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The Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” was a true speed demon. No interceptor ever really had a chance of catching it. During the aircraft’s nearly 25 years in service, the Blackbird set numerous speed records, and on July 28, 1976, a Blackbird reached an amazing 2,193.167 miles per hour. Flying at roughly 36.55 miles per minute, or 3,216.4 feet per second, it was faster than a bullet fired from the World War II-era M1 Garand rifle, which had a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second.

The SR-71 earned its reputation for incomparable speed. While no aircraft could catch it, neither could missiles. A dozen Blackbirds were lost to accidents during its service history, but not a single aircraft was shot down by an enemy. It reportedly evaded some 4,000 missiles fired its way.

‘For Them, We Didn’t Exist’

Only one aircraft even has the distinction of achieving a radar lock on this fast-flying U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane. It wasn’t a Soviet interceptor such as the MiG-25, but rather the Swedish-made Saab J37 Viggen fighter that achieved a missile lock and visual contact with the speedy spy plane.

U.S. Air Force pilots also trained against the Blackbird.

As TheAvaitionGeekClub reported, “Former Blackbird driver Col. Richard H. Graham, USAF (Ret.), tells in his book The Complete Book of the SR-71 Blackbird: The Illustrated Profile of Every Aircraft, Crew, and Breakthrough of the World’s Fastest Stealth Jet, there were two fighters that could achieve (simulated) SR-71 kills, but only under certain conditions.”

Apparently, American fighter pilots were only able to lock on the SR-71 after the Blackbird’s own crew switched off the aircraft’s defensive countermeasures.

Former SR-71 pilot Dave Peters further explained, “One of the interesting discoveries from those missions, especially the Eagle Bait, was that they couldn’t even find us when everything was shut down and we told them exactly where we were. It was then realized that the F-15 had a speed gate on their radar at 1500 kts. We were casually warping along from 1850 to 2000. So, for them, we didn’t exist.”

The SR-71 Was Too Expensive to Fly

The one thing the SR-71 could not outrun was costs.

Everything about the aircraft was expensive. The CIA had taken extreme measures to acquire highly prized Soviet titanium for the aircraft’s skin and landing gear. BF Goodrich developed special aluminum-reinforced tires specifically for the Blackbird. The tires had a lifespan of only about 20 landings.

The aircraft cost about $200,000 an hour to operate. While it was more capable than the Lockheed U-2, the Blackbird’s costs were seen as a significant problem. In 1989, the Blackbird was retired. Many SR-71s were sent to museums, while a few were kept in reserve.

In the early 1990s, the SR-71 program was reactivated, in part because a successor had yet to be developed. The aircraft was part of a contentious political debate about U.S. intelligence policy that pitted members of Congress against the Pentagon: Supporters in Congress questioned the Department of Defense’s refusal to use the Blackbird over Bosnia and other global hotspots of the era.

The Air Force argued the old warbird was not integrated with the rest of its modern equipment, and that its cameras took still photos that it could not relay by video to the ground. Instead, the CIA and Department of Defense relied on drones to provide an eye in the sky, along with satellites. Supporters of the SR-71 countered that drones could be (and were) shot down, while foreign militaries could determine when satellites were due to fly overhead.

The SR-71 made its return in part because the aircraft were already bought and paid for, and there were a lot of spare parts. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, which had developed the aircraft, was able to bring the Blackbird out of retirement under a budget of $72 million.

However, the reactivation met more resistance than the plane had faced from America’s adversaries. Air Force leaders simply did not want it, and bringing the Blackbird back into service meant shifting money from other programs. The issue was so contentious that when Congress reauthorized funding, then-President Bill Clinton tried to line-item veto the funding, a maneuver the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional.

In 1998, the program was permanently retired. NASA operated the last two airworthy Blackbirds until 1999. It was an inauspicious end to an aircraft that could do things no other reconnaissance plane could do. While no SR-71 was ever shot down, political infighting and funding issues finally grounded the speedy Blackbird.

Now a Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Suciu is also a contributing writer for Forbes Magazine.

Estranho. Achei que tinha sido apresentado em 1998 e não em 1989

Used to track the blackbird on its runs from calif. To Cuba. The speed I tracked that plane at was considerably more than 2000kts. We were given a heads up when it was due to make a run If I recall correctly it was usually on a Tuesday around 3-4 pm local time on east end of Cuba. I was watching the distances between radar sweeps and noticed a couple of much longer distance between blips and decided to mark and calculate speed for next few. Speed indicated considerably faster than 2000kts.

