I am lucky to have sat down and spoken with a past pilot of one of these. My only question was "how the hell do you convince yourself to do Mach 2 in a plane where slip a nickle into the panels". They are a true work of art and amazing machine and oddly enough the top speed is still top secret. This is of course 30 years after becoming decommissioned.

I remember as a kid sitting at home from school after breaking my arm the day before. There was nothing on so I was watching G H Bush getting inaugurated when we had a sonic boom (unusual in St. Louis). Later I found out that it was an SR-71 Blackbird. That is when I became a fan.

 

Sweet cool story I have only seen one in the Air and Space museum in DC.

 

Don't know anything about planes, but always thought the SR-71 was sick.

 

I was lucky enough to see one do some take offs and landings in Okinawa 1982 - 1983 time frame. Way cool bird.

 

Actually the gap where the fuselage and the wing met are much wider then that closer to an 1"

 

As I said before I worked with the Intel systems an soon as the aircraft would return from a mission our group was the first on aircraft to remove the tapes for analysis. How do I say some missions were more important those others and the pressure to get the tapes out and into analysis was very high. You had to be very careful while running around under the airframe removing the panels that you would run into the bladed antennas. These antennas were made out Titanium and the heat that the aircraft would be subjected to caused the titanium oxide to be more prevalent and if you got cut it took for ever to heal....just a little factoid.

 

Wicked craft. Thanks for the info, pics and vids.

 

Right on CLS that must have been pretty fun. Such a truly amazing machine.

 

definitely the sexiest plane ever I love it thanks for sharing

 

There is also one at the musuem in Alabama near the USS Alabama. I ahve pics at home froma trip this summer that I will try to post when I get home.