SR-71 Eyes in the Night

[Music] welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about we're at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance let's go see what cindy has for us today welcome everyone to the Western Museum of Flight I'm Cindy maka the director in addition to being an accomplished and widely experienced pilot he is in civilian life a highly successful lawyer and litigator specializing in aviation law of most interest to today's subject he has extensive experience flying sr-71 and agreed to share some of those fascinating experiences with us the sr-71 Blackbird is of course the fastest and highest flying production aircraft ever built despite its age it still holds numerous world records to date this exotic aircrafts accomplishments have never been matched ladies and gentlemen Jack Bev [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Thank You Cindy and thank you all for coming today welcome to the Museum of Flight as Cindy said my name is Jack deth and for the about the next hour we're going to talk about the sr-71 a few things before we get into that I was going to introduce more--and and Jim Shelton and Mark but soon he's already taken care of that so I don't have to introduce them but I can tell you that when I got to be a lair for space and I believe it was 1975 Jim Shelton was the squadron commander when I got my first look at the cockpit of the sr-71 Mori Rosenberg was the pilot that took me out there and told me what all those round dials were and what they did so it's kind of like Old Home Week here and I appreciate their attendance and I certainly appreciate your attendance the other thing I was going to talk about first was what today's anniversary was and I was gonna ask you if you know what today's anniversary was but I think that's been out of the bag so you now know July 20th 50 years ago today America put two men on the moon that giant leap for mankind if you will and this is Buzz Aldrin they spent I think about 20 hours on the moon and the reason that today is important and the lunar landing is important is because when that happened in 50 years ago that was around the same time as we developed the moon shot that the sr-71 was being developed and being used actively it was a time in our country's history when we were developing a lot of airplanes and aerospace was the place to be if you will and those of us in the room who were fortunate enough to be involved in it appreciate that time let's take a look at what we're going to do for the next hour this is our flight plan first thing we're going to do is take a look at the historical perspective of the sr-71 how it was developed the Blackbird family the sr-71 is just one airplane in the Blackbird family there are actually three airplanes and we'll get into those details and I'll tell you how they developed in a couple of minutes but then we'll look at the aircraft itself the sr-71 some of the details of its construction the limitations that it has how Kelly Johnson the individual who was responsible for designing and discomforts the place where the airplane was built put the airplane together then we'll look at crew requirements individuals like those are three of us in the room four of us in the room who have had the opportunity to fly it we're all volunteers and what requirements we had in the training we went through we'll talk about that then lastly we'll look at the operation of the airplane and I have a slide that will show you the areas in the world where we operated out of and additional slides to show you the types of missions that we flew out of the various areas where we operated well before we do that let me give you a little bit of history about me my flight history I went to pal Eternia in 1963 that's me kneeling in front of a t-38 just before graduation in pilot training at Williams Air Force Base following pala training I went to F fours and had a tour in Vietnam came it back from Vietnam flew interceptors for Air Defense Command the f-101 and then on to the sr-71 so those are the operational airplanes like flew there's a picture of me getting into an f4 C and I appreciate having a third driver here as wellthey I can't tell you how much those of us who flew the F for appreciated those individuals who flew the 105 and the Sam missions that they went up against here's a crew picture I just earlier assigned there Larry was here and he had a picture signed by the man on the left and on the left is Bill Keller he was my back cedar or reconnaissance systems operator and Larry asked me decide so now he has a picture signed by both of us he got one from Rosenberg and McKim the last time I was here so I think he's going to put mine on the left and yours on the right or maybe about a little you're gonna be on the top okay we that's the first question we asked where was it gonna be okay let's talk a little bit about the black bird program actually started conceptually back in 1959 and the sr-71 flew until about 1997 and before I tell you a little bit about the airplane I want to ask you does anybody know what this is what these are what are they slide rules in fact I think the one at the top is the Apple I slide one the bottom one maybe this samsung version but before we had computers that's the way airplanes were designed they engineers actually use those and some of you in the audience I'm sure our engineers who used to use those things now everything is done on computer with CAD cam but the sr-71 was designed to build thanks to this man Kelly Johnson who designed and built many airplanes f-104 t-33 but he's known mostly for the u2 which is still flying today and the