What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)
popularmechanics.com
popularmechanics.com
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-sr-71-blackbirds-most-...
On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing.
The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirage to hold on. The reconnaissance systems officer (RCO, the other guy in the plane) then informed the pilot that the code had been transmitted and they went back up to full speed and left the Mirage quickly behind.
The code that the RCO transmitted? The middle finger.
...
Sarcasm aside, wouldn't this be a severe case of violation of sovereignity? I find it hard to believe such a stupid act could have been performed without making news or retaliations.
(By stupid act I mean entering unpermitted airspace, the pilot's actions are irrelevant)
So when a French commander calls up an American commander about some crap their lads pulled flying by in an SR-71 the other day, they're able to sort it out like adults, maybe the American commander relays that he will give his lads whatever the military equivalent of a stern talking to is and they'll both have a laugh, maybe make arrangements for a beer and it doesn't escalate into anything for the masses to waste their limited attention bandwidth on.
Now it's entirely possible I don't live in such a world, but to believe otherwise would simply leave me scared shitless in a corner.
the other side, instead of shooting or arresting them, they helped them get the jeep out. they laughed at them and made fun of them, but they still helped
Everyone largely agreed it wasn't in anyone's best interest to talk about it publicly though.
When Powers was shot down, the US started with the cover story that it was a weather research aircraft. Then Khrushchev was able to embarrass the US by revealing that they had Powers, evidence that it was a surveillance plane, and demonstrate that the US had been lying to the public.
So, why did the US government lie to it's own people? Why wasn't in their best interest to talk about it publicly?
There's no such thing as telling your own people. Once you inform your own population about it, the enemy knows about it as well. The same as is true with regards secret service such as CIA and NSA. As you say, that doesn't fly here, since the Soviet government knew, and the US government knew the Soviet government knew.
Why you don't want to talk about that could be because its an elephant in a room which could cause escalation because of public discussion. That escalation could be internal as well as external.
Another reason could be that it shows that the US government knew a lot about the Soviets which due to this increased knowledge decreases fear for the Soviets. Which wasn't in the interest of the US government; it was in the interest of both the US and the Soviet government to see each other as the enemy.
A third reason could be, in addendum to #2, that the leadership saw no benefit to it, in terms of propaganda. It might seem the same as #2 but its less nefarious or ill intent.
We may never know the truth about this. Could FOIA requests shed some light?
That's the reason in my opinion.
(A) If the Soviets publicize US penetrations of their airspace, they look militarily weak.
(B) If the US publicizes their penetrations, then (A) as the Soviet public possibly finds out, any fatalities (and there were some) now become part of public debate, and additional parties in the US are now involved in the discussion as to whether or not these should happen.
(C) If either party publicizes their own or the other, then the opposing party is likely to publicize in retaliation. Given that both parties were conducting penetrations to assess air defense systems, this was the PR equivalent of MAD.
Barring a scenario where the president needed a clear "victory" to buttress public opinion, there was no win to be had in the public being informed.
Add in the fact that deep in the Cold War most of the media outlets were still self-censoring "for the country" and there was no one with incentive to disclose.
Though I don't think your (B)(A) regarding the Soviet public was that important. Rather, if the Soviet public were influential, would there have been the gulag system, which ended less than a decade before Powers was shot down?
But the US response to the Soviets shooting down Powers was to lie to the public. Surely the US could have remained silent or non-committal, rather than construct a cover-up, and walk into Khrushchev's publicity trap. According to Wikipedia, Eisenhower said to his secretary "I would like to resign."
That leads to the obvious question - how often does the US government lie to the public?
Lie I don't know, but omit/diverge all the time.
On the other hand, if neither country wants there to be incidents, than any potential incidents will be ignored and hushed up. Nobody will make any noise or volunteer any information about it. If a reporter happens to get information about it independently, it will be minimized and dismissed. Maybe the American pilot gets a slap on the wrist, the French pilot curses Americans a few times in his local bar, and everyone forgets about it soon after.
