Nothing is faster than the speed of light!
But is it possible to get close?
This airplane is the pinnacle of what’s possible to feel behind the wheel.
At speeds of more than Mach 3, the world zooms by in a matter of seconds.
That’s right, I’m talking about the fastest stealth aircraft in history!
This beauty has been in the most dangerous battles, flown around almost the entire planet,
and has never been shot down!
Think about this: it could fly around the whole world in 11 hours and reach the moon
in 4 days!
Over 5,000 rockets have been launched in its direction, but not one of them hit!
Just once has a single fighter come close to bringing down this monstrosity, but in
the end, it failed too.
That’s understandable, because we’re talking about the Lockheed SR-71.
It’s the most important strategic reconnaissance aircraft ever developed by the United States.
Its defining feature is its ability to reach incredible speeds and altitude.
It can accelerate to over four times the speed of sound and attain heights that make it possible
to see the roundness of the earth!
No other aircraft can achieve these parameters.
Given the SR’s abilities, designers didn’t even bother equipping it with protection against
enemy attacks.
When other craft would use flares and other tricks, the Blackbird just flies.
Missiles can’t keep up!
Intercepting aircraft aren’t even able to get close...
The SR-71 made its first flight on December 22, 1964.
This day marked a new era for scout planes!
Not a single other reconnaissance aircraft in history has operated in more hostile airspace,
making it even more astounding that the SR has never been injured!
Of course, there have been other impressive scout aircraft such as the U-2 subsonic plane,
also from Lockheed.
It was an amazing platform in its day, but the US Air Force admitted that the relatively
slow aircraft was vulnerable to Soviet interceptors.
The threat turned out to be real when a U-2 was hit by a surface-to-air missile over the
Soviet Union in 1960.
That’s when work began on a new aircraft, one intended to be an order of magnitude more
powerful.
Kelly Johnson 0.19-0.41 Lockheed’s first proposal for a new reconnaissance
aircraft was a unique design powered by liquid hydrogen.
But it had to be abandoned because of its cost.
Imagine, the price tag for just one flight with aerial refueling was 8 million dollars!
Especially for the Blackbird, unique engines that could operate in a special afterburner
mode were developed as quickly as possible, allowing the aircraft to achieve extremely
high performance.
Kelly Johnson 2.10-2.37 But having such a super-powerful engine has
led to a serious design problem.
Flying at four times the speed of sound creates temperatures of 600 degrees on the aircraft’s
outer covering, enough to completely melt standard aluminum hulls.
The heat is the result of a physical phenomenon that causes air molecules to smash together
at high speeds, resulting in higher temperatures.
In simple terms: air molecules can’t get out of the way fast enough, so they pile up
on the plane, creating friction and generating heat...
The engine, canopy, landing gear, equipment - everything was being damaged by the extreme
temperatures, so it became urgent to completely change the aircraft’s design.
The team at Lockheed decided to take a number of unorthodox steps.
The first such step was using titanium to protect the hull, and even that came with
its own set of problems.
For starters, nearly all titanium at that time was produced in the USSR and secretly
delivered to the USA.
Later it turned out that ordinary water and cadmium-plated tools couldn’t be used to
weld titanium because they caused corrosion.
Special equipment had to be custom-made for the aircraft.
There were also problems with contamination, and more than 80% of the delivered titanium
simply had to be dumped in a landfill.
Despite these challenges, the aircraft turned out to be light enough to attain high speeds
while also remaining resistant to high temperatures.
The first goal had been achieved, but the tires, which retracted into the wings during
flight, also had to be protected from melting!
New tires were created by mixing aluminum with latex and filling them with nitrogen.
The SR-71’s tire pressure is 415 pascals, compared to 35 pascals in your car’s tires!
The cockpit also became very hot while flying at high speeds, so much so that pilots on
long missions could reheat food by pressing it against the glass.
Contributing to the solution to the overheating problem was Ben Rich, who spent countless
hours figuring out how to dissipate heat throughout the aircraft’s body.
He created a special black paint that served three purposes - protection from the heat,
absorption of radar signals, and night camouflage.
It is thanks to this black paint that the SR-71 got its nickname - “Blackbird”.
Innovations were also introduced while the aircraft was being put together.
Bolts had been previously used for this task, but for the Blackbird, that option would have
been deadly.
Due to the heating and expansion of the exterior, the bolts simply would have been torn off.
You understand what that would lead to.
This is why the Lockheed Skunk Works subdivision built the aircraft with large gaps in some
parts of the structure.
This solved the deformation issue but added a new problem - fuel began dripping
from the hull.
Richard Graham SR-71 Pilot 2.23-3.02 - that’s what SR-71 pilot Richard Graham
had to say about it.
Even the engine suffered.
First of all, the shock wave created inside the engine at supersonic speeds can simply
rip the plane apart from the inside.
