The SR-71 was once a highly sensitive program at Norton AFB, where many of us
worked on the USAF B.M.O. ( Ballistic Missile Office ) through the 80s and 90s.

Memory lane of an era gone by !




SR-71 Blackbird



In April 1986, following an attack on American
Soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan
Ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafis
Terrorist camps in Libya . My duty was to fly
Over Libya and take photos recording the
Damage our F-111s had inflicted.. Qaddafi
Had established a line of death, a territorial
Marking across the Gulf of Sidra , swearing
To shoot down any intruder that crossed the
Boundary. On the morning of April 15,
I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.


I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the worlds
Fastest jet, accompanied by a Marine Major (Walt),
The aircrafts reconnaissance systems officer (RSO).
We had crossed into Libya and were approaching
Our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when
Walt informed me that he was receiving missile
Launch signals. I quickly increased our speed,
Calculating the time it would take for the
Weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air
Missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude.
I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered
Missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting
Our lives on the planes performance.


After several agonizingly long seconds, we made
The turn and blasted toward the Mediterranean .
You might want to pull it back, Walt suggested.
It was then that I noticed I still had the throttles
Full forward. The plane was flying a mile every 1.6
Seconds, well above our Mach 3.2 limit. It was
The fastest we would ever fly. I pulled the throttles
To idle just south of Sicily , but we still overran
The refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar.


Scores of significant aircraft have been produced
In the 100 years of flight, following the achievements
Of the Wright brothers, which we celebrate in
December. Aircraft such as the Boeing 707,
The F-86 Sabre Jet, and the P-51 Mustang are
Among the important machines that have flown
Our skies. But the SR-71, also known as the
Blackbird, stands alone as a significant contributor
To Cold War victory and as the fastest plane
Ever-and only 93 Air Force pilots ever steered
The sled as we called our aircraft.


The SR-71 was the brainchild of Kelly Johnson,
The famed Lockheed designer who created the
P-38, the F-104 Starfighter, and the U-2. After
The Soviets shot down Gary PowersU-2 in 1960,
Johnson began to develop an aircraft that would
Fly three miles higher and five times faster than
The spy plane-and still be capable of photographing
Your license plate. However, flying at 2,000 mph
Would create intense heat on the aircrafts skin.
Lockheed engineers used a titanium alloy to
Construct more than 90 percent of the SR-71,
Creating special tools and manufacturing
Procedures to hand-build each of the 40 planes.
Special heat-resistant fuel, oil, and hydraulic
Fluids that would function at 85,000 feet and
Higher also had to be developed.


In 1962, the first Blackbird successfully flew, and
In 1966, the same year I graduated from high school,
The Air Force began flying operational SR-71 missions.
I came to the program in 1983 with a sterling record
And a recommendation from my commander,
Completing the weeklong interview and meeting
Walt, my partner for the next four years He would
Ride four feet behind me, working all the cameras,
Radios, and electronic jamming equipment. I joked
That if we were ever captured, he was the spy and
I was just the driver. He told me to keep the pointy
End forward.
We trained for a year, flying out of Beale AFB in
California , Kadena Airbase in Okinawa, and RAF
Mildenhall in England . On a typical training mission,
We would take off near Sacramento, refuel over
Nevada, accelerate into Montana, obtain high Mach
Over Colorado, turn right over New Mexico, speed
Across the Los Angeles Basin, run up the West Coast,
Turn right at Seattle, then return to Beale. Total flight
Time: two hours and 40 minutes.
One day, high above Arizona , we were monitoring
The radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us.
First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers
To check his ground speed. Ninety knotsATC replied.
A Bonanza soon made the same request.
One-twenty on the ground was the reply. To our
surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a
ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was
doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator
in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the
bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed
was Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,
ATC responded.
The situation was too ripe. I heard
the click of Walts mike button in the rear seat.
In his most innocent voice, Walt startled the
controller by asking for a ground speed check
from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace.
In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied,
Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground
We did not hear another transmission on that
frequency all the way to the coast.


