The day the Swedish Air Force Saab 37 Viggen saved the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

[Music] these two united states air force pilots are preparing for a highly classified mission and will fly the fastest highest flying aircraft ever the sr-71 unofficially known as the blackbird it's a long-range advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft today was just a routine regular mission to fly their aircraft at high altitudes while gathering imagery on key russian bases such as the soviet navy's northern fleet on the kola peninsula today something will go wrong the blackbird flan balatant colonels dwayne knoll and tom veltry is a day they will not forget the events of that day were only declassified in 2018. this is the story of how sweden's air force vegan fighter jet pilots saved on sr-71 and its stricken crew history on the 29th of june 1987 we were flying an sr-71 sortie through the baltic it was a pretty normal sword that we'd flown many times before however on this day we had a little problem the right engine on the aircraft blew up exploded just as we were about to make our turn back to the south we handled the emergency going straight ahead for a few minutes uh but then turned south uh airplane although we started off at 80 000 feet when we lost the right engine we fell about 40 000 feet in less than a minute finally we started our left turn back to the south and decided to head straight for gotland island and uh because we knew we could be in trouble and when i say that the aircraft flies pretty good on one engine but not at mach 3 and not at 80 000 feet so by the time we leveled off at about 25 000 feet we're going about 380 knots and we didn't know what to expect but we thought we knew we could be in trouble i was a squadron commander at the fight wing 13 responsible for the vegans intercepting in the sr-71 we operated very much in the baltic sea and we had many contacts with sr-71 but we understood that it was a very severe situation with an sr-71 going down over swedish territory we're afraid it was going to crash and we ordered the vegans to contact it intercept and to follow it escort through the baltic sea it was a very severe situation with a blackbird in problems outside russia going in over swedish territory and also leaving swedish territory going over the southern baltic sea very close to east germany and we ordered two fighter vegans and qra vegans with weapons on board to follow to be very near the sr-71 on its way south to nato i think it's a very important it's very important because it's about the relations between the nations and its security policy and the meaning of what we represent in u.s air force and the swedish air force at that time but also today and today it's very important that we remember what happened and the roles we had what is a mutual respect and to be professional uh it wasn't too much after that we leveled off that we looked out the left window and there were two fighter aircraft coming at us from the east in the direction of the soviet union first thought was this could be it we didn't know what the soviet's intent could have been but we knew it probably wasn't good and as the aircraft got closer i kept looking and i recognized these aren't soviet markings and it's not a soviet jet and i got a little closer i saw the swedish markings and knew it was a swedish vegan two swedish figgens they had actually responded to our emergency squawk in the aircraft and they were on divot with us and escorted us continued south it wasn't more than a few minutes after the swedish aircraft pulled on our left wing that a mig-25 pulled up to a couple miles to the left of that my role i was the commander of the first what i call it wing pair that came out in the area we were doing a formal practice peacetime operation and we were asked from the fighter controller if we could make an identification of an aircraft with a special interest we started to get the southbound to intercept the what i thought was the asr-71 would normally flew around the baltic sea and head out southbound between the island ireland and gotland so we make heading for the southern part of the island ireland to make a northbound 180 attack on the sr-71 but as soon as i asked if he could stay positioned he said that where is he he said it was three zero kilometers north of hooberg i thought that must be wrong because it should have meant three kilometers north of koskasando so i asked him again in the state position and he said uber and i asked him that do you mean that he's over swedish territory yes he said so then we went supersonic back to him and find him in the clouds south of hobart i identified him and i stayed behind on top because it was very interesting to see that aircraft from above so i stayed behind and over him and my wingman christopher stayed on his right side to make some note of his aircraft number i i was the wingman to the first two aircraft that came into the sr-71 okay i came into to get the numbers and i said to myself this man is in trouble in real trouble so i thought that he was going to declare an emergency and turn in over sweden but they kept on going south and we took the numbers and so on and we were unarmed at that time we were just there for practicing and all this occurred and then the qr pair was inbound and we were running on bingo fuel so we turned back to our base and that's basically