Arnie Gunderson, one of the aircraft’s developers, spoke about this: arnie gunderson i worked
pratt whitney 4.04-4.30
Gradually, step by step, most of the problems were solved.
During testing of the perfected aircraft, it was discovered that it could safely operate
at a maximum speed of Mach 3.3 at an altitude of more than 82 thousand feet above the ground.
The crew even have to wear spacesuits similar to those worn by astronauts.
These suits protect the crew in the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure at extreme
altitude.
Rumor has it that at the top of the plane’s range you can even see the circumference of
the earth!
And that’s where a new problem was revealed...
While friction from air molecules in flight created incredible heat on the skin, ambient
temperatures outside the cockpit window dropped to -58 degrees Fahrenheit.
In addition, even with full tanks, flights can’t last long; supplies have to be replenished
from time to time.
Every time the SR-71 refueled, the crew had to descend to the tanker altitude of up to
29000 feet and slow the aircraft down to subsonic speed.
As the aircraft’s speed decreased, its skin and parts significantly contracted, creating
cracks in the technical gaps from which fuel flows, leaving a characteristic trail of steam.
Despite all the problems with temperature changes, the plane still turned out to be
incredibly successful and still remains the fastest in the world!
The only things that limit its speed are its engine capacitors.
They heat up to 750 degrees in flight.
Any more acceleration would simply destroy them.
Research conducted in the late 20th century showed that, with the right materials, the
SR-71 engine could theoretically attain speeds up to Mach 6.
The only other aircraft to fly supersonic for hours was the Concorde, but it still couldn’t
reach the same speed as the Blackbird.
What can I say…
Lieutenant Colonel Ed Yielding flew this plane from Los Angeles to Washington DC in 1 hour
4 minutes 20 seconds at an average speed of 2123 miles per hour!
That means it would only take 11 hours to fly around the entire planet, and just 4 days
to get to the moon!
Even while flying at such unbelievable speed, the craft can photograph a 70-mile wide area
below it!
All because it has one of the most advanced cameras in the world!
Of course, its adversaries aren’t fond of such reconnaissance... as evidenced by the
amount of times they’ve tried to shoot the plane down, but to no avail.
Despite the fact that Blackbird had electronic countermeasures, its main method of defense
against missiles has been to simply to get ahead of them!
The effectiveness of this defense was proven in 1981, when Kelly Johnson, one of the Blackbird’s
developers, announced that over 5,000 missiles had been launched towards the SR-71 over the
course of its operational life, but none have hit it!
Maury Rosenberg SR-71 Pilot Only the Swedish fighter Saab Viggen at one
time came close to bringing down the Blackbird.
In late January 1986, a Swedish pilot named Per-Olof Eldh, using a Viggen fighter, aligned
with the Blackbird’s head-on flight path and obtained full missile guidance lock, but
the planes simply passed by each other in mid-air.
Then, in 1987, an SR-71 veered off course into Swedish airspace and descended sharply.
A nearby Swedish aircraft realized that one of the Blackbird's jet engines had exploded,
and the Viggens protected the reconnaissance pilot by escorting him out of Swedish airspace.
This incident created quite a stir in the media, once again making it clear that this
plane was very problematic.
Suffice to say that out of 32 existing units, 12 crashed due to malfunctions in flight.
Even knowing all the aircraft’s problems and capabilities, it was still a big hindrance
to the Soviet Union, which is no surprise given that that is why the plane was created
in the first place.
The Union did everything in their power to intercept and even shoot the Blackbird down,
but to no avail.
Neither the MiG-25 nor the MiG-31 ever came close to even launching missiles.
Their engines overheated and they simply couldn’t match altitudes.
And although the plane was designed to spy on Russia, one time, something even more interesting
found itself in the viewfinder!
In 1980, while flying over North Korea, the plane was able to capture a real meteorite
up close!
Despite all of its achievements, the Blackbird program was discontinued in 1990 as technologies
like spy satellites and UAVs became more popular in reconnaissance missions.
Of course, no military drone can live up to the SR-71, and the role it played in Air Force
operations, though narrowed by spy satellites, still remains unfilled.
The Blackbird’s closest successor is a plane featured in the movie “Top Gun”, a supersonic
reconnaissance aircraft called the SR-72 “Darkstar”.
The fictional aircraft is described as a continuation of the SR-71.
Both are high-speed manned strategic reconnaissance aircraft.
The only difference is that while the Blackbird has a top speed of Mach 3.3, the movie copy
reaches Mach 10 - that’s 7,500 miles per hour!
Of course, such speeds seem unrealistic, and the SR-72 Darkstar is still just a fantasy
passed off as a reality, but we’re not ruling out the possibility that one could exist someday!
If that happens, we may finally see the Blackbird’s true heir, but so far, it remains unsurpassed!
And with that, this video is over!
Leave your likes and comments under the video.
It motivates us to release more interesting content for you!
Thanks for watching and see you soon!