Aerospace & Defense
As the SR-71 Blackbird neared retirement, rumors spread of a faster successor: a classified hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft called the SR-91 Aurora, said to exceed...
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As the SR-71 Blackbird neared retirement, rumors spread of a faster successor: a classified hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft called the SR-91 Aurora, said to exceed...
Former SR-71 pilot Brian Shul told the story in Sled Driver: a January mission out of RAF Mildenhall with RSO Walt Watson, bound north...
On March 21, 1968, an SR-71 Blackbird flew its first operational mission over North Vietnam at 78,000 feet and Mach 3.17. The threat came...
The SR-71 Blackbird was built to spy on the Soviet Union and built from Soviet titanium. Lockheed needed the metal for more than 80%...
On June 29, 1987, an SR-71 lost an engine to an explosion over the Baltic with Soviet airspace to its right, fell from 80,000...
Summary and Key Points: In the summer of 1984, SR-71 Blackbird 61-7974 suffered a double engine unstart at 83,000 feet off Murmansk while Soviet...
Before Lockheed drew the SR-71, Soviet designer Pavel Tsybin was already sketching a Mach 3 spy plane. His RSR, for jet strategic reconnaissance, began...
Lockheed once sketched a carrier-based Blackbird. The A-12CB would have left an aircraft carrier deck with Rocketdyne boosters borrowed from the F-104G zero-length-launch program,...
Lockheed never flight-tested the SR-71 past Mach 3.2, yet Ed Yeilding and J.T. Vida cruised at Mach 3.3 for most of the Blackbird’s final...
Every SR-71 “flaw” was a trade. Its 80-percent-titanium airframe stretched by inches at 2,000-plus mph, so 1960s sealants couldn’t hold the integral tanks shut...