sr-71 going back to the beginning coming out of World War 2 the United States realized that there was going to be tension I'll use that word tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and we felt the need for intelligence about what was going on in the Soviet Union in the 50s in 1954 the CIA contracted with Lockheed to design and build the u2 aircraft so they could find out more about what was going on in the Soviet Union with respect to bombers and missiles you remember terms of the bomber gap and the missile gap those terms led through the end of the 50s and into the 60s the goal was to be at 70,000 feet but the u2 as you know does not fly supersonic first flight of the u2 was in 1956 and in October of 57 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik which started the space race and that's the tie-in between the SR and the moon landing because that was the ultimate of the space race the program was codenamed Archangel - program had been called angel Kelly gave the Blackbird program the name Archangel as a carry-on and the goal was to be at ninety thousand feet and above Mach three if possible in August of 59 CIA gave the go-ahead for the a12 in the Archangel program there were 12 variants that Kelly had designed the a12 was the one that they chose to pursue May 1st the u2 was shot down you may remember Gary Powers and trial of Gary Powers an embarrassment to the United States but in April of 62 the initial a12 test occurred that was the in fact the first Blackbird August of 63 the first yf-12a variant of the a12 but the Interceptor version for Air Defense Command flew and then in December of 64 the first sr-71 so those are the three aircraft that were in the Blackbird program the Interceptor version was never pursued numerous problems occur keeping the airplane one of the requirements for a defense command is to have five-minute launch capability and with the sr-71 blackbird type aircraft you never got a launch capability within five minutes to maintain alert so in May of 67 the a12 deployed to Kadena and its mission there was to fly over Vietnam which it did and in May of 68 the first sr-71 mission out of Kadena occurred as well so for a while there were two variants flying missions out of Kadena the first sr-71 mission out of Kadena was in 89 and the final sr-71 mission out of Kadena was in October of 1989 in March of 1990 the finalists are 71 flight from Palmdale to the East Coast occurred that was about one hour and five minutes that our plane now sits in the oddvar hazy museum on Dulles field in 1995 the sr-71 was reactivated two aircraft will react they did in Edwards Air Force Base and within two years they would deactivate it the aircraft never flew again at one point the chief of staff of the Air Force asked Kelly Johnson what would it cost to destroy all of the airplanes that existed all the sr-71 that existed and Kelly gave me the figure of EB six million dollars a piece clearly Kelly didn't want to destroy the airplane but the chief of staff said well if it's going to cost that much one we just send them off to museums and that's where they are most of them are all in museums there's one in Los Angeles that's an a12 there's one down in San Diego that's an a12 the sr-71 sits in pristine condition at the March Air Force Base if you haven't been there before you should go out and see that airplane and Jim Shelton works very closely with the people at March to maintain that display so in summary the goal was Mach 3 90,000 feet with a low radar return what was achieved was Mach 3.3 90,000 feet with a 1 square meter return which is very small the archangel program developed to operational airplanes the a12 which was under the codename oxcart when you go back to your computers and you want to get on the internet just plug in the word oxcart and see what comes up you'll find that interesting if you're interested in that program 13 airplanes were built five will lost with the sr-71 that was under the program named senior crown to the sr-71 there were 32 airplanes built and 12 of them lost through the length of the program so now let's transition to some facts about the sr-71 itself the aircraft flies at Mach 3 as I mentioned so what is Mach 3 well it varies with with temperature therefore it varies with altitude as far as the Mach number goes but Mach 1 would be approximately 1,000 feet per second you could extrapolate that out and mach 3.2 would be about 32 to 30 miles per minute so if you were here let's say you want to fly from Orange County to Los Angeles it's about 60 miles you could do that in two minutes in the sr-71 they're not gonna do it from a standing stop you got to be at speed and altitude before you get there it flies between 14 and 16 miles in the air and from that altitude you can see the curvature of the earth which is fascinating to see and I do have a picture of that that I'll show you the aircraft flies faster than the rotation of the earth so what that means is if you're heading west at around sunset you can head into the sunset after it's said Sun will rise in the West which I have to tell you is a spectacular set I saw that a few times when I was flying the first time I saw it I remember telling Bill Keller Horace oh I said bill you're not gonna believe what I'm looking at up here he thought there was something wrong with the airplane he said what's wrong and I said well I'm seeing the Sun rise in the West expect spectacular sight as far as design graphite over asbestos over titanium because of the speed and the temperatures that the aircraft heats up to aluminum was not a sufficient material to build the aircraft out of so