Fall from an SR-71

there's an old airplane story that's called the LA speed check and go something like this a pilot of a single-engine Cessna calls the Los Angeles air route Control Center and asked for a speed check wants to know how fast he's going and the senator tells him he's going about 90 knots immediately thereafter another pilot someone in say a twin engine Beechcraft trying to make fun of how slow the Cessna goes ask for a speed check and the senator tells him that he's going around a hundred and twenty-one knots but almost immediately thereafter another voice chimes in and this is a Navy pilot who's flying at an f-18 fighter jet and he doesn't really need to know how fast he's going he's got an airspeed indicator inside his cockpit he's just trying to prove to everybody out there on the frequency that he's flying the biggest baddest fastest jet in the world and to all those Cessna and Beechcraft owners how fast our plane really flies and the LA Center radios back that he's going an impressive six hundred and twenty knots and you think that would be enough to win this little contest what another voice casually asked this is Aspen 3-0 can you give us a speed check and after a moment the Center responds Aspen 3-0 we have you going 1993 knots that story which was related in Bryan Scholz book sled driver flying the world's fastest jet shows how extreme the world's fastest air-breathing manned jet aircraft in history the Lockheed sr-71 blackbird really was but you know if you find an airplane that can go more than three times the speed of sound and almost into outer space one thing is important you don't want to fall out and if you did it would be history that deserves to be remembered in late 1957 the CIA approached the defense contractor Lockheed asking them to secretly design an undetectable spy plane the project called Archangel was to be handled by the Lockheed advance development projects team led by legendary aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson Lockheed advance development project unit was called the skunk works a nickname it had gotten since the original facility had been built near at an old plastics manufacturing plant that produced awful smells in 1955 the sky quirks had gotten a CIA contract to build an ultra high altitude spy plane designed for flying over the Soviet Union and photographing sites of strategic interests the plane was the Lockheed u2 a plane able to fly at such a high altitude that it was thought to be outside Soviet radar capacity and invulnerable to Soviet fighter aircraft and ground-to-air missiles the new request was for a plane that could go even higher and faster than the u2 the need for such a plane was highlighted when the Soviet s75 ground-to-air missile successfully shot down the u2 in May of 1960 causing an international incident project Archangel produced a single-seat reconnaissance plane called the a12 and the two-seat fighter interceptor prototype called the yf-12 that set speed and altitude records in 1965 while the f12 never made production it was used as a marble for an Air Force reconnaissance plane that was longer than the a12 held more fuel and had a two-seat cockpit the plane ended up with the designation SR for a strategic reconnaissance 71 painted a blue so dark that was almost black to camouflage the plane against the night sky it earned the nickname blackbird a total of 36 sr-71 black birds were manufactured the sr-71 was designed for flight at over Mach 3 with a flight crew of two the pilot in the forward cockpit and the reconnaissance systems officer operated the surveillance systems and equipment from the rear cockpit and directing navigation on the mission flight path traveling at supersonic speeds meant that the outside of the aircraft would get very hot more than 600 degrees so lucky could not use aluminum the plane was 92% titanium inside and out while titanium has low density in high strength it offers unique challenges in manufacturing but most problematic is that the ore needed to make titanium is rare and in short supply in the United States the major supplier of the ore was the Soviet Union the u.s. surreptitiously worked through third-world straw buyers to acquire the or the plane was designed to reduce its radar cross-section an early version of stealth that combined with its speed and altitude made the plane virtually invulnerable to countermeasures the sr-71 was powered by two pratt & whitney j58 engines this axial-flow turbojet engine was designed be most efficient it speed mach 3.2 although later experience showed that it may have been even more efficient at higher speeds but that was a complex problem at those speeds air coming inside the engine had to be slowed to subsonic speeds to maintain consistent flow to the compressor this was done by moving a cone that was called a spike inside each inlet but as the airflow reduces it causes a disturbance a shock wave called normal shock in in a locked computer within the engine would control a complex system of bleed tubes and bypass doors to handle the pressure however the early analog computers would often have difficulty keeping up with rapidly changing flight conditions if the pressure inside the engine became