SR-71 Blackbird: How the World's FASTEST Plane Became Irrelevant

today's video is sponsored by our longtime friends over at Squarespace thank you Squarespace it's you make amazing websites with them I'll tell you more about them later it's among the greatest scientific and Military achievements that humankind has ever endeavored to accomplish in 33 years of service it became an iconic symbol of Cold War scientific competition and the United States reputation for black budget Innovation it's an expression of engineering genius the brainchild of a true Savant of Aeronautics an earth-shaking development in the world of intelligence it of course is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and most of all it's really fast so in this episode of Mega projects we'll finally dive into the much requested SR-71 a series of 32 planes that broke every boundary that its creators could imagine we're going to explore the Innovation and groundbreaking process that led to the Blackbirds construction examine its extraordinary capability season dig into an operational career that broke records that are still untouched to this very day [Music] thank you more than anything else the Cold War was ultimately a war of intelligence in which the side that could collect more important Secrets more quickly would gain a massive Advantage prior to the Advent of spy satellites the best and most effective way to gather intelligence was to do it via the use of planes and the U2 a slow-moving extremely high altitude aircraft designed by the Lockheed company or was the United States's preferred plane for that job first introduced in 1956 the U2 had a service ceiling of 24 kilometers high that's some 80 000 feet meaning that it was far higher than most enemy planes or missiles could reach if it couldn't be reached it couldn't be shot down and if you're going to be shot down then the Soviets could do nothing to stop the U2 from Gathering all of the Intel that they wanted well that all changed in 1960 when a U2 piloted by CIA operative Gary Powers was disabled by Soviet service to air missiles over the city a Not only was Powers captured by the Soviets but his plane including the top secret contents of its camera were now in Soviet possession that was a catastrophe for the U.S because not only did it allow the Soviets to figure out exactly what the Americans were looking at but it allowed them to expose the U2's design flaws and find a way to consistently shoot it down luckily for the United States though a solution was on the way even before powers on his plane were shot down the U2 had been developed by a secretive Advanced group working at Lockheed known as Skunk Works who had long made it their mission to create aircraft that people couldn't have even conceived before they saw it in the skies above them now let me interrupt today's video very important announcement and that is that the Fantastic sponsor of today's video is Squarespace and maybe you've never seen a me do a Squarespace ad before in which case welcome to seeing the first ever video that I've ever made thank you Squarespace for your long-term support look Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that allows you to build your brand and grow your business online you can create a beautiful website engage with your audience and you can even sell them stuff if you want to from products to content even your time now I've used Squarespace to make websites they are very easy you go along using my link below don't forget that and you choose a template you swap in some pictures you put up some text and you hit a publish button you give them a little bit of money of course it's a business after all and then they're like huzzah you have a beautiful web presence it's just like that it is that easy I know nothing about coding I know even less about design that's a lie I I know nothing about either of those things but coding it's like I wouldn't even know where to begin design at least I'll be like well let's start with a box plus there's loads of extra features I want to particularly like is email campaigns I used to pay a company a lot of money to do email newsletters and stuff where you like send people a thing like hey check out the latest news and for some reason that costs hundreds of dollars and then Squarespace are like no no we include that that's all part of the deal so that's a good deal plus there's all the other stuff you'd expect analytics is a good one so you can know who's visiting your site what they're up to that's handy plus if you're looking for a way to give back maybe you've got a heart of gold well you can collect donations on Squarespace through PayPal Apple pay stripe venmo and support your cause and raise awareness through your website but wait there's even more they've got blogging tools ways to share on your socials and all of that brilliant stuff so head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you are ready to launch go to squarespace.com Mega projects to save 10 of your first purchase of a website or a domain that's right Squarespace is offering a special promo code just for you Peter so use the promo code Mega projects to get started today thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring and now back to today's video under the leadership of an engineer named Clarence Kelly Johnson the group had put together the U2 but the project then started afterward was on a whole other level in 1957 Lockheed had been approached by the CIA with what most people would have considered to be an impossible request to build a spy plane that could not be detected could not be intercepted and could not be shot down luckily