Kelley chose to use titanium and the black squares and triangles that you see here on the aircraft on the slide are actually there to assist in the stealth characteristics of the aircraft people always ask about the black paint why is the airplane painted black I'll give you the answer to that right now so you would have to ask me later two reasons first there's material in the paint which again helps the stealth characteristics of the airplane does it dissipate the radar energy and also it helps to the heat exhaustion it'll dissipate the heat and move it around keep the airplane a little cooler the airplane still gets very hot as you can see from this slide with the temperatures anywhere between 400 or well 1200 degrees it's been said that because of the heat the aircraft will expand it'll expand between two to three inches in length and also about one to two inches in width I can tell you when I was in the cockpit I never had any more room so I don't know where these figures come from or who is standing there measuring the airplane when it's at that temperature but I guess some engineer figured out that's what was going on but I looked around and it never got any bigger in the cockpit speaking of the cockpit for those of you who flew airplanes in the 50s and 60s that should look very familiar to you if you look at today's aircraft they have glass cockpits and all computerized but the sr-71 cockpit was basic round owls and you can see some of the specific instrumentation the ADI for attitude reference right in the center two boxes below that round black and white oval is the map display and that map display allowed the pilot to know where on the earth they were flying over and there was a black line on the map and you were supposed to stay on the black line as you were taking doing your very connaissance wrong engine instruments standard what was added to the cockpit after we started flying at night was a a white line across the center of the cockpit to give a peripheral view balance because as you'll see in some pictures flying at night in the sr-71 is like flying an e in an inkwell it's very black very dark and there are many references you're out at the end of this 105 six-inch aircraft and there's no references to two ground the pilot if you will in addition to the cockpit here's a picture of the ANS the astro inertial nav system a product produced by Northrop that allows the crew to keep the aircraft within less than 300 feet of any point on the earth this system is still being used today in the Northrop b-2 bomber and some interesting facts about this system no GPS everything is internal so the astronaut nav system once you pulled out of the hangar would triangulate the aircraft's position using three stars so it's scanning this sky picks out the three stars that it's looking for knows its exact position because of the location of those stars and then can tell the aircraft and the crew where it is from that point forward compare that to some of the aircraft we have today even combat airplanes who use GPS and are relying on satellites to tell them where they are in wartime situation do you really think those satellites are going to be there if they're not how does the crew find out where it is or where it's going with the sr-71 we didn't need anything from outside to tell us where we were and if we could update the computer or location and an update where we wanted to go the computer would take us there and Mark is the one who kept that going if you can so if you have any questions about the ANS system mark well if he has a good memory he can tell you about it okay let's go take a look at the engines and a start the fuel on this aircraft is jp-7 and you may have heard stories that as the aircraft sits in a hangar at leaks a lot of fuel I've seen the couple of the ground crew get the attention of people who were looking at the aircraft they'll pull out a match light the match and throw a match into the fuel that's something I would recommend but I've seen him do it and the fuel extinguishes the match as opposed to the other way around and the reason for that is because of the flash point of jp-7 is so high it takes a catalytic ignition another component to ignite the jp-7 and that component is tab which is Triathlon try out the boring is an element that if we had a little bit of it here and once we exposed it to oxygen it would it would explode it would light up so it spontaneous ignition once exposed to oxygen and that's what would light off the jp-7 what you see in this slide is the protective clothing on the ground crew individual who is placing the tab into the engine so each engine had a tab container if you will held the tab and we would use a shot-up tab every time we started the engine every time we ignited the afterburners and basically had 16 shots of tab in each engine so you could use the temp to ignite the afterburner if you had a climb to altitude and then a descent to refuel and then ignite the afterburner again back up to altitude that would be how the temp was used the engine is a the key to the capabilities of the aircraft if you look at the aircraft what looks like the engine which is the the two long tubes on either side one on either side break that long tube into three sections the first section would be the inlet the middle section is the engine and the third section is the afterburner the engine portion is a j58 a very powerful engine to what's unique about this engine is that it can go for two hours in after Berger I don't know of any other aircraft engine or aircraft that has that capability most fighter airplanes you engage the afterburner