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A tribute to the Blackbird


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SR-71

An amazing slideshow and story.

(It may have been posted here before; sorry if it's a dupe.)

:whistle:

Doesn't matter if it's been on ARC or any other site before we all need to see what this could do again and again... What an amazing engineering marvel it is. Truly the 8th wonder of the world! If we only knew...

Thanks for posting R.J.

Cheers,

Larry.

Edited by Incaroad
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Thanks RJ !

Doesn't matter if it's been on ARC or any other site before we all need to see what this could do again and again... What an amazing engineering marvel it is. Truly the 8th wonder of the world! If we only knew...

Thanks for posting R.J.

Cheers,

Larry.

Darwin knew ... :rofl:

Gregg

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I have a question (sorry if its O/T); when Boeing was designing the F-4X for Israel (the water-injected mach-3 variant) dodn't they think they'd have the same heat problem as the Blackbird? I mean, the Blackbird deals with the extreme air friction and heat by running its fuel through the airframe as a coolant, wouldn't the larger-profiled, less sleek F-4 need more cooling to do mach-3?

Edited by sv51macross
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I have a question (sorry if its O/T); when Boeing was designing the F-4X for Israel (the water-injected mach-3 variant) dodn't they think they'd have the same heat problem as the Blackbird? I mean, the Blackbird deals with the extreme air friction and heat by running its fuel through the airframe as a coolant, wouldn't the larger-profiled, less sleek F-4 need more cooling to do mach-3?

The F-4 did a supersonic dash, while the Blackbird cruised at high mach speed. More time for that friction to build up for an SR-71, spending hours at a time in afterburner and outracing the sun.

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I have a question (sorry if its O/T); when Boeing was designing the F-4X for Israel (the water-injected mach-3 variant) dodn't they think they'd have the same heat problem as the Blackbird? I mean, the Blackbird deals with the extreme air friction and heat by running its fuel through the airframe as a coolant, wouldn't the larger-profiled, less sleek F-4 need more cooling to do mach-3?

I believe you're comparing a Mach 3 Sprinter(F-4X) with a Mach 3 Marathoner(SR-71) ...

I'm pretty sure the F-4X was only going to reach those speeds in quick dashes to lock up a MiG-25, etc and give the missile a higher launch speed ... SR-71s cruise at Mach 3+ so heat is a much bigger problem to overcome ...

Well, that's my theory anyway ...

Edit: I see BAM 'n' IVM came to the same conclusion ...

Gregg

Edited by GreyGhost
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By coincidence I was sent a link to the strangevehicles web site only two days ago and read this story then stumbled upon this thread.

Well for some reason, and I'm not an avionics engineer or anything to do with aerospace but I didn't think that the SR71 could fly that fast. I mean sure I certainly believe that it could supercruise at mach 3.5 or thereabouts - but mach 7.77 (1.6 miles per/sec) which by the way would be 5760mph. Now that would leave me speechless. And yes it would definetly need to fly that fast to evade a speeding SAM.

Can any-one enlighten us with the genuine truth as to the ultimate viable speed that this incredible machine was capable of.

Oh by the way if this particular plane mentioned in the story was based at Mildenhall at the time of these Libya recon trips, then I would quite possibly have seen it on many occasion flying over Bury st Edmunds on its last leg coming into land. A sighting never to be forgotten.

Oh for the Mildenhall Airshow....... will there be another?

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Boy, that sure brought back some memories...

I recently had the pleasure to see the U-2 once again since a very long time.

Rather strange to realize that one day in the future I will see a simular vid

of that bird, probably waking up this same strange & sad feeling...

"Check Six....."

Spooky.

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The Blackbird is and always will be an awesome aircraft. I built my first model of the SR-71 back in 1967, a Revell kit I think. Back in the days of two hour builds, tube glue, Pactra bottle brush painting and thinking I had created a masterpiece. I regret I never got to see a Blackbird fly in all the airshows I attended. I'll have to be content with slide shows like this. Thanks for sharing. Don M.

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  • 1 month later...
SR-71

An amazing slideshow and story.

(It may have been posted here before; sorry if it's a dupe.)

:rolleyes:

The story is copyrighted material from the book The Untouchables by Brian Shul. Regardless of how inspiring the story is, it's COPYRIGHTED material and the Website should take that page down.

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A couple of quick comments about this thread.

1. The story about the flight over Libya, the ground speed check near LA and the general comments about the plane are indeed from Brian Shul's book. They are paraphrased rather than word for word quotes, so that may legally get around the copyright, but Major Shul should still get credit for the original writing.

2. The speed as quoted in the slide show was 1 mile per 1.6 seconds, not 1.6 miles per second. That is a big difference.

3. The article quoted the first operational mission of the SR-71 as 1966. It was actually March of 1968 (by Major Gerald O'Malley pilot and RSO Capt Ed Payne.)

The SR-71 routinely flew at approximately 3,000 feet per second. That is 2045 statute miles per hour or 1776 knots, nautical miles per hour or slightly over Mach 3 at 80,000 feet altitude. She could hold this speed for about an hour and a half before running out of fuel. The cameras and other sensors were designed and adjusted for this speed and altitude. Any deviation above or below those numbers caused a degradation in sensor product results.

The limiting factor for speed was the air temperature at the inlet face of the compressor. IIRC, that was about 470 degrees F. Anything higher than that would cause serious damage to the engines. The outside air temperature had a big effect on the inlet temperature, so the maximum speed varied from one mission to the next. The practical limit was 3.5 Mach, plus or minus a slight bit. If you started a stop watch at the exact instant an SR-71 passed you, 2 seconds later she would be 1 mile away.

Blackbird speed and altitude were directly proportional. If you wanted to go faster, you had to go higher. If you wanted to go higher, you had to go faster. She could break Mach 1 at low altitude, but just barely. She burned more fuel per mile at sub sonic speed than at Mach 3. At cruise speed, approximately 20% of total thrust came directly from the engines, the remaining 80% came from the by-pass air ducted around the engines. Another Skunk Works, Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich brainstorm.

Darwin

Edited by yardbird78
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