SR-71 Blackbird - Interesting Story

[RonMacPherson]

No one's going to tell us about the special wrenches that had to be used on the airframe??

Standard black metal, rather than fancy chrome?

 

[vagt6]

A really awesome plane, the Blackbird.

The VA Aviation Museum in Richmond (a surprisingly great museum with lots of vintage aircraft) has a Blackbird on permanent display. And, the 2006 National Triumph Register car show was held there with all the beautiful Triumph cars positioned around the big SR-71.

Later in the day, a perfectly restored WWII vintage Supermarine Spitfire did a fly-in as part of the show. The pilot parked the Spitfire about 50 feet away from the Blackbird. What a study in contrasts!

Two <span style="font-style: italic">very</span> beautiful aircraft, however, I prefer the roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine to the jet! :smirk: What a sweet and powerful-sounding engine!! Really nothing like it, IMHO.

 

[Twosheds]

A really awesome plane, the Blackbird.

The VA Aviation Museum in Richmond (a surprisingly great museum with lots of vintage aircraft) has a Blackbird on permanent display. And, the 2006 National Triumph Register car show was held there with all the beautiful Triumph cars positioned around the big SR-71.

Later in the day, a perfectly restored WWII vintage Supermarine Spitfire did a fly-in as part of the show. The pilot parked the Spitfire about 50 feet away from the Blackbird. What a study in contrasts!

Two <span style="font-style: italic">very</span> beautiful aircraft, however, I prefer the roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine to the jet! :smirk: What a sweet and powerful-sounding engine!! Really nothing like it, IMHO.

I think it was the VTR National in 2004.

I had a humorous exchange with the owner one week later which I have previously told in this forum, so I won't tell it here again, unless you ask!

Didn't get a photo of the SR-71; battery went dead!

 

[tony barnhill]

I'm told that every one of those SR-71's on display around the country are still easily returned to duty if necessary.....one of the guys out at the Space & Rocket Center here in town told me the Air Force visits their Blackbird regularly.

 

[Silverghost]

Hide them in plain sight eh? Or should that be plane sight??

 

[TR6oldtimer]

Makes me wonder, where are the black helicopters everyone use to talk about?

 

[kenvs]

Hey Twosheds is that a Mk IX Spit in the picture? With a 4 bladed prop it should be close to that vintage. As for those mysterious black helicopters ... they roost in the hills surrounding the Antelope Valley in CA. I know it cause I saw one near the Devils Punchbowl.

 

[DrEntropy]

:shocked: Eeek! Glad I bought the first edition back when.

PC, is there a photo of one over the Nevada desert with th' Playboy bunny symbol on the tail in that book?

...or mention of one pilot with the first name Conrad?

 

[TR6BILL]

Seems my boys, when they were youngins, built a model of the SR71 <span style="font-weight: bold">Bluebird</span>! Double canopy, as I remember. Did that ever exist??

 

[DrEntropy]

hmm. dunno. I never saw that'n but PC should have the definitive answer in the book.

 

[Twosheds]

Hey Twosheds is that a Mk IX Spit in the picture? With a 4 bladed prop it should be close to that vintage. As for those mysterious black helicopters ... they roost in the hills surrounding the Antelope Valley in CA. I know it cause I saw one near the Devils Punchbowl.

Good eye, Ken! It is indeed a Mark IX. It is in the collection at Jerry Yagen's Fighter Factory in Virginia:

https://www.fighterfactory.com/airworthy-aircraft/spitfire-plane.php

Guess no one wants to hear my Spitfire story again!

 

[TRDejaVu]

Guess no one wants to hear my Spitfire story again!

OK, I'll bite, as I don't think that I've heard it.

 

[kenvs]

Does the story include Sanford Tuck or Douglas Bader? Any Spitfire story is a good one so do tell, do tell!

 

[kenvs]

The A12 was designated, when operational, as a trainer the SR-71. It had dual canopies. The rear one was for the instructor and was raised above the front cockpit. There is an A12 in the outdoor museum in downtown Palmdale, CA. We used to go to the site every Thursday afternoon to watch the beast land at the old Air Force Plant 42 now the Lockheed Skunkworks after it moved from Burbank. I have heard that the SR-71B also had the staggered cockpits but I can't verify that.

 

[kenvs]

Another neat aircraft and one that came very close to going into production was the XB-70 Valkyrie. It was the forerunner of the SST design.

 

[Twosheds]

Does the story include Sanford Tuck or Douglas Bader? Any Spitfire story is a good one so do tell, do tell!

Neither of those two, I'm sorry to say; only Jerry Yagen, who owns the Spitfire in the photo and a chain of A&P schools:

In 2004, the college closed the Aviation Mechanic Program where I taught. A week after VTR 2004, the college auctioned the shop equipment and aircraft and stuff. I wore a Triumph shirt to the auction. Yagen was there to bid on everything for his schools. He asked for my resume. Yagen noticed my shirt and said,
"I was at a Triumph show in Richmond last week."

I said, "So was I."

He said, "I had the Spitfire."

I said, "There were lots of Spitfires there." (thinking "what an idiot, how am I supposed to remember one Triumph Spitfire out of all of them?")

He said, "No, <span style="font-style: italic">The Spitfire</span>!"

"Oh." (thinking, "I'm the idiot!")

Then he offered me a job at The Fighter Factory working on his collection. Too bad I'm disabled.

 

[kenvs]

That's cool story Twosheds and one worth telling again and again.

 

[PC]

Seems my boys, when they were youngins, built a model of the SR71 <span style="font-weight: bold">Bluebird</span>! Double canopy, as I remember. Did that ever exist??

All SR-71 and YF-12A aircraft were two-place. The standard configuration was for a pilot and a Reconnaissance Systems Officer. Standard A-12 configuration was single-seat.

There were four staggered-cockpit trainer aircraft over the life of the program. One was an A-12 (tail# 60-6927, now on display at the California Science Center, Los Angeles). two were SR-71B models (tail#s 61-7956 and 61-7957). And the fourth was the one and only SR-71C (tail# 61-7981).

I'm told that every one of those SR-71's on display around the country are still easily returned to duty if necessary.....one of the guys out at the Space & Rocket Center here in town told me the Air Force visits their Blackbird regularly.

IIRC, all of the museum display birds were rendered permanently inoperable. Beneath their skins, their airframes were sliced through and are stitched back together for static display.

This made them transportable in sections by truck and guaranteed the strike-centric commanders that were in charge at the time of deactivation would never be bothered by “those pesky things” ever again.

(Also, all the original tooling to manufacture them was destroyed in the sixties.)

... <span style="font-style: italic">very</span> beautiful aircraft, however, I prefer the roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine to the jet! :smirk: What a sweet and powerful-sounding engine!! Really nothing like it, IMHO.

I love Merlins. But they don’t make shock diamonds.

(note the staggered instructor canopy on NASA 831, a.k.a. Air Force 61-7956)


PC.

 

[GregW]

(Also, all the original tooling to manufacture them was destroyed in the sixties.)
PC.

That's a shame.
Another interesting note: the cones on the front of the engines move as the plane approaches supersonic speed. IIRC this keeps the shock-wave out of the engines so they don't stall. On the first version of the plane, the cones were operated manually by a lever in the cockpit. Eventually, the operation was automated with a computer.

 

[TRDejaVu]

(Also, all the original tooling to manufacture them was destroyed in the sixties.)

Same thing happened with the Avro Arrow and the TSR2.

"All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR.2 simply got the first three right."
- Sir Sydney Camm