you're burning up a lot more fuel and as you burn down the fuel then you have to - to get to a high speed then you pull it up out of to burner the sr-71 can cruise at high speed and in fact the higher the speed the more economical the aircraft becomes so if you want to save fuel you go faster here's the inlet the inlet moves back and forth to maintain the shock wave again some engineers may be able to tell you but the compressor blades and the engines cannot swallow air that's going faster than Mach 1 has to be subsonic air so that when you're going Mach 3 the initial air going into the inlet is also Mach 3 somewhere that air has to slow down and get below Mach 1 in order to get into the engine and that's what the spike does the spike moves back and forth to maintain the shockwave from the high speed air going to low speed air so it can be used by the engine alright what Jim pointed out is that the top picture is what the engine looks like at speed after it's been cooking if you will you guys are going about three and what you want to point out was the red glow the bottom picture is what they call the 13 joules where if the engine is operating properly again this is on a test stand down the Florida or it may have been of Appeal but you can see the individual joules as usual okay back to the inlet that spike moves in and out for a total of about 26 inches and it maintains the shockwave in front of the compressor blades so that the air going into the engine is subsonic the rest of the air is bled over the top at speed and altitude 80% of the thrust on this aircraft comes from the inland as opposed to from the engine only 20% from the engine the airplane also has defensive systems so that we can tell if we're being tracked by a ground radar and we can also tell if there's been a launch of any kind of a SAM against the airplane and from the research I did preparing for this I discovered that over the years particularly in Vietnam there were about a thousand missiles fired at the aircraft and only one Danny Sullivan was flying and there was a little speck of the sand that they found in the bottom of the aircraft after the aircraft landed otherwise that airplane is untouched that was missile flying out of Korea as well and Mori was flying the airplane at that time so if you have any questions about what it looks like they have a Sam come up to you ask mr. Rosenberg I can tell you what they look like from an f4 and 105 piler can certainly tell you what they look like but when you're at 85,000 feet memorial have to tell you that one okay one of the weakest points if you will of any airplane that can get this hot is the tires and these tires are specially designed they were filled with nitrogen the cost on these tires if they were to be purchased today is approximately eighteen thousand dollars apiece the airplane had eight of them six on the main and to an affront for a total of eight and you got about 15 landings out of each tire okay we didn't go anywhere with the exception of one or two missions without tankers and the aircraft had what we'll call Q tankers specially designed tankers flying out a bill that would fly worldwide they pre launch and go to areas around the world to support our program because without the tankers the airplane is basically limited to about 2,200 miles and about 200 as a flight after that time you're looking to either land or refuel okay let's transition to some facts about the cruise first of all in the application process everybody who flew the airplane were volunteers and when it came to Palace they were looking for approximately 2,000 hours of flying time in about five to seven years of flying practice if you'll go back and look at my background I had close to 3,000 and I had been flying for about six years when I applied multiple aircraft was repulsive required and it would be good if at least one of them was a high-performance airplane and that you had refuelling experience he had to submit an application the application was reviewed we would get somewhere around eight to nine hundred applications a year and then people were selected to come to build for a week-long interview process during that interview process you spent two days at Travis Air Force Base going through basically a very complete physical and were similar to the astronaut physical following that you were interviewed by the wing personnel you've got a t-38 flight with other sr-71 pilots and you got a time in a simulator so picture this year you're maybe an f4 pilot or t-38 pilot you apply you come out to Beale and they put you in an sr-71 simulator and throw emergency procedures I do that'll wake you up in the morning what they're looking at is what your basic aviation capability is and how you react you know emergency situations after the simulator flight I put it the last one there spend time with the crewmembers we used to call this bar and and what was happening at bar is the crew members were basically evaluating whether they want to hang around with you because we spent anywhere from two hundred to two hundred and sixty days a year away from Beal deployed too far to locations in Asia and in Europe during that time we spent our time with the early crew members and during bar the crew members decided whether they want to spend that time with you here's kind of a summary you can see that one day that they suited up all these crew members just to take a picture in front of the airplane which is kind of a good-looking picture and summarizes the requirements but once you've been selected you spend the next year in one of these boxes if you were selected as a pilot you spend your time in