
That Time an SR-71 Made an Emergency Landing in Norway - curtis
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/that-time-an-sr-71-made-an-emergency-landing-in-norway-1765436508
======
mikeash
It's funny how familiar this story is. I fly gliders and have landed in a few
fields after being unable to make it back to the airport. There's the same
desire to get back home if it's possible, and procedures drilled into you to
make sure you don't push that too hard and get yourself killed. The alternate
landing field is selected well in advance (although in my case, selected by
eye some minutes before while I'm higher up). After landing, there's the same
call back to base to tell them what happened and note the time. (We always
want to track flight times, so the landing time is required for record-
keeping.) There's the meeting of and with luck making friends with the locals.
There's waiting for the cavalry to appear with your support equipment and
whisk you away.

Obviously, their situation was about a million times more complex and
interesting, but it's neat to see this sort of commonality from one end of
aviation to the other.

~~~
imglorp
Glider pilot here too.

I like the etymology of "bought the farm" wherein you used to owe the farmer
whatever price he asked after damaging his field. Of course, an SR71 will
probably involve 5 or 10 fields, but still.

~~~
jackfoxy
I don't buy that etymology.
[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/72850.html](http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/72850.html)

~~~
codehusker
From your link:

> There are a few suggested derivations for the phrase. One, put forward in a
> 1955 edition of American Speech, is the idea that when a jet crashes on a
> farm the farmer may sue the government for compensation. That would generate
> a large enough amount of money to pay off the farm's mortgage. Hence, the
> pilot paid for the farm with his life.

Etymology is tough historic recreation, but it seems as plausible as the
others suggested by your article.

------
nissehulth
I think this story needs to be mentioned (as usual when SR-71 links are
posted):
[http://www.econrates.com/reality/schul.html](http://www.econrates.com/reality/schul.html)

~~~
foota
Do yourself a favor, open your browsers dev tools and uncheck the background-
image property on the body tag.

~~~
Bdiem
or display it in a "reading view" (FF: small book icon in the urlbar)

------
Isamu
My favorite: "what is the slowest you ever flew?"

[http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/speed-is-
life/#.Vuv5...](http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/speed-is-
life/#.Vuv56kX3bv4)

~~~
jobu
At 160 knots: _" we weren’t really flying, but were falling in a slight bank"_

That's 184 mph! Nearly the top speed of the only plane I've ever flown (Cessna
172). We never got near that speed, and I still thought we were going crazy
fast.

Great story! Thanks for posting that link.

~~~
dghughes
I had a few months of flying lessons in a Cessna 152 I was envious of the guys
who flew the 172 all that glorious elbow room!

------
sukh
One of the best books I've ever read, courtesy of Hacker News.

[http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/dp/0316743305/)

~~~
smcl
I keep seeing this mentioned on HN and other places, I must have added it to
my "to read" list about 3 times I think

~~~
pklausler
My favorite section in that book is when the Skunk Works guys trucked their
stealth fighter prototype out to Edwards AFB for radar cross section testing.
They stuck it up on a pole and then the AF guys in a radar van lit it up. And
they could see it on radar just fine, and the Lockheed engineers were
mystified, and the AF guys were giving them a hard time... until the vulture
that had been perched on the prototype flew away and left nothing behind.

~~~
robotresearcher
And then the skilled radar techs look really, really hard and see... the pole.

------
noir-york
What a beautiful aircraft! I think that every time I see pics of the SR-71.
Its as if nature wishes that the faster something flies, the more beautiful it
should look.

~~~
coldcode
It's most awesome plane ever built. Make sure you see one in person (I saw the
one at the Hazy Museum in Washington DC). It looks fast even sitting in a
hanger.

~~~
mxuribe
I actually touched the one that is/was sitting on the USS Intrepid (in NYC)!
Granted to most its just an airplane, a hunk of old metal...but too me it was
totally awesome; I touched something that - besides actual rockets - was the
fastest thing that humans have ever built! (Yes, my wife loves me but totally
called me a nerd that day! :-)

~~~
mikeash
Rockets, and one manhole cover:

[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html)

~~~
mirimir
> Later we were to see that if the hole is deep enough and the yield is high
> enough, an empty hole will close completely, allowing nothing whatsoever out
> except the initial light, which is not radioactive of course.

That is _very_ cool. But I wonder. The "light" does include neutrons, I
suspect. So neutron activation?

~~~
mikeash
Neutrons are absorbed by air, so at some sufficient depth they'll all be
stopped before they escape. I don't know what that sufficient depth would be.

People working on nuclear testing in the 1950s may not have been so strict
about their idea of perfect containment, though.

------
JustSomeNobody
The engineers in the 60's were amazing. There was no StackOverflow or Google.
You had to know your sh*t.

~~~
diskcat
Let me tell you about ancient roman engineers

they didn't even have wheelbarrows.

~~~
vermontdevil
Let me tell you about the Egyptian engineers.

They didn't even have wheels.

~~~
brashrat
yeah, but how can you call yourself an engineer if you don't even have at
least the urge to reinvent the wheel? :)

~~~
mikeash
"Why are you doing that? Don't reinvent the wheel." "What's a 'wheel'?"

------
barney54
I know Mach 3 is fast, but it still is amazing flying California to Russia and
back in 10.5 hours.

