool and contract to its former size. Inside, air-conditioning kept the tight-fitting cockpit at a cool sixty degrees. Though the stars always were out at that altitude, there was little time to gaze at the constellations. Most of a flight was spent monitoring instruments and staying on course, recalls Elliott.
When traveling at thirty-two miles a minute, a wrong turn can result in a detour of several hundred miles—or more—quickly. Planned turns started miles ahead of the actual event. It was hard work. SR crews took off knowing their exact longitude and latitude, their precise location on the face of the Earth.
The crews needed to know just where they started to get where they were going. We very seldom had any problems at all. But you could never relax. If you have a problem up there. Most Blackbird flights ranged in duration from two and a half to six hours. Some, however, might last as long as ten or twelve hours. One day, the destination may have been the Persian Gulf or Cuba, the next China or Lebanon, all places the planes are known to have operated over in an estimated sixty-five million miles of flying and spying.
On the ground afterward, support crews were warned not to touch the Blackbird for half an hour, until it cooled down.
The post-flight inspection checklist included steps. His hair and the plane are black. Skip to content. It was part of a family of spy planes built to venture into enemy territory, without being shot down or even detected, in a time before satellites and drones. The black paint job, designed to dissipate heat, earned it the nickname Blackbird, and paired with the sleek lines of the long fuselage, made the plane look unlike anything that had come before -- a design that hasn't lost any of its brilliance.
An SR ''Blackbird'' during a training mission in Most conventional airplanes look like someone built them -- this one almost looks like it was grown. A CIA spy. In May , an American U-2 spy plane was shot duown in Soviet airspace while taking aerial photographs. Initially, the US government said it was a stray weather research aircraft, but the story fell apart once the Soviet government released photos of the captured pilot and the plane's surveillance equipment.
The incident had immediate diplomatic repercussions for the Cold War and reinforced the need for a new type of reconnaissance plane that could fly faster and higher, safe from anti-aircraft fire. The task of designing such an ambitious machine fell on Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, one of the world's greatest aircraft designers, and his secret division of engineers at Lockheed, called Skunk Works.
Everything," recalled Johnson, who died in , the same year the Blackbirds were first retired from service. The original plane in the Blackbird family was called the A and made its maiden flight on April 30, In total, 13 As were produced, and the plane was a top secret, special access program operated by the CIA. The Blackbird still holds many aviation records.
In it flew a coast to coast flight, from Los Angeles to Washington, in 67 minutes. Credit: NASA. Titanium skin. Because the aircraft was designed to fly faster than 2, mph, friction with the surrounding atmosphere would heat up the fuselage to a point that would melt a conventional airframe. High-resolution JPEG x IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and image viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections.
View Manifest. View in Mirador Viewer. Twin-engine, two-seat, supersonic strategic reconnaissance aircraft; airframe constructed largley of titanium and its alloys; vertical tail fins are constructed of a composite laminated plastic-type material to reduce radar cross-section; Pratt and Whitney J58 JT11DB turbojet engines feature large inlet shock cones. Photographer Eric Long demonstrates how lighting the Blackbird from behind can help highlight the shape and contour of the aircraft.
Because the aircraft was designed to reflect light, using a flash head on will result in a photograph that lacks detail. No reconnaissance aircraft in history has operated globally in more hostile airspace or with such complete impunity than the SR, the world's fastest jet-propelled aircraft. The Blackbird's performance and operational achievements placed it at the pinnacle of aviation technology developments during the Cold War.
This Blackbird accrued about 2, hours of flight time during 24 years of active service with the U. Air Force. On its last flight, March 6, , Lt. Ed Yielding and Lt. At the flight's conclusion, they landed at Washington-Dulles International Airport and turned the airplane over to the Smithsonian.
No reconnaissance aircraft in history has operated in more hostile airspace or with such complete impunity than the SR Blackbird. It is the fastest aircraft propelled by air-breathing engines. The airplane was conceived when tensions with communist Eastern Europe reached levels approaching a full-blown crisis in the mids. Air Force recognized that this relatively slow aircraft was already vulnerable to Soviet interceptors. They also understood that the rapid development of surface-to-air missile systems could put U-2 pilots at grave risk.
The danger proved reality when a U-2 was shot down by a surface to air missile over the Soviet Union in Lockheed's first proposal for a new high speed, high altitude, reconnaissance aircraft, to be capable of avoiding interceptors and missiles, centered on a design propelled by liquid hydrogen.
This proved to be impracticable because of considerable fuel consumption. Lockheed then reconfigured the design for conventional fuels. Lockheed's clandestine 'Skunk Works' division headed by the gifted design engineer Clarence L.
To meet these challenging requirements, Lockheed engineers overcame many daunting technical challenges. The design team chose to make the jet's external skin of titanium alloy to which shielded the internal aluminum airframe. Two conventional, but very powerful, afterburning turbine engines propelled this remarkable aircraft. These power plants had to operate across a huge speed envelope in flight, from a takeoff speed of kph mph to more than 3, kph 2, mph.
To prevent supersonic shock waves from moving inside the engine intake causing flameouts, Johnson's team had to design a complex air intake and bypass system for the engines. Skunk Works engineers also optimized the A cross-section design to exhibit a low radar profile. Lockheed hoped to achieve this by carefully shaping the airframe to reflect as little transmitted radar energy radio waves as possible, and by application of special paint designed to absorb, rather than reflect, those waves.
This treatment became one of the first applications of stealth technology, but it never completely met the design goals. Test pilot Lou Schalk flew the single-seat A on April 24, , after he became airborne accidentally during high-speed taxi trials.
The airplane showed great promise but it needed considerable technical refinement before the CIA could fly the first operational sortie on May 31, - a surveillance flight over North Vietnam. While Lockheed continued to refine the A, the U.
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