the Box on the left if you were an RSO you spend your time on the one on the right in this simulator you would learn procedures you'd learn emergency procedures you'd learn from normal procedures and you'd basically familiarize yourself with the help of the instructor who would throw emergency procedures at you to see how you handled them before you actually got in the airplane once it was time to get an airplane you flew in the B model now take a look at this picture closely you'll notice back from the front cockpit there's a bubble that bubble is where the instructor could fly the airplane that could see outside so the B model was never used for operational missions that was only used for training and you spent time in this aircraft learning how to handle aircraft subsonically learning how to refuel the aircraft and getting practice of refueling and landings and takeoffs and also going at sea after you've had five flights in the B model you got to do your first a model play and that would be in an aircraft without the bubble and with an experienced RSO in the back you want an experienced RSO so that if anything would go wrong the RSO can help the pilot out and get the airplane back on fly with an experienced RSO do again training and you're still in this first year you haven't done anything operationally yet and you haven't even flown with your own crew after you flew with the RSO the experience started so then you have to fly with your own crew member and the two of you would fly from that point forward gaining hours gaining experience flying at night refueling practicing so that you could fly it on your first operational tour and your first operational tour you had to have a hundred hours in the airplane before you went overseas two hundred hours minimum in the simulator and then you could deploy to a forward location that location was normally Okinawa in Japan and then you're ready for flight here's two intrepid Airmen getting ready to get in the airplane but where most airplanes you just jump in and strap yourself in in the sr-71 it's a little special it takes a group of people to get you into that airplane and here's a picture of a pilot being strapped in with a physiological Support Division individual on the left and on the right helping to strap the pilot into the aircraft and the same thing is going on in the back seat for the RSL okay let's take a look at some of the patches that the crew members would wear on the spacesuit you'd wear on your left shoulder this small emblem of the American flag plus your name once you flew operational mission is over in Okinawa you could get the Habu patch the Habu patch can only be worn by crew members who have flown operational missions the other patch is the mach 3 patch anybody associated with the program can get a Mach 3 pension wear on their uniform and last we can look at the squadron patch this was the first SRS strategic reconnaissance squadron patch that all the way back to the beginning of flight in military I promised you a picture of what the earth looks like from 80,000 feet and you can see the courage for the earth in this picture I have another picture of what the earth looks like at night from 80,000 feet and as somebody told me once you haven't been lost until you've been lost at night at Mach 3 and and I can tell you that that is true I flew the first post-vietnam night flight out of Kadena over Korea and they set it up for what we call a two loop mission we took off hit a tanker flew through the DMZ came back across the DMZ then descended down to refuel from with the tanker and then go back and do it again the problem was we used the same basic flight that we had used during the daytime which included after the first mach 3 run a 90-degree descending turn at night into the tanker by the time we finished that 90 degree descending turn descending from 85,000 feet down to 26,000 feet my head was telling me that I was doing loops in that aircraft and I knew that wasn't true because I could see the instruments but as those of you who are pilots know you get a different impression from your little hairs injury in your ear and I kept talking to my backseater who also has an attitude indicator I said bill are we doing a loop no is straight and level ok 10 seconds later bill a we in the loop no a straight and level and particularly when we were on a tanker I was still discombobulated if you will while we were refueling but we managed to get the fuel we managed to do the the second loop we came back and landed and during the debrief I told the mission plan as I said guys you're gonna have to change that mission we're gonna lose an airplane if we keep flying that way because it's not safe another pilot one of the stand board pilots got a lot of experience flew the same mission the next week he came down this is the same thing and they changed the flight from that point on to straight in one loop flights as opposed to two loop flights with a second tanker and they also incorporated that peripheral bar light bar in the cockpit but that was developed for the same purpose operations what was the purpose of the aircraft well for strategic reconnaissance obviously find out what was going on behind the Iron Curtain it would stimulate the environment the National Command authorities would use the aircraft - if you will excite the radar systems of Russia and we had other airplanes in the air that would be able to tell which radars were coming on at what time so we could check the recovery time and response time for their defensive systems and also to support operations here is where we operated the blue dots are the locations that