Lockheed SR-71s of the Baltic Express

[Music] in 2018 the united states air force awarded the air medal an award for single acts of heroism or meritorious service while participating in aerial flight to four members of the swedish air force and a ceremony at the u.s embassy in stockholm it was a rare award sweden is a neutral nation with no official military treaty with the united states and the united states does not typically award the air metal to the members of the armed forces of neutral states the awards had to do with an event the details of which had been kept secret until 2017 that it occurred 30 years previously at the height of the cold war and had involved one of the world's most iconic and yet secretive aircraft the lockheed sr-71 blackbird it was one of several events involving the blackbird and u.s reconnaissance operations in the far northwest of the soviet union at the height of the cold war the stories of the sr-71 and the baltic express deserve to be remembered when it comes to aircraft you don't get much sexier than the lockheed sr-71 first flying in 1964 largely retired from service in 1988 and officially retired from all service in 1999 the high altitude high-speed strategic reconnaissance aircraft nonetheless still seems to represent a cutting edge of aircraft design for example the sr-71 still holds the world's speed record for air-breathing manned aircraft the record of 2193.2 miles per hour said all the way back in july 1976 might not even be the fastest the plane ever flew as there are anecdotes of covert missions where the plane flew even faster to avoid enemy missiles for numerous reasons the plane is often described as the most extreme aircraft ever flown by man but the extreme performance of the aircraft came at a cost the extreme speed and altitude at which the plane operated required that pilots were pressurized flight suits for extended periods of time merely surviving the altitudes and speeds was a challenge the plane would get so hot that the interior of the cockpit could reach 120 degrees and there was no proper air conditioning system the extreme speeds stressed the airframe missions so stressed the plane that sr-71s could only fly on average one flight per week requiring extended recovery and repairs after virtually every flight the stresses showed in operational problems the planes faced a number of mechanical difficulties included the dreaded engine unstart a problem exacerbated by the fact that the aircraft was designed before digital computers a complex system of inlets was required to maintain air flow for the j58 turbo ramjet engines at supersonic speeds the automatic system controlled by an analog computer would sometimes exceed its capacity in the changing conditions of extreme flight the resulting engine unstart would at best cause significant shaking inside the plane causing extreme jaws the plane adjusted to operating with a single engine until the engine could be restarted if the engine could not be restarted the plane would lose significant speed and altitude critical problems as speed and altitude were the sr-71's only defense against enemy attack given the extreme speeds maneuverability was also an issue the plane literally flew so fast that pilot major brian shull once said you can cover several countries in the middle east in mere minutes the speed meant that the plane would cover great distance even in a relatively sharp turn the fact that resulted in the plane getting the nickname the sled among its pilots who probably call themselves sled drivers these various problems could be exacerbated in one of the areas where the sr-71 saw significant service over the barons in baltic seas here the sr-71 was used to gather intelligence about several soviet military bases in the region but it was the dividing line between the warsaw pact and nato countries and those sr-71s would have to fly through narrow corridors of international airspace it would have been easy to wander into soviet airspace or to wander close enough that the soviets could claim that you had the narrowness of the window was demonstrated in a flight on august 13th 1981 by pilot jc thomas and reconnaissance systems operator jay reed at the time the sr-71 was not being operated from europe and so a mission to the barons or baltic sea would be a long flight expected to take some 10 and a half hours from beale air force base in california the purpose of the mission was to collect electronic data around the soviet naval facility at murmansk home of the russian northern fleet located on the cola peninsula in the barren sea the base was above the arctic circle in the extreme northwest of the soviet union the long flight to the soviet union would require the crew to rendezvous with tankers for in-flight refueling three times over idaho labrador and scotland the mission itself would have them approach the base at a 90 degree angle for the berent sea before making a right turn this allowed the sr-71 to gather data with its side-looking airborne radar or s-l-a-r it was a tricky maneuver the soviet union claimed that territorial waters extended 100 miles from the coast but the international norm is just 12 miles the mission would have thomas and reed make a 30 degree turn that would take them just 12 and a half miles from the