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National News See other National News Articles Title: How The SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane Outwitted Soviet Air Defenses How The SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane Outwitted Soviet Air Defenses Henry Kelsall - 14 June 2022 At the height of the Cold War, the United States wanted to know nearly everything that the Soviet Union was up to. But high altitude military spy plane flights were under threat after the shooting down of a U-2 spy plane by the Soviets in 1960. The U-2 it turned out, despite flying so high, was vulnerable to Soviet surface-to-air missiles. So, the American’s needed a new aircraft that could fly higher, and faster, and take the photographs of Soviet missile sites and various other points of interest and get out of there safely. © Provided by HotCars The famous Lockheed Skunk Works division was soon tasked with creating such an aircraft. Based upon the earlier A-12, the SR-71 Blackbird would be the product that Lockheed eventually came up with. The Blackbird would be a Mach 3 capable interceptor that could effectively out run any Soviet radar system and interceptor aircraft, and its innovative design reduced its radar cross-section, making it harder for the Soviets to find on their radars. The Blackbird would go on to serve the United States Air Force from 1966 until 1998, while NASA would use the aircraft for an extra year before it finally retired. Background And Development Of The SR-71 Lockheed had already built the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, a Mach 3 capable machine itself, and 13 of them were built. But the project was canceled just four years after the first A-12 flight in 1962, citing budget concerns and the upcoming SR-71, which was to be bigger and more powerful. The A-12 also spawned the YF-12 interceptor version and the M-21 drone carrier. But the SR-71 would be the ultimate version of the A-12, and it featured a design similar to that of its predecessor. The SR-71 was a tandem cockpit aircraft with a flight crew of two, and for its construction, titanium, was used on 85% of the structure. The rest was made up of polymer composite materials. To deal with the extreme temperatures of Mach 3 flight, the Blackbird had major sections of the skin of the inboard wing corrugated and not smooth. Fuselage panels would fit only loosely on the ground, as the aircraft would expand several inches during flight and thus reinforce the aircraft. The Blackbird would even leak fuel on the ground, thanks to a lack of a fuel-sealing system that could handle the expansion of the airframe. Related video: Russian bomber plane carries out training exercise The SR-71 Spy Plane In Service Powered by two Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojets, the first flight of a Blackbird took place on December 22nd, 1964. The aircraft would achieve Mach 3.4 during flight testing, and the first SR-71 would enter service in January 1966, stationed at Beale Air Force Base in California. Each SR-71 would fly, on average, once a week, due to the extended turnaround that the aircraft required after each mission. The SR-71 would fly reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam and Laos beginning in 1968, and although some 800 North Vietnamese missiles were fired at the aircraft, none were able to score a hit. A notable incident occurred on June 29th 1987, when an SR-71 lost an engine after an explosion during a flight around the Baltic Sea. The aircraft violated Swedish airspace, who scrambled two Saab JA 37 Viggens to intercept the aircraft. Upon seeing the Blackbird and that it was in distress, the Swedish fighters escorted the SR-71 out into Danish airspace. This escort saved the aircraft and the lives of the pilots, as Soviet MiG-25s had been sent up to shoot down or force the SR-71 to land when it was detected, just after its engine failure. The escort prevented that from happening, and the Swedish pilots were awarded medals by the USAF in November 2018. How The SR-71 Avoided Radar Detection The SR-71’s shape and speed meant it could outwit most radar systems, with many missiles fired at it with no lock on the actual aircraft. And the only aircraft to ever get an acknowledged lock onto the SR-71 was the Viggen This was thanks to feeding of target location from ground- based radars in Sweden to the fire-control computer in the Viggen. Thanks to some Pentagon politics and reshuffling at the top, the SR-71 was retired in 1989. At least, that’s what initially happened. Reactivation And Final Retirement Thanks to political unease in the Middle East and North Korea, the SR-71 was re-examined for a reactivation in 1993, despite the costs it would take to do such a thing. In 1995, three SR-71s were returned to service, and would fly on for a further three years before their final retirement in 1998, with NSA retiring their last two aircraft until the end of 1999. Amazingly, in 2022, there has been no official replacement of the SR-71, despite the long rumored SR- 72 that Lockheed is developing. Even now, the SR-71 is one of the most incredible aircraft to look at, and one of the finest flying machines ever made. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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