for the CIA the folks over at Skunk Works are not now and have never been most people and they got straight to work on an initiative that they dubbed project Archangel now when the CIA referred to a plane that could not be detected or what they were referring to was a plane with an extremely small radar cross-section now we're used to these sorts of planes today take the American F-22 or the Chinese j-20 but at the time this was a very New Concept one that the scientific engineering Institute had just begun investigating in their own attempts to make a better aircraft than you too what the Institute realized was that if a plane could fly at extremely high altitudes or extremely high speeds either option could reduce its radar cross-section but if a plane could do both then it was at a huge advantage and further if the plane could be built in a way that absorbed or deflected radar rather than sending it directly back to its source then that plane could hypothetically become pretty damn close to Invisible now skunk worked competed for a bit from the CIA alongside the conveyor corporation which was responsible for the supersonic b-58 Hustler bomber the Skunk Works design originally referred to as the u3 had a few key criteria it would have to be able to cruise at no less than Mach 3 that is three times the speed of sound with a range of 4 000 miles at altitudes at or above 90 000 feet that's a 70 miles above the surface of the Earth the CIA added in a couple of other requirements a 500 pound payload for reconnaissance equipment and the requirement that the plane reach a radius of 2000 nautical miles with no need to refuel but Kelly Johnson's early attempts to work with his team and design a u3 plane repeatedly had to be discarded it was achievable enough to develop a plane that could meet the altitude and speed requirements but it was the radar signature that was still a thorn in Johnson's side on the 23rd of April 1958 Johnson took a different tack in his daily pencil sketches this time opting for a design with a long thin tapered airframe and a cylindrical cross-section drawing back to two engines tucked closely to the fuselage and a pair of rhomboids squared off Wings although he didn't know it at the time that day's design would eventually form the basis for the SR-71 and as the Skunk Works team began working with the concept they started tweaking at specifications and establishing different configurations this required a great deal of technological innovation from the team and over the course of the design they often would have to incorporate technologies that nobody had even built yet as Kelly Johnson put a quote everything had to be invented everything these designs referred to as Archangel 1 Archangel 2 and so forth a later got shortened to the a series and when skunk worked had finally worked their way to the A10 design they began to get a sense that they had the plane they needed the 8N met all the cia's requirements except the radar cross-section but the CIA had the connections and resources to draw on a much wider range of American innovators than Skunk Works had access to with the modifications the CIA was able to procure the plane's radar cross-section was reduced by 90 percent and for a price tag of 96 million dollars the CIA and Skunk Works shook hands on a deal that would produce a dozen planes of the Archangel line the final prototype designation the a12 would be their name for the foreseeable future foreign [Music] Works built 13 copies of their a12 which were shipped off to groom Lake also known as Area 51 in the state of Nevada for testing on the 26th of April the first flight ready prototype hurled itself into the sky for the first time to hear Kelly Johnson tell it after the fact the test was a bit of a nail biter because once Airborne the plane started oscillating badly and at one point it disappeared into a cloud of dust leaving the engineers on the ground panicked as to what exactly was going on when the plane landed and could be picked apart the problem wasn't exactly hard to find some of the equipment inside had been put in backwards despite the ignominious start the good Folks at Skunk Works were actually more than capable of fixing the problem once they found it and with everything pointing in the right direction it turned out that the plane flew a lot better surprise surprise the subsequent test flights went just fine and more and more prototypes were produced the numbers it generated blew past even the initial expectations of the CIA according to Lockheed when the a12 test pilots were trying to push it to its limit they were able to bring the plane to a top speed of 2221 miles per hour at 3.35 times the speed of sound and fly it as high as 95 000 feet individual Pilots anecdotally reported having gotten it to go even faster although these sorts of in-flight claims couldn't be verified Skunk Works also built two variants of the a12 including the yf-12 which was intended to be a missile armed Interceptor craft and aversion meant to carry drones a fun fact about the yf-12 by the way is that the plane would have to have been misalarmed because it flew several hundred miles an hour faster than bullets from an onboard Cannon would have been capable of moving now the a12 was initially planned to be the final aircraft that the CIA ended up with that's why Skunk Works was building so many prototype versions they were supposed to be pretty close to the finished product in fact the a12 was flown emissions over Vietnam and North Korea fairly early on but in 1962 the U.S Air Force had some changes that they wanted to make although they liked the capabilities of the a12 a lot