> America, f\\k yeah!
(I'm European, not French, but was pro-US during the Cold War.)
Yeah, my response was the same, until I read the context which the original quote lacks [1]. These 2 quotes are to me the most relevant from the story for the context of the original quote. Feel free to read the story in its entirety.
"The French refused to allow us overfly, so our mission profile was to refuel off the south coast of England, a Mach 3 cruise leg down the coast of Portugal and Spain, left turn through the Straits of Gibraltar, refuel in the Western Mediterranean, right turn into Lebanon and fly right down main street Beirut, exit along the southern Mediterranean with another refueling over Malta, supersonic back out the straits, and return to England."
Furthermore,
"We completed our pass over Beirut and turned toward Malta, when I got a warning low-oil-pressure light on my right engine. Even though the engine was running fine I slowed down and lowered our altitude and made a direct line for England. We decided to cross France without clearance instead of going the roundabout way."
The earlier quoted story lacks these nuances. Sure, you might still find it rude but for me it made a big difference that they weren't just invading French aerospace for no valid reason.
Its just typical that they opted to increase speed during the encounter with the Mirage while previously they decided to lower speed due to low oil pressure on the right engine. Although at that point they were much closer to home which was at the south of England. At some point, I just gotta stop being skeptic and trust these guys know what they're doing with their super expensive toy^H^H^Haircraft. Its easy to judge on others, claiming you wouldn't resort to this behaviour. But would we? Really?
Makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing!
in particular, he said they kept notes on everyone and turned them in (not sure to whom), in order to prevent russian espianage. For example, if you saw someone order something from a vending machine, it was up to you to write down who, what item they selected, etc. presumably these were checked for patterns.
Next to Ben Rich's "Skunk Works", it is one of the best books on the SR-71 that I have ever read.
For the rest of us there's this great talk from Brain Schul which covers this story and a few others.
Hang on to your two - could be a better retirement plan than crypto currency! :D
EDIT: Here is one current listing ~USD$640 - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Sled-Driver-Flying-the-Worlds-Fa...
I’m willing to provide insurance and proof of my identity to ensure your property is respected.
It only came out in 1991 though — does Internet Archive host books that aren't public domain?
> It only came out in 1991 though — does Internet Archive host books that aren't public domain?
http://blog.archive.org/donation-faqs/
I have temporarily added contact info to my HN profile. Please get in touch if you would like me to help facilitate the shipping, scanning, and return of your book donation.
Here's Brian Shul telling the story live:
> When I'm doing a talk, if I don't tell that speed check story, they run me out of town. I tried that one year, I thought, I've been speaking at this air museum for 10 years now, I'm gonna change it up this year. People lost their minds. I realized hey, Elvis has to sing Love Me Tender at the end of every show, I gotta tell that story no matter how many times I tell it.
> And there's always people who've never heard it. I told it at an FBI conference the other day, out of 800 people I swear 700 had never heard it, and they were falling out of their chairs.
[1]: https://newatlas.com/brian-shul-interview-sr-71-blackbird-pi...
It's a great speech about overcoming his war injuries and getting to fly on of the most special planes in history, along with actually documenting most of it himself.
I still read it every time too.
https://theaviationist.com/2015/03/17/sr-71-mid-air-disinteg...
I don't want to put down your enthusiasm, but this is not very exact info. Stealth design never makes the plane invisible, it just increases the detection distance or the power requirement of the radar.
You get relatively long way by simply avoiding corner reflectors. There are rumors that Avro Vulcan used to disappear from friendly radars accidentally just because of that.
One of the features that increases stealth is the radar. Because radars tend to show on radar. SR-71 had "side looking radar" which might have been optimized not to show the array towards any hostile ground stations.
[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/8c/a7/0a8ca767c485d88869af...
Why not just copy the U2 and make an improved, unmanned version?
- The U2 uses old parts that aren't wildly/cheaply available anymore.
- The Global Hawk doesn't have a person in it. So they can send them into more dangerous situations without worrying. Which means they likely want a cheaper robot version. (Though, before RnD costs which skyrocketed, the price appeared to be only about 10mil cheaper.)
- New sensor modules have a different footprint that the shell can be designed around than a plane designed in the 70's. Also, more computer aided design into the entire thing.
- More fuel economy means more air time. (Additionally no fatigued pilot means more air time.) I know you said "remove the pilot" but the point is the entire thing can be designed for more air time, and more efficient fuel use.
Of course, often the most obvious answer is simply: Money. Tax payer dollars are "Free", and there's political power to be had in rewarding "your" defense contractor the ability to make brand new, amazing, super, bells-and-whistle aircraft. (::cough::F-35::cough::) And there's no ego boost for simply upgrading existing planes. (::cough::A-10::cough::)
Since every new program seems to be full of cost overruns I really wonder if they intentionally do that. They low-ball it, pocket the surplus "costs" as long as they can until congress gets pissed and then magically "fix" the product with a "modest" cash-influx bill from congress to finally finish it off. Because it's politically dangerous to be a congressperson that voted for this failed product that then has to be repealed. So they could, in essence, "fail" at making their product up until the point where it's just under "repeal time" and pocket all that cash.
[edit]
Here's a quote on Wikipedia that lines up partially with my comment about costs to fly:
"Secretary stated: "The Global Hawk is essential to national security; there are no alternatives to Global Hawk which provide acceptable capability at less cost; Global Hawk costs $220M less per year than the U-2 to operate on a comparable mission; the U-2 cannot simultaneously carry the same sensors as the Global Hawk; and if funding must be reduced, Global Hawk has a higher priority over other programs."[21]"
There are two stages to any defence procurement project - too soon to tell, and too late to stop.
EDIT:
Found it. A Ernest Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's First Law: "There are only two phases of a program. The first is 'It's too early to tell.' The second: 'It's too late to stop.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/23/a...
Where it says he's been the most hated man in the Air Force for two decades. So, this guy was/has basically been telling us how things are since the late 60's. And we still haven't learned a thing / integrated this into our public common sense / knowledge. (Like how >90% of people know not to mess with the inside of electronics without experience, or how most people think the government/banks/big-oil/etc is corrupt. That's community knowledge.)
And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.
I was under the impression that computers can fly planes which are impossible for humans to fly (e.g. the F-117, or any fighter with forward-swept wings). Since the U-2 is much closer to a "conventional" aircraft, and can be stick-flown by a human, wouldn't it be a walk in the park for a compute to fly it?
Computers don't fly the F-117, they help humans fly it. The difference between the two is significant.
"...To maintain their operational ceiling of 70,000 feet (21,000 m), the early U-2A and U-2C models had to fly very near their never-exceed speed (VNE). The margin between that maximum speed and the stall speed at that altitude was only 10 knots (12 mph; 19 km/h). This narrow window is called the "coffin corner", because breaching either limit would likely cause airflow separation at the wings or tail. For most of the time on a typical mission the U-2 was flying less than five knots above stall speed. A stall would cause a loss of altitude, possibly leading to detection and overstress of the airframe."
It's a testament to the engineering that what was by all rights a quick hack job has managed to stand the test of time.
oh gee whiz. this is such a great comment. I almost spilled coffee laughing on my keyboard. A+.
"just imagine the objections people would have raised to this feature, more parts, it looks funny"
"we wanted to throw a clambshell on it for shits and giggles but the powers that be decided that being able to back up a 2% grade was enough"
"both sets of wheels steer so it's one of the nicest planes to land in a near-hurricane cross wind because it can just crab sideways though the sky and keep the wheels lines up perfectly with the runway"
https://jalopnik.com/5537629/the-140-mph-chase-cars-of-the-u...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...
The priority placed on tight OODA loops jibes well with the Lean Startup doctrine, I think. Of course, since there's always an aggressive competitor for resources in Boyd's field, he emphasizes messing up their OODA loop as well.
I generally love reading about how other fields do what we call Agile. It allows you to set the principles behind the implementations.
There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The Soviets had childish, despicable politics of their own going on, with important rocket engineers like Korolev being accused by his colleague Glushko of treason, sending Korolev to the gulag for Glushko's professional advantage.[1]
Korolev went on to help design to Tupolev tu-2, a formidable bomber in WWII, from prison. Later he was Chief Designer of the Soviet's rocket program before dying of cancer (had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized).
Maybe the reason we see no signs of life in the universe is that all life evolves to conquer itself.
1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment
>The Space Race began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961
Almost. He didn't want to avoid launching satellites, he wanted to avoid launching _military_ satellites, which is why they had to use Vanguard (which was a civilian rocket). Once Sputnik launched on an R-7, there was no more need.
It went both ways, Glushko consisered Korolev to be irresponsibly cavalier and autocratic with anything outside of [Korolev's] specialities, which included Glushko's (liquid-fueld rocket engines).
> had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized
Probably not: Glushko's OKB-456 controlled the design of high-power liquid-fueld engines (which would ultimately lead to the RD-170 and its various derivatives), Korolev refused Glushko's engine design (RD-270), Glushko thus refused working with Korolev and on LOX/Kerosene engines[0].
It was Korolev who decided to go with a metric fuckton of NK-15 instead of listening to Glushko.
[0] he would ultimately design the LOX/Kerosene RD-170, but 20 years after the F1, one of the reasons for refusing to do so for the N1 was the lacking techno-industrial environment and inferior coke-prone fuels available to him in the 60s)
http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...
I'd also recommend "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans"
http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/...
[1] Ben Rich and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1996. ISBN 0-316-74300-3.
A: it would simply fly faster than them.
What ana amazing piece of engineering.
Towards the end of his life Kelly Johnson suffered from dementia.
They wheeled him out on a runway and there was a fly-past of SR-71s.
Ben asks Kelly "Did you see that? They were saluting you!" I was bawling when I read first that and I am tearing up now. Talk about Epic Men.
[0] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange...
How much technology did they have to invent from first principles to build a plane which flew at Mach 3 at the edge of space? Using slide rules and chalk boards?
Does nobody proofread these articles anymore? A missing word in the first sentence. This sort of sloppy publishing really doesn't leave a good first impression with the reader.
We assume they were flying recon missions over North Korea. They would take off then quickly bank almost 180 degrees
we referred to them as "Habu" because that's how the locals called them, which is the name of the large black (and extremely poisonous) snake indigenous to the island.
i recall reading that the SR-71 was originally designed as a strategic interceptor, rather than a long-range recon bird.
"As reported in PM, NASA is currently the revisiting the supersonic spy plane concept. It recently awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Skunk to test the feasibility of the SR-2, a supersonic drone that would fly almost twice the speed of the Blackbird. The idea is that speed would play the role that stealth once did in beating enemy air defense network. "
The interceptor variant is definitely interesting, but it's a side branch of the spy plane lineage.
"Do you even read my christmas list?"
At some point, in a speech or introduction, some high ranking official misread that as SR-71, and after that all documentation was updated to show this new designation.
SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.
>The 1980s saw an increase in threats capable to countering the SR-71, including improved enemy air defenses and the introduction of the MiG-31, which was armed with the R-33 air-to-air missile could intercept the Blackbird.
This just breaks my mental parsing, since there are so many ways to fix this:
1. ..MiG, which, being armed with the R-33 missile, could intercept the Blackbird;
2. ..MiG, which was armed with the R-33 missile, and could intercept the Blackbird;
3. ..MiG, which was armed with the R-33 air-to-air missile, and therefore could intercept the Blackbird.
(and so on)