Why It Took an Army Just to Get the SR-71 Blackbird Flying nationalinterest.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalinterest.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The vulnerability of the subsonic U-2 spy plane spurred the SR-71’s development, CNN explained.
“In May 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace while taking aerial photographs. Initially, the U.S. government said it was a stray weather research aircraft, but the story fell apart once the Soviet government released photos of the captured pilot and the plane s surveillance equipment,”
The incident had immediate diplomatic repercussions for the Cold War and reinforced the need for a new type of reconnaissance plane that could fly faster and higher, safe from anti-aircraft fire. The CIA wanted a plane that could fly above 90,000 feet or thereabouts, at high speed and as invisible to radar as it was feasible, said Merlin.
The SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane Flew Faster Than You Could Imagine The cockpit also got very hot when flying at high speeds, so much that pilots used to warm up their meal on long missions by pressing it against the glass.
Here s What You Need to Remember: The Air Force first retired the SR-71 in 1990. Satellites and later drones assumed its reconnaissance mission. After a brief return to military service in the mid-1990s, a few SR-71s lingered as NASA test assets, finally transferring to museums in 1999.
Twenty years after its final retirement, the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane still is the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever.