Blackbird: Cold War Spy Planes: U-2, SR-71 and Area 51: Secret War on the Soviet Union

The KCQ had a modified high-speed boom, which would allow refueling of the Blackbird at nearly the tanker's maximum airspeed with minimum flutter. This unusual instrument projected a barely visible artificial horizon line across the top of the entire instrument panel, which gave the pilot subliminal cues on aircraft attitude. Nortronics, Northrop Corporation 's electronics development division, had developed an astro-inertial guidance system ANS , which could correct inertial navigation system errors with celestial observations , for the SM Snark missile, and a separate system for the ill-fated AGM Skybolt missile, the latter of which was adapted for the SR Before takeoff, a primary alignment brought the ANS's inertial components to a high degree of accuracy.

In flight, the ANS, which sat behind the reconnaissance systems officer's RSO's , position, tracked stars through a circular quartz glass window on the upper fuselage. The system's digital computer ephemeris contained data on a list of stars used for celestial navigation: As the SR had a second cockpit behind the pilot for the RSO, it could not carry the A's principal sensor, a single large-focal-length optical camera that sat in the "Q-Bay" behind the A's single cockpit.

Lockheed SR Blackbird - Wikipedia

Wide-area imaging was provided by two of Itek 's Operational Objective Cameras , which provided stereo imagery across the width of the flight track, or an Itek Optical Bar Camera , which gave continuous horizon-to horizon coverage. Both the first SLAR and ASARS-1 were ground-mapping imaging systems, collecting data either in fixed swaths left or right of centerline or from a spot location for higher resolution. An air conditioner used a heat exchanger to dump heat from the cockpit into the fuel prior to combustion. Blackbird pilots and RSOs were provided with food and drink for the long reconnaissance flights.

Water bottles had long straws which crewmembers guided into an opening in the helmet by looking in a mirror. Food was contained in sealed containers similar to toothpaste tubes which delivered food to the crewmember's mouth through the helmet opening. Reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam were code named "Giant Scale". O'Malley and Major Edward D. The Air Force could fly each SR, on average, once per week, because of the extended turnaround required after mission recovery.

Very often an aircraft would return with rivets missing, delaminated panels or other broken parts such as inlets requiring repair or replacement. There were cases of the aircraft not being ready to fly again for a month due to the repairs needed. Rob Vermeland, Lockheed Martin 's manager of Advanced Development Program, said in an interview in that high-tempo operations were not realistic for the SR From the beginning of the Blackbird's reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam and Laos in , the SRs averaged approximately one sortie a week for nearly two years.

By , the SRs were averaging two sorties per week, and by , they were flying nearly one sortie every day. Two SRs were lost during these missions, one in and the second aircraft in , both due to mechanical malfunctions. While deployed at Okinawa, the SRs and their aircrew members gained the nickname Habu as did the As preceding them after a pit viper indigenous to Japan, which the Okinawans thought the plane resembled.

Only one crew member, Jim Zwayer, a Lockheed flight-test reconnaissance and navigation systems specialist, was killed in a flight accident. There were two routes: One along the Norwegian west coast and up the Kola Peninsula , which contained several large naval bases belonging to the Soviet Navy's Northern Fleet.

Rescue parties were sent in to repair the planes before leaving. On one occasion, one complete wing with engine was replaced as the easiest way to get the plane airborne again. Swedish Air Force fighter pilots have managed to lock their radar on an SR on multiple occasions within shooting range. Before approaching the target area, the crew noticed that one of the Fs was missing, it was shot down during the raid and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. During the mission, it was fired on by Surface to Air Missiles. In a effort to outrun them, the crew throttled up to full speed. This enabled it to avoid the missiles.

It successfully landed back in RAF Mildenhall. The SR program was terminated due to Pentagon politics, and not because the aircraft had become obsolete or irrelevant, or suffered maintenance problems, or had unsustainable program costs, although these reasons are frequently cited as justifications for its downfall. In order to be selected into the SR program in the first place, a pilot or navigator RSO had to be a top-quality Air Force officer, so continuing career progression for members of this elite group was not surprising.

These generals were adept at communicating the value of the SR to an Air Force command staff and a Congress who often lacked a basic understanding of how the SR worked and what it did.

