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Used to go to his annual lecture in Seattle.
Signed my copy of Sled Driver of course.
SR 71
- Thread starter Model29-26.5
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Used to go to his annual lecture in Seattle.
Signed my copy of Sled Driver of course.
Pima's SR-71 in the back ground.
On July 20, 1972, I was at Site 1, on a hill NE of the Kadena runway. A typhoon was coming in and I was part of a team that was prepping Site 1 for the storm. As I worked outside, I heard an SR-71 coming over the top of me. I stopped to watch it land. What followed was anything but what I expected. A strong cross-runway wind was blowing and the ill-fated SR-71 ended up on the port side of the runway after a fiery crash. I was stunned but I had work to do, so I wasn't able to stand and watch the rest of the action. I did see the two crew members escape the plane, but that's it.
You can read more about the crash here:
You can read more about the crash here:
Drem
Member
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I wish I could have watched that one take off the next morning but my jet was a late flyer so I was still asleep.
Being under an F-111A on the test par with both AB's lit you could feel the sound in your soul. I can only imagine what that would be like on an SR.
My old jet.
Attachments
There is a cockpit mock-up you can sit in at the Boeing Field in Seattle. Along with all kinds of aircraft.
Hair Trigger
US Veteran
Then you'd be very familiar with these. Anything you'd like to add that the article doesn't cover?
Jack, I was working Base Police on Kadena that day, and remember hearing about the crash. We worked the base side, not the flightline, so I didn't actually see the plane.
I noticed from your previous post that you and I overlapped at Kadena. I was in the 400 MMS(T). We were stationed PCS at Kadena but spent a lot of time TDY down south. By June 1972, my 24 months were nearly over (a little more than two months to go). We had one more short TDY to Bien Hoa before I left for CONUS. I wonder if we bumped into each other during our overlap on Okinawa!
If you were in the SP, maybe you heard about the huge fight we had with you guys back in 1970. I have no idea what started it but there were probably 15 of us Ammo guys who had it out with a bunch of SPs. Nothing came of it, but it was a wonderful fight! Let off a lot of tension . . .
LVSteve
Member
Thing is, when you look at what it took to make those planes fly, the maintenance and availability overhead simply does not work in the Microsoft Project age. The prep involved to get a F-117A fully stealthed for a mission is one of the reasons that type is no longer in regular service.
Until the tech and materials come along to allow the combination of Mach 3 speed, stealth, and minimal maintenance we are treading water in terms of ultimate performance. The last 30 years have seen the money go into stealth, sensors and data distribution for situational awareness. Recall how in Vietnam our missile armed fighters could not launch because they didn't really know what they were seeing on their radars. That needed fixing.
Tinyman
US Veteran
Same thing at Pease AFB NH -- beautiful bird.
Tinyman
US Veteran
Great lunch time, sitting on Habu Hill and got 'the thrill' -- beautiful things for sure.
NUTHIN! and NO! kind of like the 6 gen fighter,, lots of smoke and mirrors, but no real flying hardware... the SR-71 was designed at a time when MEN could keep secrets, and Men like Kelly Johnson with a pencil and slide rule could design and produce an airplane in a place called the "skunkworks"!
We should have restarted F-22 production when we had the chance! and let NGAD come on its own time..
Now we have "Wild Willy Roper" and his sooper secret rebirth of the F-100 series, or new aircraft every 2 months,,, the last truly secret bird was the F-22, and like the SR-71, it was miles ahead of the competition for a long, long, time...
and NO, the YF-23 was not the better airplane, for once or maybe twice, USAF got it right!
So true. The YF-12’s and SR-71’s were built in a time of slide rules and no real computers. Do any of us truly believe its replacement or replacements are not out there flying in some way, shape or form? Satellites can only do so much, limited to their orbit patterns, so the excuse that they have taken over, exclusively, the surveillance role is fake news. Only with the slip of the tongue (ala LBJ) or an incident will the next generation or several generations be revealed. It ain’t rocket science my friends. Say what you will, this is still AMERICA and at the end of the day, AMERICA rules.
Tinyman
US Veteran
If I'm not mistaken, there are still parts buried around the 400th.
LVSteve
Member
Agree 100% on the secrets thing. These days secrets burn holes in people's integrity the same way money burns holes in their pockets.
The F-22 died because of its bespoke software and communications systems. To rebore the whole avionics and sensor suite to a modern open architecture capable of taking rapid updates would be so expensive that you may as well start from scratch with a new airframe. That also tends to suit the Military/Industrial Complex and also Squadron/Group/Wing commanders. Who wants a so-called "new" ariplane that looks like last decade's model? Seriously, some do think like this.
I'm anxious to hear why you are so certain that the F-22 is superior to the F-23. I will say I thought the tail surfaces on the F-23 carried some technical risk, being about the same size as a F-18A wing!
You lost me with the Wild Willy Roper reference, but I suspect an explanation would take us past the rules boundary.
Being stationed at Dobbins, 1996-2000, I got to witness several F-22s take the runway for their wringing out by Lockheed's production test pilots. Watching them on the run-up area doing the "wipe out the cockpit" control check, I saw some very unconventional control surface movements.
Who came up with the name Aardvark?