Oh baloney. You never tracked ANY Blackbird going “considerably faster than 2000 kts. 2000 kts at 80,000 feet is 3.45 Mach which may be doable, but“considerably faster than 2000 kts” is most certainly not doable. Do you consider 2300 kts as “considerably faster than 2000 kts”? Because using a TAS of 2300 kts a Mach airspeed calculator gives a Mach number of 3.97 Mach, nearly 4 Mach! An airspeed the Blackbird could ONLY achieve in a dive on its way to crashing. Lol.

Only way they lo ked was because it was a emergency landing for the SR-71. If it wasn’t for the fact that the one engine wasn’t working, they would’ve never locked onto it.

Pratt & Whitney engines of course.

Actually it was the inlets in front of the engines, not the P&W J58’s that powered the SR-71 to Mach 3. Through the black art of physics known as thermodynamics, at Mach 3 ram air pressure recovery in the inlets generated 54% of the thrust propelling the SR-71’s through the air. And not a drop of fuel was burned in the inlets to generate this thrust. Like I said, it was taking advantage of thermodynamics at Mach 3. Ben Rich, the Lockheed engineer at the Skunk Works who was in charge of the design of the inlets (and also the man who replaced Kelly Johnson in charge of the Skunk Works when he retired) said that at Mach 3 “the engines were merely pumps to keep the inlets alive.” He also said that designing the inlets was the hardest task of his entire engineering career. The actual breakdown of thrust propelling the SR-71 at Mach 3 is: inlets 54%, engines a mere 17%, and the ejectors the remaining 29%.

The U. S. A always does that the plane is the best of all planes , the Pentagon just wanted to get other things that can’t be as good as the plane and I feel like they have a better one called the TR3B but they won’t let the people know that!!!!!!

Does this blackbird come in neutral if so I’m buying one

The SR-71 does hold the official, timed, record for the fastest speed ever achieved by an air breathing, piloted aircraft. But the original CIA A-12, from which the USAF SR-71 descended, flew at 2207 mph evading SAM’s over North Vietnam on October 30 1967. It was flown by CIA pilot Dennis Sullivan. I read that in a story on the CIA’s website, so I do not doubt that it’s true. But since it was not officially timed it cannot be claimed to be an official record. On that mission Sullivan also came the closest any Blackbird has ever come to being shot down. Sullivan said he saw one of the SAM’s explode about 200 yards behind him, and when he returned to base in the Philippines the ground crew found a piece of shrapnel embedded in the wing root. The truth is that Blackbirds, the CIA A-12 and the USAF SR-71 could not ‘outrun’ a SAM. Every SAM ever fired at a Blackbird had a higher top speed, as evidenced by the North Vietnamese SAM’s catching up to Sullivan’s CIA A-12. But because the Blackbirds were already at 3.2 Mach, traveling around 35 miles per minute, by the time SAM caught up to the Blackbird it ran out fuel. Also, the SR-71 had much more sophisticated ECM gear than did the A-12, and ECM rather than pure speed likely allowed the SR-71’s to evade the SAM’s. One SR-71 pilot who claims he did outrun a SAM is Brian Shul. Shul claims that on a recon flight over Libya in 1986 he firewalled his SR-71 and didn’t pull the throttles back until he was out over the Mediterranean and looked down and saw his triple speed indicator showing 3.5 Mach. Again this is not official and is only anecdotal. But Shul’s boss at the time, the aforementioned in the article Colonel Richard Graham, said that it was possible. What actually limited how fast any Blackbird could push his plane was something called CIT, Compressor Inlet Temperature. The Flight Manuals for all versions of the Blackbird, original CIA A-12, USAF YF-12A, and the SR-71 put a limit on the CIT of 427 degrees C (800 degrees F). The aircraft could be pushed faster, but damage or complete failure of the engines would result. Since temperatures in the engine are additive, the base temperature is that of the ambient air through which the Blackbird is flying at 80,000 feet. Under standard atmospheric conditions the limit CIT of 427 C would usually be reached at about 3.3 Mach, and all the Flight Manuals limit how fast the Blackbird can be flown to 3.3 Mach. But Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson himseIf once said (speaking about the CIA A-12) that if a pilot found himself in some unusually cold outside air he could fly the plane faster than the Mach 3.3 limit before hitting 427 C. (3.3 Mach is just about exactly 2207 mph, the speed CIA pilot Dennis Sullivan was flying that day over North Vietnam.)

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