we flew out of basically our home base was Beeler force base in northern california okinawa was that one and Mildenhall in england was dead for they were also a couple of flights out of diego garcia and that's that blue square that you see the red dots are where we flew the missions and I have individual slides to slip through where they are but we are honored today to have Jim with us because Jim Shelton has the honor of having flown the longest mission longer celebrational mission in the sr-71 I believe that's about eleven and a half hours 11:20 but who's counting right 11:20 and he can tell you the whole story of that but basically it was out of Griffith it was flown into the area of the arab-israeli war the command authorities ignited States wanted confirmation of how far into Egypt the Israeli forces had gone and it was Jim's job to go out and make a loop through the area take some pictures take some radar and come back and let our command authorities know what was going on on the ground and because of various political reasons the flight which could have been shorter had he been able to land someplace else he had to fly all the way back to a Griffis Air Force Base in New York in order to to land during the Vietnam War coming out of Okinawa the airplane flew many times over North Vietnam in fact during one flight we had to sr-71s up to fly over North Vietnam 15 seconds apart to let the prisoners know padmi oh there were three who flew okay oh they crossed over North Vietnam to let the prisoners that were in santé the Hanoi Hilton know that they were going to try to extract them that didn't work but they did hear the sound because wherever the airplane went the sonic boom trailed behind it out of Okinawa we also flew over Korea most of our missions were over Korea than the lower a little left and then we also flew up from Vladivostok and into the sea of oh heck which is in the eastern side of Russia fly into the Warsaw Pact areas into the politic you can see the seed at two point eight the reason for the two point eight as opposed to three Oh is because of the turn the area in there gets kind of tight and at 60,000 feet you can hold a 2.8 hear you're looking for troop rotations personnel movements any activity that's on the ground looking for subtends submarine activity hit into the northern part of Russia you can come in again have a Mildenhall make your mach 3 run aiming right at Russia and then make a hard turn out to get out of there the Russians didn't particularly appreciate this flight plan and would send up some of their interceptors to attempt to intercept the sr-71 they were never successful in doing that we also flew in Libya to do bomb assessment in 1986 after President Reagan had ordered some bombings in Tripoli and we also flew in Cuba and Nicaragua in Cuba it was to make sure that the Russians were not sending up any missile bases again the last picture of the fleet before it was dispersed shows you all the aircraft lined up at peel okay now it's time for questions and as I said with all the sr-71 experience in here I can't answer a question for one reason or another I'm sure Jim or Maury or mark will be able to do it the question is does the RSO have flight controls the answer is no in the a model the only flight controls are in the front in the B model which has the second cockpit is designed for an instructor the RSO doesn't sit there the instructor who's also a pilot sits there and there are controls in the B model but none in the a model okay the question was that I ever experienced an inlet unstart event of course I'll have to explain what an inlet unstart is as I mentioned that spike retracts as you increase speed total 26 inches once you're at speed that the spike is fully retracted at times because of turbulence in air or something with the engine despite the air disturbance in the spidery will cause the the supersonic air to to be pushed out so that the spike drives forward as these as the requires the shockwave and then moves back it's an attempt to self adjust for the for the inlet the problem is once that spike moves forward now you have tremendous drag on that side of the aircraft the aircraft will then y'all and your head will hit the other side of the canopy so if it's the left side your head will hit the left side or the right side and yes I did experience and the ones I experienced were not very violent they were relatively mild I'd never experienced that many of them because I believe if you if you watch the door indicators in the cockpit you can almost predict when they're going to when there's going to be a unknown star but it it has been known to be very violent and I have heard I've never seen that I've heard pilots as I having their helmet cracked once it bounced off the side and I'm sure that Maury and Jim also experienced and once they can tell you about that to later the question was is there a way to escape from the airplane if you have to Amanda hi you're speaking on the ground or in play and in flight there's an ejection seat and people have safely ejected out of this aircraft you could initiate the ejection seat either by handles on the side or there was a another handle in the center will you pull that in the canopy would go and then the seat would eject at altitude you would stay in the seat the crewmember would stay in the seat as you came down and then at about 20,000 feet or so you would separate from the seat and a parachute would come out the one that you were carrying with you the question was worded was were basically a camera platform and what kind of cameras and did we scrubber if it was bad weather well we will