The Blackbird always showed us something new,
each aircraft possessing its own unique personality.
In time, we realized we were flying a national
treasure. When we taxied out of our revetments
for takeoff, people took notice. Traffic congregated
near the airfield fences, because everyone wanted
to see and hear the mighty SR-71 You could not be
a part of this program and not come to love the
airplane. Slowly, she revealed her secrets to us as
we earned her trust.
One moonless night, while flying a routine training
mission over the Pacific, I wondered what the sky
would look like from 84,000 feet if the cockpit lighting
were dark. While heading home on a straight course,
I slowly turned down all of the lighting, reducing the
glare and revealing the night sky.
Within seconds, I turned the lights back up, fearful that the jet would
know and somehow punish me. But my desire to see
the sky overruled my caution, I dimmed the lighting
again. To my amazement, I saw a bright light outside
my window. As my eyes adjusted to the view, I
realized that the brilliance was the broad expanse
of the Milky Way, now a gleaming stripe across the
sky.
Where dark spaces in the sky had usually
existed, there were now dense clusters of sparkling
stars. Shooting stars flashed across the canvas every
few seconds. It was like a fireworks display with no
sound.
I knew I had to get my eyes back on the
instruments, and reluctantly I brought my attention
back inside. To my surprise, with the cockpit lighting
still off, I could see every gauge, lit by starlight. In
the planes mirrors, I could see the eerie shine of
my gold spacesuit incandescently illuminated in a
celestial glow. I stole one last glance out the window.
Despite our speed, we seemed still before the
heavens, humbled in the radiance of a much greater
power. For those few moments, I felt a part of
something far more significant than anything we
were doing in the plane. The sharp sound of Walts
voice on the radio brought me back to the tasks at
hand as I prepared for our descent.


San Diego Aerospace Museum
The SR-71 was an expensive aircraft to operate.
The most significant cost was tanker support, and
in 1990, confronted with budget cutbacks, the Air
Force retired the SR-71.
The SR-71 served six presidents, protecting America
for a quarter of a century. Unbeknownst to most
of the country, the plane flew over North Vietnam ,
Red China, North Korea , the Middle East, South
Africa , Cuba , Nicaragua , Iran , Libya , and the
Falkland Islands . On a weekly basis, the SR-71
kept watch over every Soviet nuclear submarine
and mobile missile site, and all of their troop
movements. It was a key factor in winning the
Cold War.
I am proud to say I flew about 500 hours in this
aircraft. I knew her well. She gave way to no plane,
proudly dragging her sonic boom through enemy
backyards with great impunity. She defeated every
missile, outran every MiG, and always brought us
home. In the first 100 years of manned flight, no
aircraft was more remarkable.
The Blackbird had outrun nearly 4,000 missiles,
not once taking a scratch from enemy fire.
On her final flight, the Blackbird , destined for
the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum, sped from Los Angeles to Washington
in 64 minutes, averaging 2,145 mph and
setting four speed records.

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The "doesnt exist" Aurora



Does the United States Air Force or one of America intelligence agencies have a secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance? Continually growing evidence suggests that the answer to this question is yes. Perhaps the most well-known event which provides evidence of such a crafts existence is the sighting of a triangular plane over the North Sea in August 1989 by oil-exploration engineer Chris Gibson. As well as the famous "skyquakes" heard over Los Angeles since the early 1990s, found to be heading for the secret Groom Lake (Area 51) installation in the Nevada desert, numerous other facts provide an understanding of how the aircrafts technology works. Rumored to exist but routinely denied by U.S. officials, the name of this aircraft is Aurora.

The outside world uses the name Aurora because a censors slip let it appear below the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 in the 1985 Pentagon budget request. Even if this was the actual name of the project, it would have by now been changed after being compromised in such a manner.

The planes real name has been kept a secret along with its existence. This is not unfamiliar though, the F-117a stealth fighter was kept a secret for over ten years after its first pre-production test flight. The project is what is technically known as a Special Access Program (SAP). More often, such projects are referred to as "black programs."

So what was the first sign of the existence of such an aircraft? On 6 March 1990, one of the United States Air Force Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spyplanes shattered the official air speed record from Los Angeles to Washingtons Dulles Airport. There, a brief ceremony marked the end of the SR-71s operational career. Officially, the SR-71 was being retired to save the $200-$300 million a year it cost to operate the fleet. Some reporters were told the plane had been made redundant by sophisticated spy satellites.

But there was one problem, the USAF made no opposition towards the planes retirement, and congressional attempts to revive the program were discouraged. Never in the history of the USAF had a program been closed without opposition. Aurora is the missing factor to the silent closure of the SR-71 program.

Testing such a new radical aircraft brings immense costs and inconvenience, not just in the design and development of a prototype aircraft, but also in providing a secret testing place for aircraft that are obviously different from those the public are aware of.

Groom Dry Lake, in the Nevada desert, is home to one of Americas elite secret proving grounds. Here is Auroras most likely test location. Comparing todays Groom Lake with images of the base in the 1970s, it is apparent that many of the larger buildings and hangars were added during the following decade. Also, the Groom Lake test facility has a lake-bed runway that is six miles long, twice as long as the longest normal runways in the United States. The reason for such a long runway is simple: the length of a runway is determined either by the distance an aircraft requires to accelerate to flying speed, or the distance that the aircraft needs to decelerate after landing. That distance is proportional to the speed at which lift-off takes place. Usually, very long runways are designed for aircraft with very high minimum flying speeds, and, as is the case at Edwards AFB, these are aircraft that are optimized for very high maximum speeds. Almost 19,000 feet of the runway at Groom Lake is paved for normal operations.

