A VERY GOOD read..

http://gizmodo.com/5950763/holy-fcklook-at-all-these-sr+71-blackbirds-together

I drove all the way to hutchinson, kansas just to see that damn thing over the summer. Bad asss is the only way to describe it lol. I got pics of it all somewhere, including really fine detail pics of things, hope they didn't get dumped with all my other pics. I'll post them if I find them.

Alright I didn't actually read that longggg thing before I posted lol, until now. I didn't think there were many stories I hadn't already read. I think most of them were from him, however I never saw any telling the actual speed. I just couldn't believe they still had throttle left all the way up until it pinned out at 3.5 That is just incredible. What drives me nuts is they built that thing in the 60's and if it were put back into service today, it would still be unbeatable. One thing I found particularly interesting that they didn't talk about there was that to refuel, the SR71 was as slow as it could go and the boeing was going as fast as it could go. However, that still wasn't enough. They said to refuel it they had to go into a nose-dive to pick up even more speed because the SR71 just couldn't go as slow as those boeings cruised during level flight. It wasn't straight down but I guess the entire time it was refueling they were in a constant decent to keep enough speed up.

That is an exceptional airdraft and 1960's tech built it. Kelly Johnson as his folks built some extroidinary aircraft. It was very good read.

My uncle is part owner of Cold War Air Museum in Lancaster, TX. I've posted pics of some of the aircraft here, before.

There's some neat stuff to see there, if you're into older aircraft (winged and rotored)..

http://www.facebook.com/Cwamtx

So I kinda got back on the ball with this and spent most of the day looking up more stuff on the SR71 lol. This one is very interesting and must have been an incredible sight. http://tailspinstales.blogspot.com/2010/01/slowest-blackbird.html

I sent the link to my bro-in-law... former AF flyboy (Nav on B52, #2 on F111), former AA Jet Captain... now retired, he's back in the air as a flight instructor.

So I kinda got back on the ball with this and spent most of the day looking up more stuff on the SR71 lol. This one is very interesting and must have been an incredible sight. http://tailspinstales.blogspot.com/2010/01/slowest-blackbird.html

That is a great story.

What drives me nuts is they built that thing in the 60's and if it were put back into service today, it would still be unbeatable.

Yup!!!! This was before CAD and CNC...........all the calculations were done with pencil and slide rule!!!:smart: Truly amazing!!