SR-71
Ancient history, though. The Air Force hated them.
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7 comments:
OK comrade, don't leave us hanging. Why did the Air Force hate the best performing reccon aircraft in history? The high operating cost?
I second that. Inquiring minds want to know.
It depends on whose story you believe. One is that the Air Force wanted to spend the money on the Global Hawk program. Another is that they had a newer platform, the Aurora.
Love the awesome Blackbird! And it was needed.
This one though? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_SR-72
There used to be an internet rumor of there being a couple in flyable storage just in case. I can't remember the year, but a blackbird made an appearance at Oshkosh. during his arrival, a contrail appeared on one of the wings. about a second later he declared an emergency and departed for MKE. It had developed a fuel leak, and was almost out of fuel when they arrived. a distance of approx. 80 miles. IIRC, it sat on the Air Guard ramp for almost a month. Cannot imagine that repair bill.
The story of the design and engineering of the SR-71 was always interesting to me. Kelly Johnson and the skunkworks at Lockheed was an amazing technological feat into the relatively unknown back then. I was always reading everything I could about that aircraft as a kid. I’m not ashamed to say I was thrilled the two times I was able to work a Blackbird and a U2 (at different times, of course) while I was working at Houston ARTCC. Just the pilots checking in at “above FL600” was awesome. LRod probably has some stories from when he worked at a center (can’t remember which one he has said he was at)
Dale
They LOVED the publicity the SR-71s gave them with the various administrations. The folks I knew that worked on/flew them out of Kadena were happy with them too. Any 'hate' came from the bean counters, not the actual troops or pilots.
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