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However, by the mids, these SR generals all had retired, and a new generation of Air Force generals wanted to cut the program's budget and spend its funding on new strategic bomber programs instead, especially the very expensive B-2 Spirit. The Air Force saw the SR as a bargaining chip which could be sacrificed to ensure the survival of other priorities. Also, the SR program's "product", which was operational and strategic intelligence, was not seen by these generals as being very valuable to the Air Force.

A former 1st SRS commander believed that if the SR had been funded by an intelligence agency like the A was , instead of the Air Force, it would have easily survived. The SR, while much more capable than the Lockheed U-2 in terms of range, speed, and survivability, suffered the lack of a data link , which the U-2 had been upgraded to carry. This meant that much of the SR's imagery and radar data could not be used in real time, but had to wait until the aircraft returned to base.

This lack of immediate real-time capability was used as one of the justifications to close down the program. Attempts to add a datalink to the SR were stymied early on by the same factions in the Pentagon and Congress who were already set on the program's demise, even in the early s.

However, the USAF refused to spend the money. While the SR survived attempts to retire it in , partly due to the unmatched ability to provide high-quality coverage of the Kola Peninsula for the US Navy, [97] the decision to retire the SR from active duty came in , with the last missions flown in October that year. The SR program's main operational capabilities came to a close at the end of fiscal year October The 1st SRS kept its pilots and aircraft operational and active, and flew some operational reconnaissance missions through the end of and into , due to uncertainty over the timing of the final termination of funding for the program.

The squadron finally closed in mid, and the aircraft were distributed to static display locations, with a number kept in reserve storage. From the operator's perspective, what I need is something that will not give me just a spot in time but will give me a track of what is happening. When we are trying to find out if the Serbs are taking arms, moving tanks or artillery into Bosnia , we can get a picture of them stacked up on the Serbian side of the bridge.

We do not know whether they then went on to move across that bridge. We need the [data] that a tactical, an SR, a U-2, or an unmanned vehicle of some sort, will give us, in addition to, not in replacement of, the ability of the satellites to go around and check not only that spot but a lot of other spots around the world for us.

It is the integration of strategic and tactical. Congress re-examined the SR beginning in Hall addressed the question of why the SR was retired, saying it was under "the belief that, given the time delay associated with mounting a mission, conducting a reconnaissance, retrieving the data, processing it, and getting it out to a field commander, that you had a problem in timelines that was not going to meet the tactical requirements on the modern battlefield. And the determination was that if one could take advantage of technology and develop a system that could get that data back real time Macke told the committee that they were "flying U-2s, RCs , [and] other strategic and tactical assets" to collect information in some areas.

They maintained that, in a time of constrained military budgets, designing, building, and testing an aircraft with the same capabilities as the SR would be impossible. Congress's disappointment with the lack of a suitable replacement for the Blackbird was cited concerning whether to continue funding imaging sensors on the U Congressional conferees stated the "experience with the SR serves as a reminder of the pitfalls of failing to keep existing systems up-to-date and capable in the hope of acquiring other capabilities.

Still-active Air Force pilots and Reconnaissance Systems Officers RSOs who had worked with the aircraft were asked to volunteer to fly the reactivated planes. Modifications were made to provide a data-link with "near real-time" transmission of the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar's imagery to sites on the ground. The reactivation met much resistance: Also, with the allocation requiring yearly reaffirmation by Congress, long-term planning for the SR was difficult.

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In June , the U. Supreme Court ruled that the line-item veto was unconstitutional. All this left the SR's status uncertain until September , when the Air Force called for the funds to be redistributed; the Air Force permanently retired it in NASA operated the two last airworthy Blackbirds until The SR was the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft throughout its career. The SR also holds the "speed over a recognized course" record for flying from New York to London—distance 3, Air Force pilot James V.

Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, reconnaissance systems officer RSO.

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For comparison, the best commercial Concorde flight time was 2 hours 52 minutes and the Boeing averages 6 hours 15 minutes. On 26 April , , flown by majors Thomas B. Estes and Dewain C. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. On 6 March , Lt.

