Air Force ordered an interceptor version of the aircraft designated the YFA. The Skunk Works, however, proposed a "specific mission" version configured to conduct post-nuclear strike reconnaissance.
Lockheed built fifteen As, including a special two-seat trainer version. Two As were modified to carry a special reconnaissance drone, designated D The modified As were redesignated Ms. These were designed to take off with the D drone, powered by a Marquart ramjet engine mounted on a pylon between the rudders.
The M then hauled the drone aloft and launched it at speeds high enough to ignite the drone's ramjet motor. Lockheed also built three YFAs but this type never went into production. Two of the YFAs crashed during testing.
The first SR flew on December 22, These were retired in after only one year of operational missions, mostly over southeast Asia. After the Air Force began to operate the SR, it acquired the official name Blackbird-- for the special black paint that covered the airplane. This paint was formulated to absorb radar signals, to radiate some of the tremendous airframe heat generated by air friction, and to camouflage the aircraft against the dark sky at high altitudes.
The RSO operated with the wide array of monitoring and defensive systems installed on the airplane. This equipment included a sophisticated Electronic Counter Measures ECM system that could jam most acquisition and targeting radar. In addition to an array of advanced, high-resolution cameras, the aircraft could also carry equipment designed to record the strength, frequency, and wavelength of signals emitted by communications and sensor devices such as radar.
The SR was designed to fly deep into hostile territory, avoiding interception with its tremendous speed and high altitude. It could operate safely at a maximum speed of Mach 3. The crew had to wear pressure suits similar to those worn by astronauts. These suits were required to protect the crew in the event of sudden cabin pressure loss while at operating altitudes.
A typical Blackbird reconnaissance flight might require several aerial refueling operations from an airborne tanker. Each time the SR refueled, the crew had to descend to the tanker's altitude, usually about 6, m to 9, m 20, to 30, ft , and slow the airplane to subsonic speeds. As velocity decreased, so did frictional heat.
This cooling effect caused the aircraft's skin panels to shrink considerably, and those covering the fuel tanks contracted so much that fuel leaked, forming a distinctive vapor trail as the tanker topped off the Blackbird. As soon as the tanks were filled, the jet's crew disconnected from the tanker, relit the afterburners, and again climbed to high altitude.
Cuban missions were flown directly from Beale. The SR did not begin to operate in Europe until , and then only temporarily. In , when the U. When the SR became operational, orbiting reconnaissance satellites had already replaced manned aircraft to gather intelligence from sites deep within Soviet territory. Satellites could not cover every geopolitical hotspot so the Blackbird remained a vital tool for global intelligence gathering. On many occasions, pilots and RSOs flying the SR provided information that proved vital in formulating successful U.
Blackbird crews provided important intelligence about the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath, and pre- and post-strike imagery of the raid conducted by American air forces on Libya. In , Kadena-based SR crews flew a number of missions over the Persian Gulf, revealing Iranian Silkworm missile batteries that threatened commercial shipping and American escort vessels.
As the performance of space-based surveillance systems grew, along with the effectiveness of ground-based air defense networks, the Air Force started to lose enthusiasm for the expensive program and the 9th SRW ceased SR operations in January Despite protests by military leaders, Congress revived the program in Each engine has a one-and-a-quarter pint.
If I had it in a squirt gun and I squirted it into the atmosphere, it goes Kaboom! And that's how we started the engines. As the engines rotate, at the right time it sprays this amount of TEB into the turbine section which goes kaboom and that in turn lights the engine.
When you take the throttles up into the afterburner it puts this metered amount of TEB in, that lights up the JP You get 16 shots for each engine. The plane was purposely designed to leak fuel: "The fuel tanks are the skin of the airplane. If you rap on this airplane, the fuel tank is on the other side. There's no internal fuel tanks. Because of the expansion and contraction cycles [due to heating and cooling of the aircraft at different speeds] it sometimes leaked and dropped from underneath the airplane.
It was measured in Drops Per Minute — DPMs we called them — and maintenance used a stopwatch and counted them, and in certain locations on the aircraft there are acceptable and unacceptable Drips Per Minute. Rainstorms could be deadly: "In Okinawa, unfortunately, we had a lot of rainstorms which just come out of nowhere. And when you mix JP-7 with a little bit of rain it gets very, very slippery on the ground. An SR was coming back from a mission.
He was coming back into the hangar. As he came in to the hangar, he slows down, he's right on the centreline… and we notice his brakes are locked up, the wheels aren't rotating anymore, and he's still going through the hangar, sliding. And you would not believe how many maintenance people realised immediately something was wrong with this airplane. We had maintenance guys throwing chocks under the wheel but it kept on moving. Don and I were grabbing on to the wingtip to try and stop it, people were grabbing every part of the airplane as they realised it was an emergency.
It was like a dream in slow motion as this airplane just went through the hangar. And it stopped, when the main wheels just caught the other side of the hangar onto the concrete. And its pitot tube, the tube at the front, came about a foot from ramming a curved blast deflector we have for jet engines.
Steak and eggs before every flight: "The day before the mission, both the primary crew — a pilot and a navigator — would meet with backup crews. They would meet at mission planning. The mission planners would have all the maps and computer flight plans laid out on the table and the next two or three hours you would go through the entire route of flight, seeing what would happen through the flight, if we ran low on fuel, if MiGs come up, if there were [surface to air missiles] fired at us, if there was an engine flame-out, what we would do?
So we had a good game plan when we left mission planning. Before every flight you had to have a High Protein Low Residue meal — which was steak and eggs. So they wanted to make sure you were well fed before every flight with a steak and egg meal. That would last about half an hour, and then you would drive your cars to a secure location… and begin the mission briefing. Once the briefing was concluded, it took about 20 minutes, everyone went to the four winds to do their job.
The back-up crew went out to pre-flight your airplane the primary crew would go undressed, get into their long john cotton underwear to get into the suit. Prior to that they've already taken a physical, a little mini physical, blood pressure, eyes, nose, ears, throat, when you went to bed, what time you woke up, what your meal was the night before, all these parameters.
If you didn't pass the physical, the back-up crew would come in and fly the mission. Blackbirds ended the Yom Kippur War: "An average mission was probably three-and-a-half to four hours. A long mission would be eight or more. Through the whole history of the programme, through 22 years, we had 13 sorties that were over 11 hours; very, very long missions. But they were very rare. The President wanted to find out whether the Arabs and the Israelis had really moved back from the front line like they said they did.
We went over there, took the imagery, came back and showed photographic proof they were both lying about where their forces were. Anticipating this, designers chose to build the SR almost entirely out of titanium, a metal that is heat resistant and relatively lightweight but difficult to work with. In the early s, it was also hard to find.
To minimize its chances of being detected in enemy airspace, the SR incorporated one of the first uses of stealth technology, including radar-absorbing composites for the leading edges and tail fins, and black paint impregnated with ferrite particles that soaked up radar energy.
For the next two decades, the SR would be called upon to photograph sites around the world that were beyond reach of spy satellites.
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