The SR-71 "Buzzing the tower" story you probably never heard before

the question is did you ever fly over commercial airport airports that was the question from my wife yes I think it was the 1982 or 83 Toronto airshow I was a participant and we took an sr-71 there and it was three crew members went one crew flew it in one crew flew the second day air show and the third crew which was myself flew just a couple of flybys that the third day of the air show and then actually flew the aircraft back to Beale Air Force Base and the Toronto air show is over the what does it Labor Day weekend is it the Labor Day weekend in September what's the first that's Monday yeah that that's when they always have it and when we end it's a holiday weekend so when I came back into the Sacramento area and I was descending down to land at Beale and we had a lot of fuel and we had to work on the holiday and I said yeah I asked the backseater I said you want to make an approach at sac Metro and he said can we do that and I said why not you can do anything once yeah exactly so so so I on approach control I when we got over to approach control I asked if sac Metro was available for a an approach and they said they'd switch this over to sac Metro and they cleared us for an approach so as we were coming down final and we had configured the airplane with the gear down and we're about two miles out on final I asked the controller they switch this over to tower and I asked the tower I said would you like a flyby down the runway or down the ramp and the guy said down the ramp when I said okay I sucked the gear up and I pushed the power up and we started heading towards the ramp towards the tower and as we were approaching it I rolled the plane up away from the tower and lit the afterburners and we went around and made a pass and the tower controller said beautiful beautiful come back and do another one and I said I better not I'm gonna go to Beal so we went back to Beal and we landed and as I mentioned holiday weekend and Colonel Lonni list was the deal he was the director of flight operations the do sorry straight blah knee straight Lonnie yeah anyhow so he met us when we pulled in the hangar after we landed as I mentioned that was the normal procedure and I thought well that's nice that he came out as I came down the ladder from the aircraft he looked at me he said Morrie and I said yes sir he said do we have any regulations that say we can't make approaches at Sacramento Airport I said no sir I want one on my desk at seven o'clock tomorrow morning now there's a continuation to this story I retired in 87 and flew with United Airlines when I went I had previously flown for United I had a break in service when I went back to United I was a 760 copilot 760 yeah Boeing 767 co-pilot and one of my that first year in 87 I think it was either the fall of 87 or the winter of 88 right after the new year I was flying a 767 from Washington DC to San Francisco and an air traffic controller wanted to know if they could ride in the cockpit and the captain of the plane signed it off they have that privilege or if they want to do that and the aircraft normally when they do that if there's an empty seat somewhere the captain allows one of the flight attendants to come in an empty seat in the back of the plane the plane was full so this young lady was the air traffic controller she came in she's quite attractive young lady and the captain I was falling with was I don't know if he's married or not but I know he's a big flirt I hadn't flown with him before so I was flying it was my leg from DC to San Francisco you would trade offline legs in the airlines and we're flying and he's just talking to her halfway across the country and at some point he asked her how long she'd worked at San Francisco Airport and she hadn't been there that long she said I used to work sac Metro so this is night I think was 1988 and I looked over my shoulder at this young lady and I said were you working sac Metro in 1982 or whatever it was 82 or 83 and she looked at me and she said yeah I was why do you ask and I said were you working tower when the sr-71 buzzed it and she said oh yeah I was how did you know that and I told her it was me and she started laughing and she said you scared the hell out of people she said there she said there were people in the terminal that dived to the ground they thought the airplane was going to hit the turf to come

Channel: TAOFLEDERMAUS

Views: 4,993,443

Rating: 4.8895731 out of 5

Keywords: sr71, blackbird, speed check, pilot, mystery, funny story, maury rosenberg, top gun

Id: xTJYNq4GQAE

Length: 5min 30sec (330 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/bratling]

Sorry if this is a repost but this is the first I’ve ever heard this story. Audio only, no real video. Love the ending :-)

[u/halfhere]

This is a new one for me too! Great find!