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President, the termination of the SR was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday's historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our short-sighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance. Speculation existed regarding a replacement for the SR, including a rumored aircraft codenamed Aurora. The limitations of reconnaissance satellites , which take up to 24 hours to arrive in the proper orbit to photograph a particular target, make them slower to respond to demand than reconnaissance planes.

The fly-over orbit of spy satellites may also be predicted and can allow assets to be hidden when the satellite is above, a drawback not shared by aircraft. Thus, there are doubts that the US has abandoned the concept of spy planes to complement reconnaissance satellites. On 1 November , media outlets reported that Skunk Works has been working on an unmanned reconnaissance airplane it has named SR , which would fly twice as fast as the SR, at Mach 6.

United States Air Force [] [] []. Twelve SRs were lost and one pilot died in accidents during the aircraft's service career. Many secondary references use apparently incorrect series aircraft serial numbers e. SRC , but no primary government documents have been found to support this. Data from Pace []. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see SR disambiguation. Macke to the Senate Committee on Armed Services. United States Air Force portal Aviation portal. C-1 Landplanes Group 3: The People Behind the Story. Archived from the original on 4 October Retrieved 2 October Archived on 17 April Challenges and Lessons Learned". Retrieved 16 January The Cold War's ultimate spy plane". Retrieved 4 May Ratnayake and Casie M. Dryden Flight Research Center. Retrieved 29 May Retrieved 21 July Beyond The Secret Missions, , p.

Retrieved 24 July Pioneers Venturing into the Stratosphere. Retrieved 29 October Earl Shilton, Leicester, England: Retrieved 29 August The Online Blackbird Museum. Retrieved 11 September Retrieved 7 October Retrieved 12 May Aircraft controlled from nuclear weapon secured bunker]. Look at time 5: The Next Generation of Aircraft Technology. Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Archived from the original on 11 August Retrieved 1 November Archived from the original on 21 January Retrieved 6 December Retrieved 28 April Air Force Flight Center Museum.

Air Force Armament Museum. March Field Air Museum. Archived from the original on 4 March Retrieved 5 May Retrieved 24 March Air International , January , pp. Wings of Fame , Volume 8, , pp. A, YF and SR".

Lockheed's SR "Blackbird" Family. Ray ejected successfully but was unable to separate from the seat and was killed on impact. Although originally designed to succeed the U-2 in overflights over the Soviet Union and Cuba , the A was never used for either role. After a U-2 was shot down in May , the Soviet Union was considered too dangerous to overfly except in an emergency and overflights were no longer necessary, [27] thanks to reconnaissance satellites and, although crews trained for flights over Cuba, U-2s continued to be adequate there.

With the arrival of two more aircraft on 24 May, and 27 May this unit was declared to be operational on 30 May, and it began Operation Black Shield on 31 May. During further Black Shield operations were conducted in Vietnam. Additional sorties were also carried out during the Pueblo Crisis with North Korea. Operations and maintenance at Kadena AB began with the receipt of alert notification.

Both a primary aircraft and pilot and a back-up aircraft and pilot were selected. The aircraft were given thorough inspection and servicing, all systems were checked, and the cameras equipped. Pilots received a detailed route briefing in the early evening prior to the day of flight. On the morning of the flight a final briefing occurred, at which time the condition of the aircraft and its systems was reported, last-minute weather forecasts reviewed, and other relevant intelligence communicated, together with any amendments or changes in the flight plan.

Two hours prior to take-off the primary pilot had a medical examination, got into his suit, and was taken to the aircraft. If any malfunctions developed on the primary aircraft, the back-up could execute the mission one hour later.

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A typical route profile for a mission over North Vietnam included a refueling shortly after take-off, south of Okinawa, the planned photographic pass or passes, withdrawal to a second aerial refueling in the Thailand area, and return to Kadena. Once landed, the camera film was removed from the aircraft, boxed, and sent by special plane to the processing facilities. Later an Air Force Center in Japan carried out the processing in order to place the photointelligence in the hands of American commanders in Vietnam within 24 hours of completion of a mission.

