The National Interest, a magazine for military fans, introduces the U.S. Army’s SR-71 Blackbird spy plane that even 4,000 missiles can’t hurt.
According to the report, the SR-71 Blackbird flies so fast and so high that enemy missiles can’t even be seen, even though it flies directly over enemy territory.
The SR-71 Blackbird is recognized as the highest-performing military jet in U.S. history. From the 1960s through the 1990s, the spy plane flew higher and higher, faster and faster. Although these dangerous missions often involved flying over enemy territory.
In fact, the SR-71 Blackbird has never been shot down in more than three decades of reconnaissance missions.
How many anti-aircraft missiles have missed the Blackbird in its lifetime? According to one estimate, the number is around 4,000.
According to a 2017 report in Airman magazine, “The Blackbird has dodged all 4,000 missiles fired at it and remains, to this day, the only Air Force aircraft that has not lost a crew member, either in the air or on the ground.”
Brian Shul, perhaps the Blackbird’s most famous pilot, wrote in 2014 on the well-known tech blog Gizmodoin that by the time the Blackbird was retired, it had escaped nearly 4,000 missiles and had not been scratched once by enemy fire.”
Schurr’s article notes that Blackbird’s lifespan has coincided with the terms of six U.S. presidents. Assuming the clock started with the first mission in 1966 and ended with its retirement in 1990, those presidents were Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr. However, Lockheed began development of the project while Eisenhower was still in office and made the first flight during the Kennedy administration, with the last flight occurring during the presidency of Bill Clinton.
We Are the Mighty also cites a number of unique facts about the SR-71 Blackbird.
Because of its extreme speed, the plane emitted heat up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, so the plane’s windshield had to be made of quartz.
“The designers ultimately decided that using quartz as the windshield was the best way to prevent any blurring or window distortion under these conditions, so they ultrasonically fused quartz to the aircraft’s titanium body.” The report said. The Blackbird was also the last large military aircraft to be designed using computational rulers.
“Kelly Johnson and his team used their ‘computational ruler,’ which was basically just a specialized ruler with slides that designers could use to help them make calculations in designing the mighty ‘Blackbird,'” We Are Strong said in its report.” Years later, aircraft were reviewed using modern aviation design computers, only to find that these computers did not need to suggest any changes to the design.”
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