coast perhaps more dangerous for a plane that depended upon stealth they would be announcing their mission to the soviet navy the approach from the north would produce what thomas described in a 2016 article in the web magazine jalopnik as the sweet and rather loud sound of freedom the distinctive double stomach boom of the 2 200 mile per hour sr-71 this was purposeful well part of the purpose of the mission would be reconnaissance on the location of soviet nuclear missile carrying submarines another part was to gather data about radar and air defenses as thomas explains we stimulated the soviet defenses causing their radios and radar to bristle with electronic information thus impelling them to reveal tell-tale electromagnetic signatures indicating the type of equipment modes of operation and limits thomas referred to the technique as trolling after gathering the data thomas and reed were to rendezvous for a fourth refueling tanker over the north sea on their way back to beale but during the refueling the master warning light illuminated the light was a warning about the oil supply for the left engine this was a serious issue with the checklist indicating the plane should land as quickly as possible if another system failed the result could mean crashing the plane but landing was a problem as the sr-71 was over the north sea thomas and reed quickly identified a norwegian base a joint military civilian base called buddha on the norwegian coast some 60 miles away as their best alternative but there were issues while buddha was a ford nato base the mission of the sr-71 was still top secret moreover the sr-71 did not have a direct uplink meaning that all the important and highly secret data collected in the flight was still being carried inside the aircraft when declaring the in-flight emergency the crew was not allowed to identify the type of aircraft simply calling themselves u.s air force tactical when the plane landed it was the first landing of an sr-71 in continental europe while the norwegian military was friendly and accommodating some of the pilots there had even trained with pilots who flew the sr-71 there were political complications thomas noted some odd requirements for example the repair crew that had to be called to fix the plane were required to wear military uniforms most often they were civilian dressed to avoid drawing attention also despite the type of aircraft being rather evident they were asked not to mention that the plane operated in reconnaissance role it was only years later after he retired from the air force that thomas discovered the reason for the concerns in 1960 a lockheed u2 was being flown over soviet territory when it was shot down by a soviet surface-to-air missile flown by francis gary powers the u-2 incident had created a major international crisis while powers u2 had taken off from pakistan it was actually scheduled to land at the norwegian air base at buda the norwegian air base commander knew about the top secret mission but the head of the norwegian air force and the norwegian prime minister did not khrushchev was said to be so angry that he threatened to nuke buddha for aiding the americans in their spying operations although the u2 incident had been 21 years earlier the base commander in 1981 had been a pilot at the base at the time and recalled that the base commander had been fired after the incident the commander was therefore somewhat reticent to admit to having provided a landing base for another u.s reconnaissance plane however as norwegian newspapers at the time noted in the airplane in difficulty will be received in norway regardless from which country it came an american repair crew was able to manage repairs to the plane which was flown to a base in england as missions of the baltic and baron's seas became more common during the coming years three more sr-71s eventually had to make emergency landings in norway while complicated an emergency landing certainly could beat the alternative which offered its own complications given that these flights largely occurred above the arctic circle in the summer of 1984 an sr-71 piloted by joseph matthews with reconnaissance systems operator kurt osterheld was on a mission in the barren sea when officer held was quoted in the may 2013 issue of aviation history the plane yawed to the right so far and fast that i felt like i was going sideways the right engine had suffered a dreaded engine unstart due to the yaw caused by flying on only one engine osterhall realized that the only way to get the plane going again was to unstart the left engine as well and try to restart both in midair at the same time the problem was that according to the magazine without power the big blackbird had the glide ratio of a brick the plane was plummeting towards earth as saucer held desperately pressed the auto restart button the crew was preparing to eject when they finally managed to get the engines to restart manually while they were able to level the plane the restart process had burned so much fuel and the plane had lost so much altitude and speed that they no longer had enough fuel to accelerate back to supersonic speed as the plane was actually less efficient at solar speeds that left them without enough fuel to make it to their rendezvous point for refueling they