There were a number of reasons leading to the retirement of the A, but one major concern was the growing sophistication of Soviet-supplied SAM sites that it had to contend with over mission routes. In , the vehicle was tracked with acquisition radar over North Vietnam, but the SAM site was unsuccessful with the Fan Song guidance radar used to home the missile to the target. Photography from this mission documented the event with photographs of missile smoke above the SAM firing site, and with pictures of the missile and of its contrail.

Electronic countermeasures equipment appeared to perform well against the missile firing. During a flight on 30 October , pilot Dennis Sullivan detected radar tracking on his first pass over North Vietnam. Two sites prepared to launch missiles but neither did. During the second pass, at least six missiles were fired, each confirmed by missile vapor trails on mission photography. The fragment was not a warhead pellet but may have been a part of the debris from one of the missile detonations observed by the pilot.

The SA-2 'Guideline' was an early missile design intended to counter lower and slower aircraft like the B and B In response to faster, higher-flying designs like the B , the Soviets had begun development of greatly improved missile systems, notably the SA-5 'Gammon'. No usable photography was obtained of North Vietnam due to adverse weather conditions. There was no indication of a hostile weapons reaction and no ECM systems were activated.

In , three missions were flown over North Korea. The first mission occurred during a very tense period following seizure of the Navy intelligence ship Pueblo on 23 January. The aim was to discover whether the North Koreans were preparing any large scale hostile move following this incident and to actually find where the Pueblo was hidden. The ship was found anchored in an inlet in Wonsan Bay attended by two North Korean patrol boats and guarded by three Komars. The second mission on 19 February , was also the first two-pass mission over North Korea. The Oxcart vehicle photographed 84 primary targets plus 89 bonus targets.

Scattered clouds covered 20 percent of the area, concealing the area in which the USS Pueblo was photographed on the previous mission. One new SA-2 site was identified near Wonsan. Even before the A became operational, its intended purpose — replacing the U-2 in overflights of the Soviet Union — had become less likely. Soviet air defenses had advanced to the point that even an aircraft flying faster than a rifle bullet at the edge of space could be tracked. Upgrades to Soviet radar systems increased their blip-to-scan ratios , rendering the A vulnerable.

By , moreover, the photoreconnaissance satellite programs had progressed to the point that manned flights over the Soviet Union were unnecessary to collect strategic intelligence. The A program was ended on 28 December [38] — even before Black Shield began in — due to budget concerns [39] and because of the SR, which began to arrive at Kadena in March Layton flew the 29th and final A mission on 8 May , over North Korea. Sullivan for participation in Black Shield.

The deployed As and the eight non-deployed aircraft were placed in storage at Palmdale. All surviving aircraft remained there for nearly 20 years before being sent to museums around the U. On 20 January , despite protests by Minnesota's legislature and volunteers who had maintained it in display condition, the A preserved in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was sent to CIA headquarters to be displayed there. See SR timeline for later SR events. The A training variant "Titanium Goose" was a two-seat model with two cockpits in tandem with the rear cockpit raised and slightly offset.

In case of emergency, the trainer was designed to allow the flight instructor to take control. The YF program was a limited production variant of the A Lockheed convinced the U. Air Force that an aircraft based on the A would provide a less costly alternative to the recently canceled North American Aviation XF , since much of the design and development work on the YF had already been done and paid for.

Thus, in the Air Force agreed to take the seventh to ninth slots on the A production line and have them completed in the YFA interceptor configuration. The M , a two-seat variant, carried and launched the Lockheed D , an unmanned, faster and higher-flying reconnaissance drone. A C Hercules would catch the package in midair. The M program was canceled in after a drone collided with the mother ship at launch.

The crew safely ejected, but LCO Ray Torick drowned when his flight suit filled with water after landing in the ocean. The D lived on in the form of a B-model launched from a pylon under the wing of the B bomber. The DB performed operational missions over China from to Data from A Utility Flight Manual [83]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 17 November Retrieved 13 November Sorry, but no space aliens or UFOs.

Central Intelligence Agency Doc Number Central Intelligence Agency Document Number Retrieved 2 April Retrieved 6 May Central Intelligence Agency Document Number page Central Intelligence Agency Document Number: Brugioni; edited by Doris G. Eyes in the sky: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company.

The wizards of Langley: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Central Intelligence Agency National Archives.