too great it could blow back off the front of the engine disrupting airflow and what was called an inlet unstart the unstarted initially causes immense drag because of the forward blowback and would often extinguish the afterburner causing a symmetrical thrust and violent yaw inputs from the autopilot system and the pilot could counter the yargh recapture the shock wave and return the plane to normal operation but an unstart would almost always result in a rough ride sometimes accompanied by violent banging noises and counter yarra the yarn can be so violent that the pilot helmets would bang against the canopy the effect was described as like being in a train wreck there were also challenges given the plane's altitude ceiling above 80,000 feet a normal pilots mask could not provide enough oxygen for a pilot above about 40,000 feet and breathing becomes impossible above 49 thousand feet as the pressure at which the lungs excrete carbon dioxide exceeds outside air pressure at 62,000 feet some 18 plus kilometers the pressure reaches something called the Armstrong limit named after the pioneering flight position who identified the phenomena the Armstrong limit represents the altitude above which atmospheric pressure is sufficiently low that water boils at the normal temperature of the human body simply put a human cannot survive above this limit as their blood would literally boil to a stand the conditions aircrews for high-altitude craft have to wear pressurized suits in the terrible scenario where an air crew had to ejected extreme altitudes the suit had a built-in oxygen tank designed to keep the suit pressurized the sr-71 performance would subject extreme conditions planes returning from missions often would have rivets ripped out or panels that were delaminated or parts like air intakes it had to be repaired or replaced and one place where the extreme conditions that affected this airplane showed was in aircraft losses of just 32 sr-71s built 12 were lost to accidents and the first of those accidents occurred during the planes testing phase of January 25th 1966 the plane tail number nine five two took off from Edwards Air Force Base at 11:20 a.m. the pilot was bill Weaver an experienced Lockheed test pilot Jim's where a Lockheed flight test reconnaissance and navigation system specialist was in the rear the two were investigating procedures designed to reduce trim drag and improve high Mach cruise performance the latter involved flying with the plane configured with the center of gravity located further aft than normal the first leg of the flight went normally and the sr-71 was refueled by a kc-130 tanker Weaver increased the plane speed to mach 3.2 and climbed to 78,000 feet several minutes later the right engine automatic Inlet control system failed requiring to switch to manual control this was common in the early test phase of the aircraft but as Weaver took the plane into a scheduled 35 degree Bank turned to the right the right engine suffered a dreaded Inlet unstart the resulting asymmetric thrust caused the plane to roll further right increasing the bank to 60 degrees and pitch up Weaver yanked the control stick as far left as it would go but it seemed to have no effect knowing the chances of surviving an ejection at Mach 3 point one eight and seventy eight thousand eight hundred feet was not very good Weaver hoped to be able to get the plane to a lower altitude and speed to allow a safe ejection he yelled FERS where to stay with the planes as they attempted to gain control but the g-forces were so strong that the words came out garbled and unintelligible part of the problem was the nature of the test flight moving the center of gravity aft of normal specs reduced the Blackbirds longitudinal stability given the yaw from the inlet unstart the reduced longitudinal stability combined with the increased angle from the turn and the speed and altitude the cumulative forces simply exceeded the automatic system's ability to control the plane the radical g-forces were beyond human limits and Weaver in wäôre lost consciousness neither able to activate the ejection system the airframe initially broke apart after the cockpit sr-71 tail number nine five two disintegrated in midair back at Edwards the plane disappeared from radar and they lost radio contact the initial assessment was was that the flight crew could not have survived such a violent breakup at that speed in altitude when Bill Weaver woke up he thought he was having a bad dream his next thought was no one could survive what just happened therefore I must be dead but as he became more aware he could hear rushing wind what sounded like straps flapping he was alive and had somehow separated from the aircraft despite not activating the ejection system in fact he had been thrown clear in the accident his ejection seat was still with the wreckage of the plane falling to earth at that very moment the flight suit had apparently done its job with the oxygen tank that was attached to the parachute harness inflating the suit to keep it pressurized that was itself astounding given the violence of the planes breakup and it was a good thing otherwise Weaver's blood would be boiling but the visor on his helmet was iced