more than the next best option the xb70 valkyrie they ordered a modified version to include some of what the air force needed this included a longer fuselage a two-seater car cockpit and some different sensor equipment 13 a12 planes would eventually be retired by 1968 because despite some inherent trade-offs caused by the Air Force's modifications the plane It produced still did the a12's job very well this new plane would become the SR-71 Blackbird that we know today and in order to focus both budget and resources the SR-71 took over where the a12 left off 32 copies of the SR-71 aircraft were eventually produced 29 versions of the main production variant two trainers and a hybrid trainer called the bastard which took the refusalage of the a12 fight of Aryans and grafted it onto the forward SR-71 fuselage that had been used for static testing on the ground this Fleet of 32 would be the only blackbirds ever produced and in 1968 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered that the Machinery used to create the planes would be destroyed at the end of production these 32 would be the only 32 and as long as they were invisible as advertised they were all America would ever need exactly what finished product Skunk Works had created in short it was a masterpiece Sleek seamless and almost organic looking in shape the black bird was light years ahead of any other plane that existed at that point the most critical aspect of the Blackbird was its survivability the extreme altitudes and speeds that it reached and the most basic problem it faced was friction traveling through the air as fast as the Blackbird did the plane surface got so hot that it would have melted a conventional airframe in order to deal with that problem the plane was constructed out of a titanium alloy that was strong lightweight more temperature resistant than nearly any other metal it was also a royal pain to deal with and had to be shaped with specially designed tools also made out of titanium to make matters worse the US didn't even have enough titanium but the CIA solved that particular Problem by procuring Titanium Ore from the Soviet Union in a covert effort that could probably be its own Mega projects video use the comments with that problem dealt with skongworks was able to complete the titanium outer layer which was then coated in the plane's iconic black paint in order to absorb heat the plain skin was also corrugated instead of smooth allowing it to expand or Flex instead of splitting at these temperatures and oh when the plane was on the ground its fuselage panels actually didn't fit together particularly well they were built to align only when extremely hot due to thermal expansion which caused them to leak fuel when all the tarmac the outer windshield was made of quartz and fused directly onto the airframe and it would typically get as hot as 600 degrees Fahrenheit when landing and then well then there's the engines in order to meet the cia's requirements for a plane that could fly at Mach 3 continuously the Blackbird couldn't rely on afterburner technology after all those only worked for a short time whereas the Blackbird was expected to fly at those speeds for multiple hours the engine Skunk Works went with to Pratt and Whitney j58 turbo Jets were an innovation in themselves and produced 32 500 pound-force of static thrust that sort of equated to just bolting a rocket onto the blackbird's back and because of the combination of these engines and the sr-71's unique airflow management system the plane was actually more fuel efficient around Mac 3.2 or even faster than it was at lower speeds technically speaking the engines could even make the plane go faster than that with their only real constraint being that the air in the engine compressor became too hot well before the Blackbird reached its true speed limit now as one might imagine strapping what seemed to be essentially Rockets onto an airframe makes the craft hard to slow down and while the Blackbird used specialized tires and drag shoots when it touched in order to make the plane run Skunk Works also had to use specialized exotic Fuel and although coal slurries and cryogenic hydrogen were a no-go a custom jet fuel known as jp7 was mixed in with the compound triethal boring this combination produced the blackbird's characteristic green flame out of the engines it was built to have an extremely high ignition point so that the in-flight friction on the plane surface couldn't cause an explosion and ground crew chiefs were known to show off by tossing lit matches and cigarettes into the blackbird's fuel only for the Flames to extinguish it once he was in the air the SR-71 would typically have to be refueled after about 90 minutes and to spend a third of its fuel load just to get altitude in order to refuel the planes tanker Jets had to fly almost as fast as they could using specialized equipment that again had to be built just for the Blackbird and Not only was the blackbird's design visually stunning but it was even better than the a12 at hiding its radar profile despite the plane's massive size it would show up on Soviet radar as something roughly the size of a pelican and since there's no such thing as face pelicans flying at around 90 000 feet it would most likely have been dismissed as a technical error this is also when its speed and altitude became handy although the Soviets eventually learned how to detect the aircraft they were largely incapable of reaching it since it was far faster than a missile and its surface ceiling was higher than the soviet's best Interceptor and then there was the hardware on board the SR-71 was not built to carry Armament