what happened my role i was the scoring commander for 62 scored a number 62 squad and we were responsible for the qra unit and then that's very morning i was one of the pilots flying i had a wingman who was not here today but boo and we uh we watch held in the actual pair based in england on the west coast of sweden so that's what happened what's my road that very morning first of all i was a little surprised because i i was asked to raise the alert from five minutes to jump into the aircraft and as soon as i got into aircraft scramble and i understood that this must be quite urgent because the weather was really lousy it was a drizzle foggy so it was not sure we could get back to the base after taking off so my first reaction was this must be very important so we started out eastwards climbed to roughly 20 thousand feet flew as fast as i could above the the territory because i couldn't get supersonic but close enough and then uh it took just a few minutes and then i was in the baltic got the sr-71 inside and it was really tricky to reduce the speed because it was flying quite slow so i had to make a big turn so i know the guys from the sr-71 i thought were coming from these but we came from the west so i had to go on i went on to the sr-71 on this right side because i didn't know if they were aware that we were there so i just did a flyby quite close to the cockpit showed my national registration and went backwards and my wingman went forward and we kept that position i follow him for six minutes i think and then we had to abort the mission when we came to danish territory so we had to go and go back to our base found out later from nsa that they were under orders to force us to land they wanted the aircraft or to shoot us down so without the swedish vegans rendezvousing with us and escorting us we wouldn't have made it home alive again we're here today to celebrate and pay um to recognize the amazing courage and valor of the four swedish pilots and i say four because initially it was two but they were starting to run out of fuel and uh ended up having to go back to their home base when two other swedish vegans came up and escorted us that continued south and then to the west towards uh uh west germany which which is where we landed um again i don't think they knew the threat that was and or what actually happened at the time they just knew they saw an sr-71 in trouble and they came to our rescue again i found out from nsa later on that the russians or the soviets had actually launched uh as many as 20 aircraft hoping that the vegans would have to pull off and we would be all alone and and they would have well i wouldn't be here today telling you this story so that's why uh it's it was it's so great to be able to recognize the uh events of that day and what the swedish vegan pilots did i gave them all a hug and thanked them i said it's not often that you get to actually meet somebody that saved your life and i asked them i said have you ever uh had someone save your life and they said well i'm not sure well i know exactly who saved my life and i'm with them right now so yeah i would like to have one thing uh my front seater pilot uh dwayne knoll i was not able to be here today he just had back surgery but he wanted to make sure that everyone knew his he sends his uh not just regards but also his congratulations and thank you to the swedish pilots as well as responsible for the intercept the manage command structure high level management on sweden when this happened and we got so worried because if you have this at 70 000 feet and it goes down with a descent speed of 40 000 feet a minute from this going down it's not going like this it will it's going like this and then they manage to recover and we were very worried that it was going to crash and we we felt the responsibility also to handle the situation and there is a meaning of that we ordered the vegans to be very close to the sr-71 on this very dangerous way out of the baltic like that [Music] this is a fantastic opportunity to see what's happening it's great actually it's more than 30 years ago but it's amazing to be here today great opportunity to say thank you and to see the guys who are there [Music] very uh first of all very honored to get in the middle and i'm really astonished that what happened 35 years and 31 years ago should end up in a ceremonial ceremony like this never go to my turn after more than 30 years of highly classified missions the united states air force permanently retired the sr-71 in 1998 [Music] you

Channel: OFF TRACK PLACES - Military Aircraft

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Keywords: MIG, usaf, sr71, sr-71, sr71 blackbird, aircraft, aviation, air force, plane, planes, jet fighters, soviet aircraft, viggen, 37 viggen, saab, saab aircraft, aeroplane, us airforce, saab viggen, sweden, sweden military, cold war, baltic fleet, baltic, jet planes, airplanes, sr 71 blackbird, blackbird plane, sr71 plane, flygvapnet, swedish, swedish air force, blackbird, spy plane, lockheed sr-71 blackbird, sr-71 blackbird, jet, swedish military, pilot, fastest jet, mig 31, aviation history

Id: y5Z2Bb-wnls

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/shaanauto]

Lovely post !! Thanks !

[u/ale_dona]

Thanks for sharing

[u/KCASC_HD]

I would love to see a tradition rise where if a pilot emergency lands the are invited for a meal, but they have to return the favor