more than a camera platform because we also had radar and that's one of the things that the a12 didn't have but the sr-71 did so we had cameras along the side in the chine bays and we could have a huge camera in the front that they could spot off the nose so they could put radar in the nose and then it didn't make any difference whether it was night or bad whether the radar could still take radar images of whatever the area was that the command authorities were interested in so we didn't have to scrub a mission because of weather the question is with respect to the spike and door control because they work together weather indicators and did we control them yes there were indicators of both the left and right side and the left and right doors but they were all operated by computer and we didn't have to get involved with their work in the doors manually operate them unless there was a malfunction so we would practice using the controls for the spike in doors manually but in most flights we did not use them manually we use e let the computer do its thing what the gentleman said was as as mr. boon was coming down in a parachute he was thinking what am I going to tell the boss they have various cover stories as the airplane was being developed when the a12 is a story of two when the first eight twelve came apart in the air and again that was over in Nevada a farmer came out and picked up the pilot and was going to drive the pilot to where the airplane had hit the ground the smoke was coming up and the pilot said no I wouldn't do that that was an F 105 and it had a nuclear bomb on board so you might want to go someplace else because he didn't want a farmer to go over and see the airplane so once he found got to the hospital and made the call then the appropriate parties went to the aircraft the question is going to talk about the drone I don't have any experience with the drones the m21 drone the concept was that the drone which was a Mach 3 drone would sit on top of the sr-71 and the airplane that handled that is on display up in Seattle but as you're going Mach 3 the pilot would hit a button and this drone would take off and go fly over the area to take pictures because you could get into the Soviet Union with unmanned air but Eisenhower promised the Russians that we wouldn't send manned aircraft now the problem was third flight I think it was the drone pitch to the left took out the airplane took out the sr-71 and Kelly Johnson canceled the flight there's still 15 drones that are in storage I think in Palmdale but they never were used operationally the question was do I know where the astronaut systems was built it was designed and built by Northrop so I assume it was down here until morning okay so the building where the astronaut lab system was built you can see from here it's it may still be built there because they're still using the b2 is using it okay the question is if you lose one engine well you're not going to continue the mission that's the first step at that point if you if you lose an engine you're in an emergency situation and you're going to land at the closest airport that they are feel that you can and the airplane responds very well on one engine despite the fact that the engines are not Similan and we do practice during the training program and then subsequently practice one engine approaches so that you know what the handed characteristics are but the airplane responds very well on one engine question is are there any operational 70 wants today no they were all canceled and sent to museums and the question was on the the the light that I mentioned yes it was installed I believe over the right shoulder if I remember correctly and it projected a horizon and was connected to gyros to maintain the Droid and just like the attitude indicator question was did I ever have to recover and not other than an operational base and the answer is no not me personally I was involved in the region I was involved in the recovery of airplane aircraft that did have to recover at operate non operational bases did you ever land away where he was that on a Cuba mission okay so Maury just told that he was on a Cuba mission one of the missions I showed you and something happened with the airplane and he had to land and he landed at MacDill Air Force Base and that's a very interesting I think what happens when the sr-71 lands away the crew the ground crew and personnel a deal after Jenna a couple of airplanes and flying a a kc-135 to MacDill brings start equipment bring fuel equipment bring all the things necessary to get the airplane back flying again so they can get it home the picture okay the question is with the sr-71 the aircraft that will lost what caused that interestingly while people expected losses to be at Mach at supersonic speed I think there were only one there was only one Lawson supersonically the others were almost at lower speeds for various reasons the question was how many missions and hours do I have an SOS everyone I don't remember how many missions I have but I have a little over probably about 350 hours Maury's got over 600 don't know you have over a thousand okay so besides having Jim 911 okay mark how many you know no mark doesn't remember he flew the airplane question is being a being a pilot he noticed a G meter and he wanted to know about turn capability of turns at that speed and altitude 45 degrees was considered a high speed a high banked turn most turns will will less than that so usually about 30 degrees now down subsonic you could go up to 60 degrees attack you could go further but it wasn't recommended you're not gonna do a roll in this airplane I'm