and certainly didn't need any for defensive purposes instead it contained electronic intelligence hardware anti-missile and anti-interceptor measures side-looking Airborne radar and specialized tracking in infrared cameras the Blackbird used two cameras to provide stereo Imaging across the plane's entire flight track plus Horizon to Horizon coverage while a specialized secondary camera could be focused in on a Target area due to advancements in camera technology the sr-71's ability to image its targets would greatly increase with time and some of its other sensor Technologies were upgraded as well it was outfitted with the specialized life support system plus water and snacks for the crew who wore specialized protect suits that could keep them safe in the event of a high altitude ejection the Blackbird was a beast of an airplane but it also required an immense amount from its Pilots traveling 3000 feet per second Pilots had to reimagine how they navigated the landscape either with instruments or by using massive geographical features as their landmarks telling a pilot to say turn left at Shan Wyoming wasn't much good that Passover all of Jan in about nine seconds and with a turning radius of a hundred miles it made far more sense to tell the pilot to just turn when they hit the Rockies features like its delta wing and Chimes sharp edges at either side of the fuselage made a considerably more aerodynamic but still nowhere near the ease of flying most modern planes but although flying the Blackbird was incredibly challenging it was also seen as a major privilege a chance to do something that few people ever would in the words of Colonel Jim Watkins quote at 85 000 feet in Max 3 it was almost a nothing had prepared me to fly that fast my God even now I get goosebumps remembering on a less poignant notes being a blackbird pilot came with a guaranteed tasty breakfast because of the demands of flight Pilots were required to eat a so-called high protein low residue meal before flying which was for the Air Force steak and eggs [Music] it's a testament both to the Blackbirds engineering and the brave Pilots that flew it that in over 30 years of operation not a single plane out of 32 was ever shot down even after the Soviets had the blackbird's number even after they knew that it was out there their best pilots and their best technology were just unable to do anything about it the SR-71 entered the skies at just the right time to make a big impact in Vietnam with the first planes arriving to okinawa's kadena air base in March of 1968. from there the Blackbird was deployed over North Vietnam for thousands of flying hours and hundreds of operational missions while the planes were barred from passing over Soviet airspace directly they could and would go just about anywhere else in the coming years they would see action performing reconnaissance work anywhere that the US had a relevant interest Blackbird intelligence was crucial during the Yom Kippur War the Israeli invasion of Lebanon the American incursions into Libya the exposure of silkworm missile batteries in Iran and of course it's not like those countries could do anything about the Blackbird hanging out in their airspace and over a total of 53 500 total flight hours for the Blackbird family of planes it grew a massive reputation around the world as a projection of the power of the American Military initially the Archangel Project's planes were made public partly because of political pressure with the U.S desperate to give an outward appearance that they were keeping up with the Soviets in terms of innovation but once they were known around the world the Blackbird took on a life of its own both in the military and civilian circles but the Blackbird wasn't a Panacea to United States as intelligence troubles either with only 32 planes to work with this all-71 program could only be in so many places at once and each time a plane flew it would require something around a week's worth of Maintenance to just become air worthy again often they would come back with some parts broken and other parts completely missing and even when a plane was cleared to fly it took up to a day to get the thing ready from Hangar to Runway even at Peak efficiency that meant only four planes could fly each day and that that was before natural delays costs and larger fixes were even accounted for the larger issue though was the sr-71's troubling record of accidents and when we're discussing a plane with this level of power and thrust there was only a hair of difference between an innocuous error and certain death of the 32 blackbirds that were built 12 of them were lost to accidents for example one plane disintegrated in 1966 after an engine shutdown in a high Bank turned killing the reconnaissance officer on board Jim's Ware several others suffered braking failures on the tarmac causing the wheels to collapse and the entire plane to be damaged while a 1989 flight over the South China Sea suffered engine explosions in what would be the blackbird's final accident luckily no crew member of an SR-71 except Jim's Ware would ever be killed in an in-flight accident but these equipment losses would equate to several billion dollars in today's money this contributed to an expectation within the Blackbird program that although the planes were incredible they also posed a bit of a risk to anyone who flew them in fact there was one incident in which Soviet mig-25 Fighters even had the Blackbird their Mercy after an SR-71 suffered an engine explosion over Sweden and was locked onto by the Soviets however a couple of unnamed Swedish planes had beaten the migs there and the planes were