called for support but had no way to know if help would arrive before they ran out of fuel and had to eject matthews noted that osterheld had just started to speculate as to how long they might survive in the freezing north sea water when he spotted the kc-135q refueling tanker coming to their aid we had less than 10 minutes fuel remaining when we hit the tanker matthew said the tanker accompanied them back to the base in england refueling them when they needed as they burned more fuel at the slower speed an engine unstart was also nearly disastrous for pilot tom veltry and reconnaissance systems operator dwayne knoll who on june 29 1987 were flying a reconnaissance route across the baltic sea that had become named the baltic express as they approached the turn the red engine suffered an engine unstart veltry was forced to drop both speed and altitude to adjust for the loss of the engine and still keep the plane under control the unfortunate circumstance of the lost speed and altitude the plane's only defense when flying on one engine had given the sr-71 a different nickname the lead sled very near soviet airspace of the baltic sea the crew knew the plane would be an easy target for soviet interceptors they knew the soviets would be anxious to capture an sr-71 both for the technology and for the propaganda realizing the significance of the predicament they decided to head for the closest alternative the baltic island of gotland territory of neutral sweden while sweden was not a member of nato an official military ally of the us beltry quoted in a january 2019 issue of air force magazine said we knew they were going to treat us better than the soviets realizing their best help was with sweden and the soviets would presumably already know about their presence the crew activated squawk an emergency distress beacon that showed their location and said let's hope the cavalry comes before the bad guys when they saw two dots approaching from the direction of soviet airspace they made a simple plan if they saw a missile they would eject and crash the plane into the baltic sea but the two dots turned out to be saab 37 fighters of the swedish air force the swedish pilots quickly determined that the sr-71 was in obvious distress and escorted the plane towards nato airspace their arrival was timely only later was found out that a soviet mig-25 arrived close behind the saab 37s the u.s national security agency later determined through communication intercepts that the plane had orders to force the sr-71 crew to land or to shoot them down the nsa also determined that the soviets had scrambled other air assets in case the swedes peeled off when the two swedish jets ran low on fuel they were replaced by another pair of saab 37s and escorted beltry and oil until they reached danish territory a nato ally and could be escorted by us f-15s to a nato naval air base in west germany details of the event did not become declassified until 2017 after a standard 30-year classification period and valtryek was able to track down the four pilots who had escorted them to safety the air force decided to award the four pilots air metals u.s air force major general john williams said at the ceremony even when there was both political risk and a great physical risk in the form of actual danger there was no hesitation on your part to preserve the pilots on that day the way noel who was present for the award ceremony said we will never know what would or could have happened because of you there was no international incident the us air force did not lose any irreplaceable aircraft and two crew members lives were saved thank you for being highly skilled and dedicated patriotic fellow aviators the sr-71 program was officially discontinued in 1989 the victim more of internal politics than obsolescence air force high command had come to question the cost of a program that essentially served the nsa and the cia over what they perceived to be the core air force missions of bombers and fighter interceptors congress appropriated funds to bring three of the sr-71s back into service in 1995 but that program was finally eliminated in 1998. the last sr-71s to be flown were flown as test aircraft by nasa with the final flight being october 9th 1999. each of the 32 lockheed sr-71s manufactured was essentially hand built they represented engineering taken to extremes and they broke the records but also showed the operational vulnerabilities that one might expect from such a specialized aircraft over the course of the airplane's service life 12 sr-71s were lost all either to mechanical failure or flight accident none were ever lost to enemy fire only one sr-71 crew member reconnaissance system officer jim zwyer died in an sr-71 flight accident that was in january 1966. overall the airplane flew 3 551 mission sorties and 53 490 flight hours 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: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 147,168

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, aviation, us history, sr71, baltic express

Id: 15BcGlxlh4g

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020

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[u/Skipinator]

Two of my favorite things. The SR-71, and The History Guy.

[u/blackbirdsr71]

Awesome. Thanks!