not gonna put a lot of G's so 60 degrees a bank 2g turn for a pitch out for a landing that's not a problem but an anything steeper than that you're not gonna do that at altitude either Wow the question was what was my most memorable flight I would have to say the flight that I flew from California to Okinawa we would we would swap out airplanes every you know their planes would have to go through various tests and modifications so the airplanes that were overseas would have to be flown back and we would have to fly new airplanes over and I had the experience to fly an airplane from deal to Okinawa along the coast of Alaska along the coast of Russia the Kamchatka Peninsula down into the Korean Peninsula and then into Okinawan that took about six and a half hours so I'd say that that was the only one I can think of memory basically any flight in that airplane it is a memorable flight it was a joy to fly and I can't speak for the three pilots in the room I bet every one of us wish we were still doing it and they're nodding their head okay the question is is there a lot to do while you're flying I presume yes there's a lot to do for both the reconnaissance systems operator in the back and the pilot the pilot is basically monitoring the systems that make the airplane fly and one of the basic things that I considered myself was a fuel manager because you would go fuel to go through a fuel rather rapidly and you could also move fuel there was a switch to transfer fuel from one tank to the other and by transferring fuel you could adjust the angle of attack of the aircraft if you could adjust the angle of attack you could therefore adjust the amount of fuel that was being used because you could become more economical or less economical so by fine-tuning the airplane and getting the most out of the fuel to me was my primary job but in addition to that you had to watch the inlets to make sure they were operating properly because I also felt that this was one of the most honest airplanes I've ever flown in other words before something happened I always got some indication so if I was closely monitoring the instruments I could almost predict what was going to happen in the aircraft once you once you learned the airplane and flew it for a while and became very familiar with it so there's a lot to do most of us would lose anywhere from because you're going to suit as well most of the solute between three and eight pounds on an average flight and I'm sure Jim was 11 hour 20 minute flight he probably lost about 20 pounds well okay the question was what's the max speed that you can eject there wasn't a limitation no limitation either high or low the question is is there a limitation after you land on getting out of the aircraft nothing I'm more of I've never you know you touch down you pull the drag chute your taxis off the runway you're texting in to the hangars you shut down and you're playing open campaign you get out no limitation that I'm aware of the question was what's the turning radius and I'm answer was at speed and altitude it's anywhere between 150 and 70 miles so you're you're basically crossing state lines if you're flying over the United States all the Baxters were military pilots in the sr-71 and a typical background what experience they had they were navigators most of them came out of b---fifty twos I would imagine right some of them came out of the FT 111 as well the question was what was the reason for the reactivation the program was reactivated by Congress not by the military and from the reading that I have done there were members of Congress who thought the airplane should be reactivated because satellites at that point were not as reliable and they were all so predictable so when the satellite is taking reconnaissance photos or whatever pictures they're taking from a satellite you know when the satellite is coming around one of the advantages of the sr-71 is it could be anywhere in a short period of time unannounced they didn't know where we were so there were people in Congress who thought that we should reactivate the program and use the aircraft they budgeted I think a hundred million dollars to reactivate the program two airplanes flying out of Edwards they selected the crews checked out in the airplane and then never used them and after two years President Clinton cancelled the program the question was that you understand that Robert McNamara ordered the destruction of the two lengths and the question was do I know why it was not unusual for military aircraft to have the tooling destroyed that was also done at Northrop when North work came out with the first flying wing before the v2 the jig's that made that airplane were also destroyed as to why the order was given for the sr-71 I don't know why but I can confirm that they were destroyed and I don't know if it was Robert McNamara who ordered it destroyed or whether there was somebody from the Air Force recruiter destroyed so I don't know well I think that's all the time we have for questions thank you thank you for watching Peninsula seniors out and about I'm Betty wheaton see you next time [Music] you

Channel: PeninsulaSrsVideos

Views: 66,490

Keywords: SR-71, Blackbird, U-2, Spy Plane, A-12, skunkworks, Kelly Johnson, Edwards Air Force Base, crash, cold war, Russia, Cuba, missile crisis, F-104, F-4, Vietnam, Beale Air Force Base, March Air Force Base, Area 51, Betty Wheaton, Western Museum of Flight, documentary, reconnaissance, secret, Peninsula Seniors, aviation history, National Air and Space Museum, pilot

Id: U6ABvIHohG0

Length: 54min 37sec (3277 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019