able to escort the Blackbird away from the Soviet threat without being harmed although this near Miss was an isolated incident it was a massive reminder to the air force that the blackbird's habit of system failure put it at risk of attacks that would have otherwise been impossible it's also worth noting the Blackbirds weren't only employed by the US Air Force either with two planes being loaned to NASA during the 1990s to conduct scientific research because of the sheer magnitude of what the Blackbird could do it was a perfect platform to explore everything from extreme aerodynamics to Thermal protection to studies on the surrounding atmosphere the SR-71 also became a test bed for the Iridium satellite communication system which was instrumental in developing technology like modern cell phones and all throughout history the SR-71 contributed to Scientific advancements like ramj engines Survival Systems and huge advancements in Material Science many of which have gone on to be used in a whole range of modern Technologies [Music] before we see the SR-71 through the end of its service life let's take a moment just to honor some of the truly incredible records that it set as the fastest highest flying jet aircraft that the world has ever seen a flight taken in 1976 set the record for the highest ever sustained horizontal flight at an altitude of 85 069 feet and another flight on the same day set the absolute speed record for a man jet aircraft 2193 miles per hour or if you prefer it holds the speed record for a trip from London to New York which was completed in under an hour and 55 minutes it also completed its final flight a transcontinental Journey from California to Washington DC in a little bit over an hour by the late 1980s The Operators of the Blackbird program understood that their beloved planes time was coming to a close although there were no faster but higher flying planes in development to replace it well there didn't really need to be spy satellites were doing a better job and doing it more cheaply than the SR-71 good in most circumstances and the US really didn't have any new adversaries who would demand the sort of SuperSonic spycraft that the Blackbird offered with the Cold War quickly coming to a close the Air Force was transparent and open that it just couldn't justify the cost of the Blackbird anymore official cited advancements in Soviet ground to Air Technology and new interceptors the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles and even the potential alternate uses of the Blackbirds funding all his reasons not to keep the program there's been speculation after the fact that Pentagon politics and Congressional ignorance about the Blackbirds capabilities might have also been a factor but regardless the SR-71 was retired in 1989. that retirement was not without his caveats Congress decided to keep six of the planes plus a trainer model in a state of partial Readiness that could put them in the skies within two months of reactivation in the following years after the plane was retired high-ranking officials like General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr were frustrated by its absence as it could have been extremely useful during operations storm in the Middle East and to gather intelligence on emerging threats in Bosnia and North Korea during those years the limitations of satellite intelligence began to frustrate U.S officials and while the remaining U2 Fleet and newer drones were doing a decent job none of those aircraft were nearly as good as the Blackbird three of the planes were reactivated for a short couple of years but eventually political pressure again became too much after their brief return to the skies the SR-71 fleet was permanently retired in 1998. with the two last blackbirds working with NASA joining them a year later today the Blackbird Fleet sits mostly in museums in the U.S and Europe although NASA still retains custody of two of the aircraft both as a testament to the truly Visionary nature of the Plains and of the way their capabilities have become less important with time neither the United States nor any other nation has developed a known successor craft a stealth UAV made by Northrop Grumman known as the rq-180 is believed to be operating in the skies today but its existence is not acknowledged by the United States even if it was it's not believed to operate anyway were near the Blackbird service ceiling or its top speed after the release of the movie Top Gun Maverick Lockheed Martin have made some cheeky references to a crude air-breathing jet aircraft that could go faster than the Blackbird and the movie's fictional Dark Star aircraft is believed to resemble plans for a plane known as the sr-72 but this remains just speculation even if the Press team at block heater feeding into it without any known successor the SR-71 is today the Undisputed albeit retired King of the Skies its Legacy as the fastest highest flying jet plane in the world is untouched and it may well be Generations before something else even comes close thank you [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 615,351

Keywords: sr-71 blackbird, sr71 blackbird, fastest jet ever built, the fastest jet, fastest jet ever made, fastest jet ever, the world's fastest jet, blackbird aircraft, fastest jet plane, fastest jet, fastest jet flying, fastest jet fighter, fastest jet military, fastest aircraft, record breaker, interesting engineering, fastest jet of all time, fastest jet drone, fastest jet flight, fastest jet engine, airplane, high speed aircraft

Id: IDuSGRInMms

Length: 26min 22sec (1582 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023