~~~
sswezey
You can fly from California to Russia and back in less than 10.5 hours today,
it's not that far from Alaska.

~~~
obsurveyor
The difference is they were flying the long way, across the Atlantic, not the
short way over the Bering Sea.

~~~
mikeash
Here's the direct route:

[http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=BAB-MMK](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=BAB-MMK)

According to the article they passed south of Greenland, so they took a
somewhat longer path. I assume that's because it helped them reach the
tankers, or kept them within range of emergency landing spots or potential
rescue forces.

------
zhte415
I love hearing others stories after the event. Especially long after the
event. It is touching to share first-person memories, even, especially, long
after the event.

And admirable reflections of character that he didn't even contact the
commanding officer of the Norway base until both the author had required and
the mission/plane had been declassified. He believed in what he agreed to, and
stood by it.

------
wiremine
The Air Zoo Museum in Kalamazoo Michigan has a SR-71B on display, and it's
even cooler in person than the pictures give it credit for. If you ever get a
chance, I recommend you check it out.

[http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?page_id=192](http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?page_id=192)

------
jjallen
I will never cease to be amazed by stories like these of the SR-71, even
though the essence of this one is benign in the grand scheme of aircraft
stories: an important, sensitive plane had to emergency land in a foreign
country.

But perhaps the most amazing part for me was the last paragraph, stating how
two pilots ejected from an SR-71 after losing engine power! Can you imagine
ejecting from an SR-71? I would guess you needed to sit there for at least a
minute or two, just sort of flying through space until it slowed down to some
speed that wouldn't immediately render you unconscious once ejecting. Will
have to find out more about that.

EDIT: I'll add that I still can't imagine ejecting at even 100 MPH, a fraction
of the speed the pilots probably ejected at.

~~~
mirimir
> April 18, Capt. Brian Udell, an F-15E fighter pilot from Mountain Home Air
> Force Base, Idaho, will acknowledge the second anniversary of that fateful
> day. There will be no celebration, because he lost a friend and coworker -
> weapons systems officer Capt. Dennis White. Yet on that bitter-sweet night,
> Udell miraculously survived one of the fastest known ejections in history at
> more than 780 mph.

[http://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm](http://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm)

------
reitanqild
> We learned that many Norwegian fighter pilots received their initial
> training in the USA. We definitely were among friends!

This was a really surprising part for me.

Norway is, and has "always" been a part of NATO. Only one (I think) fringe
(well, mostly, they flew high 6 or so years ago) party has really been opposed
to Norways NATO membership.

Norwegian troops also train regularly together with other allied troops so
learning that top trained pilots would wonder if they were among friends when
they landed were.. weird.

~~~
fraserharris
Invasion by the Soviet Union was an ever present risk. Neighboring Finland has
been repeatedly occupied by Russia. During WW2, the Soviet Union attempted to
annex Finland.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93Russia_relatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93Russia_relations)

------
mey
Oddly enough, I think this is the first time I've seen reference that the
SR-71 flew combat missions.

------
tlrobinson
Lots of other good Blackbird stories:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22sr-71%22&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22sr-71%22&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
Maultasche
That was interesting. My physics teacher from high school told us that he used
to be an SR-71 pilot, and flew missions near the Soviet Union, but couldn't
tell us much more than that due to most of it being classified. It sounded
like he really enjoyed that job.

Now I get to read about what sort of stuff he was doing. I see that his name
is briefly mentioned in this article as an SR-71 pilot based at Beale AFB, so
I know he wasn't just making it up :).

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tkinom
"Necessity is mother of invention" \- if not for the cool war, there won't be
billions that pour into the military /industrial complex to create wonderful
machines like SR-71.

It seems the "progress" has been slow down after the cool war is over.

1950-1980 created far more interesting military innovations compare to the
last 30 years, right or wrong?

~~~
zeveb
There was certainly a lot of neat military-related innovation, and a lot of it
had great civilian applicability (e.g. the Internet), but I'm minded of the
Mr. Eisenhower's speech: 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.' Every one of
those dollars, had they been spent on the market's priorities rather than on
the State's, would have done more to satisfy basic human needs.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have fought and won the Cold War — indeed,
the fall of Communism was perhaps the only good thing to come out of the
benighted, bloody, blinkered, blunderous 20th century — simply that it was
costly. War is necessary for survival, but war is also a mis-investment, but
the best investment in the world doesn't matter if one fails to survive. It's
a tragic paradox.

------
pklausler
The Evergreen Aviation Museum near Portland, OR has an SR-71, surely the most
beautiful aircraft ever designed. It's worth the short drive if you're in the
area. Those engineers were badass and didn't even use those new-fangled
digital computers.

This museum also has the Spruce Goose, by the way.

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greenisland
A better bird from a better time.

------
runeb
Interesting article, but the stated pronunciation of Bodø as "Buddha" is
wrong. Its more like "Boo-duh'.

~~~
veritas3241
That's how I currently pronounce "Buddha". This now makes me question how I
pronounce "Buddha"...