over well I could tell that he was falling he couldn't see air density at high altitude is insufficient to resist a body's tumbling motions and centrifugal forces high enough to cause physical injury could develop quickly the parachute system was supposed to initially deploy a small chute that should keep him from tumbling but he couldn't be sure that it had deployed as he had no idea how long he'd been unconscious he didn't know how far up he was or how long before he might experience the rapid deceleration caused by colliding with the earth but the small chute had deployed and he was falling vertically the main chute should open automatically at 15,000 feet but it could not be sure the automatic systems were functioning he tried to find the manual activation for the chute but his hands were numb by cold and with the suit inflated he couldn't find it but just then he felt the reassuring sudden deceleration caused by the opening of the main chute he lifted the faceplate on his visor only to find that the latch was broken and he had to hold it up given the plane speed he couldn't even be sure which state he was going to land in and the ground below looked desolate he could see the burning wreckage of the airplane on the ground some miles away and most importantly he was reassured to see Jim's way or chute open some distance off despite being an experienced test pilot we never actually jumped out of an airplane before this was his first parachute landing and he said it went okay despite nearly landing on what appeared to be a very surprised antelope given the size that the search area must be he figured he'd have to figure out how to survive the night before he could expect rescue but on that count he was wrong he was busy trying to collapse his parachute while having to hold up his faceplate when he heard someone behind him say can I help you with that it turns out the plane had broken apart over a New Mexico ranch owned by Albert J Mitchell jr. Mitchell and several ranch hands were Brandon Colts when they heard a noise and saw parachutes descending from the sky several minutes later Mitchell was a pilot and owned a small Hughes 300 helicopter and it immediately flown to where Weaver had landed after helping Weaver collapse the chute Mitchell flew to where Jim's waders chute had landed only to find that swea was deceased his neck had apparently snapped when the airplane broke up after the accident Weaver found out that the flapping noise that he'd been hearing as he was falling was because the heavy nylon straps it had strapped him into the aircraft had been shredded by the accident and that shows how impressive it was that his flight suit held together through all of that but he also found out that the oxygen tank that connected to his flight suit was connected by two tubes and one had torn loose and the other was barely hanging on if that second tube had torn loose then the flight suit would not have inflated and he would have died Albert Mitchell flew Weaver to the nearest hospital which was in Tucumcari New Mexico and Weaver remembers being terrified because Mitchell kept a little helicopter speed above the red line for the entire trip and Weaver was thinking how ironic would be that if he survived falling out of an sr-71 at 78,000 feet only to die in a little helicopter on the way to the hospital lockheed decided as a result of the accident to discontinue any testing of the sr-71 that put the center of gravity aft of Speck's and they solve some other problems through aerodynamic means and eventually a digital computer replaced the analog computer that controlled the air intakes and those intake unstart became much more rare the Air Force retired the sr-71 in 1998 and NASA retired theirs in 1999 but there are persistent rumors that the skunk works is working on a successor to the sr-71 that some people claim will be twice as fast in its 33 years of service where was the only sr-71 crew member to die in a flight accident bill Weaver was back flying sr-71s within a week and eventually became Lockheed chief test pilot he retired and lives in Carlsbad California I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets of forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 2,154,851

Rating: 4.9486413 out of 5

Keywords: History, the history guy, sr-71, aviation, us history, sr 71 blackbird, history guy

Id: nRyIGTkcmII

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/dryphtyr]

This is one of my favorite YouTube channels. He's a national treasure.

[u/thepensivepoet]

If you guys haven't read Skunkworks you need to get on that shit right now.

[u/RDPCG]

Awesome story

[u/thesuavedog]

A fantastic short documentary! This guy has a wonderful voice and cadence and I was thoroughly intrigued. Thanks for sharing!

[u/TrendyEistee]

Very interesting. I like how he talked quite fast

[u/captcha_fail]

This was fantastic!! I thought no way when I started the video, was I going to watch the whole thing, and now I want to see more. Also the bow tie... men don't wear enough bowties anymore. It's a shame.

[u/fugekilledgrandpa]

Wow ive never heard this story before

[u/Panjojo]

Here's the LA speed check story in the pilots own words, he really tells it well.