The SR-71 Blackbird: A Supersonic Stealth Wonder

Spy Plane was Cold War Predecessor to Modern Stealth Fighters & Bombers

THE MOTHER OF NECESSITY

1960 began literally with a "bang" over the skies of the Soviet Union. The bang was a horrible sound, an explosion which marked the detonation of a SAM 2 antiaircraft missile meeting its target. A few minutes later, the twisted wreckage of an American spy plane came tumbling down. In 1962, yet another was shot down over Cuba.

The American CIA had to face a hard fact: Its proud high-flying U-2 photo-reconnaissance aircraft, deployed barely a few years before, was already outdated.

What to do?

A SUPERSONIC WONDER

Two years later, in 1964, imagine an aircraft that...

- Cruised comfortably in excess of 2,000 mph and glowed red-hot!

- Was so expensive, that for every 1 hour the plane flew, it required upwards of 450 hours of repair!

- Had no armament - whose only defense against missiles was just to accelerate and get away!

If you imagined this, you envisioned Lockheed's SR-71 "Blackbird" spy plane!

THE ULTIMATE OF "COOL" WAS ACTUALLY VERY HOT!

For a plane that flew in excess of three times the speed of sound, this baby was hot. I mean really honest-to-goodness smoking hot! Heat generated from 35 tons of engine thrust and friction from high-speed travel presented challenges the aircraft industry had never witnessed to date.

At speeds over 2,000 mph, the plane literally developed tons of air pressure, which threatened to destroy its sleek wings and fuselage. This air pressure and air friction produced enormous amounts of heat. The plane got so hot that it glowed red hot - at temperatures upwards of 1200?F or more!

Because it was difficult to build an aircraft and have it fly for sustained periods without melting into a useless metal blob, the Blackbird's designers had to rig the plane to use its own fuel to cool the aircraft's wings, fuselage, and tires while in flight! Fuel lines were routed in an intricate pattern along the aircraft's leading edge surfaces where heat was at its greatest. The resultant flow of fuel under the aircraft's skin shunted away just enough heat away to keep the plane's skin from liquefying.