Lockheeds Skunk Works, now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company, is the most likely prime contractor for the Aurora aircraft. Throughout the 1980s, financial analysts concluded that Lockheed had been engaged in several large classified projects. However, they werent able to identify enough of them to account for the companys income.

Technically, the Skunk Works has a unique record of managing large, high-risk programs under an incredible unparalleled secrecy. Even with high-risk projects the company has undertaken, Lockheed has a record of providing what it promises to deliver.

Hypersonic Speed

By 1945, only a small amount of jets had the capability of reaching speeds of 500mph. In 1960, aircraft that could exceed 1,500mph were going into squadron service. Aircraft capable of 2,000mph were under development and supposed to enter service by 1965. This was a four-fold increase in speed in two decades.

From this, the next logical step was to achieve hypersonic speed. The definition of hypersonic isnt as clearly defined as supersonic, but aerodynamicists consider that the hypersonic realm starts when the air in front of the vehicles leading edges "stagnates": a band of air is trapped, unable to flow around the vehicle, and reaches extremely high pressures and temperatures. The edge of the hypersonic regime lies at a speed of roughly one mile per second - 3,600mph or Mach 5.4.

What is regarded by many as the most successful experimental aircraft program in USAF history, the X-15 rocketplane was created in response to a requirement issued by NASA (then NACA) for an air-launched manned research vehicle with a maximum speed of more than Mach 6 and a maximum altitude of more than fifty miles.

The X-15 program, which involved three test aircraft, went on to exceed all goals set and provided valuable data which has been used on many high speed/altitude aircraft of today, including NASA spacecraft, and most likely, the Aurora aircraft.

In the early 1960s, Lockheed and the USAF Flight Dynamics Laboratory began a hypersonic research program which would provide data on travel at hypersonic speed as well as more efficient shapes for hypersonic vehicles. From this program came the FDL-5 research vehicle, which beared an amazing resemblance to the North Sea Aurora sighting of Chris Gibson. Building on both the FDL-5 Project and Aurora, the aircraft which may have been seen over the North Sea could have been Northrops A-17 stealth attack plane.

Possible forms of hypersonic propulsion that Aurora could be using include:

* Pulse Detonation Wave Engines
* Pulsejet Engines
* Advanced Ramjets

Hypersonic Requirements

There are three reasons why the North Sea sketch drawn by Chris Gibson is the most persuasive rendition of the Aurora vehicle. Firstly, the observers qualifications, with which he couldnt identify the aircraft; which would have been instantaneous if the aircraft was known to the "white world". Second is the fact that the North Sea aircraft corresponds almost perfectly in shape and size to hypersonic aircraft studies carried out by McDonnell Douglas and the USAF during the 1970s and 1980s. The third factor is that the North Sea aircraft looks unlike anything else. No aircraft other than a high-supersonic vehicle, or a test aircraft for such a vehicle, has ever been built or studied with a similiar planform.

At hypersonic speeds, traditional aerodynamic design gives way to aero-thermodynamic design. In order for a hypersonic vehicle to remain structurally intact at such high speeds and stresses, the vehicle must produce minimum drag and be free of design features that give rise to concentrations of heat. The aircraft design must be able to spread the heat over the surface of the structure.

Thermal management is critical to high-speed aircraft, especially hypersonic vehicles. Skin friction releases heat energy into the aircraft and must be pumped out again if the vehicle is to have any endurance. The only way to do this is to heat the fuel before it enters the engine, and dump the heat through the exhaust. On a hypersonic vehicle, thermal management is very critical, the cooling capacity of the fuel must be used carefully and efficiently or else the range and endurance of the aircraft will be limited by heating rather than the actual fuel tank capacity.

Hypersonic vehicle undergoing thermal imaging tests

So how will an aircraft reach such speeds? Conventional turbojet engines wont be able to handle the incoming airstreams at such speeds, they can barely handle transonic speeds. In the case of hypersonic propulsion, an aero-thermodynamic duct, or ramjet, is the only engine proven to work efficiently at such speeds. Even ramjets have drawbacks though, such as drag created in the process of slowing down and compressing a Mach 6 airstream.

To make a ramjet engine efficient is to spread the air over the entire length of the body. In a hypersonic ramjet aircraft, the entire underside of the forward body acts as a ramp that compresses the air, and the entire underside of the tail is an exhaust nozzle. So much air underneath the aircraft serves another purpose, it keeps the plane up.

The ramjets need a large inlet area to provide the high thrust needed for Mach 6 cruise. As a result, the engines occupy a large area beneath vehicle and the need to accomodate a large quantity of fuel means that an all-body shape is most feasible.

