
What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015) - skellertor
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a14491/story-of-sr-71-blackbird/
======
mikeokner
My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass:
[http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-
sr-71-story-107912704...](http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-
sr-71-story-1079127041)

~~~
strictnein
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.

~~~
badosu
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)

~~~
SllX
I have never served in the military, but I like to believe I live in a world
in which military commanders are often stuck in a position of having to manage
a load of testosterone-fueled lads out doing crazy shit that has the potential
to be a "diplomatic incident" and are thus, sympathetic to the commanders in
_other_ countries that are often stuck dealing with the same type of lads.

So when a French commander calls up an American commander about some crap
their lads pulled flying by in an SR-71 the other day, they're able to sort it
out like adults, maybe the American commander relays that he will give his
lads whatever the military equivalent of a stern talking to is and they'll
both have a laugh, maybe make arrangements for a beer and it doesn't escalate
into anything for the masses to waste their limited attention bandwidth on.

Now it's entirely possible I don't live in such a world, but to believe
otherwise would simply leave me scared shitless in a corner.

~~~
autokad
i heard a story were a group of rookies in a jeep lost their bearings in the
fog, and plowed through a barb wire barricade and got their jeep stuck in some
sort of ravine on the wrong side of Germany.

the other side, instead of shooting or arresting them, they helped them get
the jeep out. they laughed at them and made fun of them, but they still helped

------
kevincennis
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.

~~~
jfoutz
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
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.

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

------
DoofusOfDeath
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.

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

[1]
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/8c/a7/0a8ca767c485d88869af...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/8c/a7/0a8ca767c485d88869af7e6974d33b77.jpg)

------
jotm
" 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?

~~~
ProAm
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...](https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-
Changed/dp/0316796883)

~~~
wallace_f
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](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment)

~~~
WalterBright
The way I read it, there was some question that orbiting spacecraft would
violate airspace, and with itchy fingers on the launch button, Eisenhower was
unwilling to provoke the Soviet Union. He delayed the space program until the
Soviets launched Sputnik, which settled the issue. If that's true, it was a
good, pragmatic decision.

~~~
wallace_f
I have heard that as well, but to the best of my knowledge I don't believe it
is accurate. Here is Wikipedia, from the Space Race page.

>The Space Race began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to
the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial
satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would
also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Union beat the US to
this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to
the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961

------
leeoniya
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...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-
places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/)

~~~
jonah
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...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-
death-valley-germans/)

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

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

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

~~~
hector_ka
Check this out
[https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/htf/](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.

------
strictnein
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/...](https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/dp/0316743003)

~~~
joshvm
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.

------
thule
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
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.

------
matt_wulfeck
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.

------
sizzzzlerz
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.

------
throwaway456321
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
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...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-
places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/)

~~~
oasisbob
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.

------
throwaway456321
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?

------
kevin_thibedeau
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.

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
lylejohnson
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.

------
sdfjkl
> 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
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.

------
cyberferret
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](https://youtu.be/tj9UwKQKE3A)

------
doug1001
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.

------
Abishek_Muthian
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. "

------
sandworm101
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.

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
ufmace
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.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21)

------
zaarn
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?"

------
AdmiralAsshat
I always preferred the SR-77 Blackbird, myself.

~~~
cyberferret
"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?

~~~
tonteldoos
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.

------
onesun
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.

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

~~~
cyberferret
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.

~~~
kevincennis
I actually didn't even notice that until you put it in quotes just now.

~~~
romwell
Then there are outright broken sentences like this:

>The 1980s saw an increase in threats capable to countering the SR-71,
including improved enemy air defenses and the introduction of the MiG-31,
which was armed with the R-33 air-to-air missile could intercept the
Blackbird.

This just breaks my mental parsing, since there are so many ways to fix this:

1\. ..MiG, which, being armed with the R-33 missile, could intercept the
Blackbird;

2\. ..MiG, which was armed with the R-33 missile, and could intercept the
Blackbird;

3\. ..MiG, which was armed with the R-33 air-to-air missile, and therefore
could intercept the Blackbird.

(and so on)