Engines occupy majority of underside

Structurally, the all-body shape is highly efficient. As well as being extremely aerodynamic, the average cross-sectional area being very large provides a great deal of space for load, equipment and fuel. This being inside a structure that is light and compact having a relatively small surface area to generate frictional drag.

The spyplanes airframe may incorporate stealth technology, but it doesnt really require it should its mission simply involve high altitude reconnaissance. Hypersonic aircraft are much harder to shoot down than a ballistic missile. Although a hypersonic plane isnt very maneuverable, its velocity is such that even a small turn puts it miles away from a SAMs projected interception point.

Cross-section of Aurora

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Choosing The Right Fuel

Choosing the right type of fuel is crucial to the success of Aurora. Because various sections of the craft will reach cruising-speed temperatures ranging from 1,000 degrees fahrenheit to more than 1,400 degrees fahrenheit, its fuel must both provide energy for the engines and act as a structural coolant extracting destructive heat from the planes surface.

At hypersonic speeds, even exotic kerosene such as the special high-flashpoint JP-7 fuel used by the SR-71 Blackbird cant absorb enough heat. The plausible solution is cryogenic fuel.

The best possibilities are methane and hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen provides more than three times as much energy and absorbs six times more heat per pound than any other fuel. The downfall is its low density, which means larger fuel tanks, a larger airframe and more drag. While liquid hydrogen is the fuel of choice for spacelaunch vehicles that accelerate quickly out of the atmosphere, studies have shown that liquid methane is better for an aircraft cruising at Mach 5 to Mach 7. Methane is widely available, provides more energy than jet fuels, and can absorb five times as much heat as kerosene. Compared with liquid hydrogen, it is three times denser and easier to handle.

Current Knowledge of Aurora

On 16 November 1998, a camcorder video was taken of a mysterious "fireball" in the sky. While this was very interesting, what was even more amazing was the aircraft which was seen shortly after flying at very high speed producing the mysterious "donuts-on-a-rope" contrails. Does this video, which is currently undergoing intense study at JPL, show the mysterious Aurora spyplane?

A newspaper article about this event was also written in the The Sun Herald newspaper.






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on line museums ...

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircra...ums/index.html



http://rareaircraf1.greyfalcon.us/UNITED%20STATES.htm

how many know about this P-51 ?











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That story on the SR-71 is awesome. Here's one you may not even know. It was cancelled after a handful were made and ordered destroyed. Pressure from the US government is cited as the strongest reason because it was feared it might compromise US security. At that time even your closestnieghbour could not be trusted heaven forbid the Russians got a hold of one.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CF-105_Arrow

 

The Cold War had many victims .. and .. is not over yet .. not as long as incidents like Georgia keep coming.


It was equal treatment ...

" ... the Arrow was not the only heavy high-speed interceptor design cancelled at that time; the Republic Aircraft XF-103 and the North American Aviation XF-108 Rapier, designed to have higher performance specifications than the Arrow, were cancelled in the mock-up stage of development at approximately the same time.[9][10]Even the Convair F-106 Delta Dart was very nearly terminated. In the UK, the ramifications of the 1957 Defence White Paper led to the cancellation of almost all manned fighter aircraft development."


The Russians almost did get it ...

"The cancellation immediately put over 50,000 people out of work at the plants and outside suppliers. Within two months, all aircraft, engines, production tooling and technical data were ordered scrapped. This was partly in response to Royal Canadian Mounted Police fears that a Soviet "mole" had infiltrated Avro, later confirmed to some degree in the Mitrokhin archives. Officially, the reason given for the destruction order from Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff was to destroy classified and "secret" materials utilized in the Arrow/Iroquois programs."



Although the agreement was done before my time, I knew about it and everyone I knew believe it was the right thing, not providing a radioactive showers to Canadians.
At one point in life, I worked out of G.E. Syracuse Heavy Military, R&D of radar arrays for the Arctic Circle Defense .. I still have my USAF Arctic issue jacket, with the 12 inch long, WOLF HAIR breathing TUNNEL .. great souvenir.

"In August 1957, the Conservative Diefenbaker government signed the NORAD (North American Air Defense[5]) Agreement with the United States, which required the subordination of the RCAF Air Defence Command to American command and control. The USAF was in the process of completely automating their air defense system with the SAGE project, and insisted that the RCAF had to use it as well. One aspect of the SAGE system was the BOMARC nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missile, which when intercepting bombers over Ontario and Quebec would be exploding over major Canadian cities. This led to studies on basing BOMARCs in Canada in order to push the line further north, away from the cities."


I spent my life working on things that one prayed night after night would never be needed.
I saw them built, then I saw most of them destroyed.

Anyone that tells me the world is getting worst, didnt see what I saw behind the scenes or didnt read real news.
We are always just one step for a needed kick in the butt, now and then.



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