SR-71: LA speed story

[Savago]

Old story, but really nice video montage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILop3Kn3JO8

[Savago]

What can I say? I love this plane!

[Oss]

One has been sitting on the flight deck of the Intrepid for at least a decade

Amazing a plane that leaks so much avgas at sea level that it must refuel minutes into flight

Never shot down

[Serk]

WAY back in the day when I was a kid, I ran a Commodore 64 BBS, named Beale Air Force Base in honor of the home base of the Habu...

When I took a crazy cross country road trip with my dad, getting as close to the front gate of Beale was one of the must-do things on the itinerary...

[Savago]

I mentioned it before, but it deserves to be mentioned again:
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-SR-71-Blackbird-Breakthrough/dp/0760348499/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=SR-71&qid=1558056467&s=gateway&sr=8-7

[Chrisj CMA]

One has been sitting on the flight deck of the Intrepid for at least a decade

Amazing a plane that leaks so much avgas at sea level that it must refuel minutes into flight

Never shot down

Yes they leak on the ground, the tolerances tighten up with speed not altitude. They run out of gas minutes into a flight when they do a max power vertical ascent to high altitude. They level out and immediately refuel.

I got a chance to talk to a few Habu pilots when I was stationed on Okinawa. I like those planes too.

[scooperhsd]

Yes - more speed => more heat produced => more expansion of the metal, leading to sealing up of the planes fuel tanks.

[Oldfishguy]

Great storyteller.

But who/what are the fastest guys on the block these days?  Got to be something else??

[Serk]

Great storyteller.

But who/what are the fastest guys on the block these days?  Got to be something else??

Quite possible there's something we don't know about, but honestly I doubt it. Making a human carrying vehicle travel at hyper sonic speeds in the atmosphere using non-rockets is extremely complicated and expensive, and with satellites mostly removing the need for such craft, and non-manned drones covering the other needs from a military perspective, the entities with the pockets deep enough to do it don't have the need any longer...

[Chrisj CMA]

The SR-71 is still the fastest airplane. We don't really know the top speed as it has always been classified but it's over 3,000 mph. I have heard when they did speed trials they always had multiple blackbirds flying and landing at various places so no one could calculate flight times

[MarkT]

They had some SR-71's and U-2's stationed at U-TAPAO when I was there.  They had armed guards positioned a good distance around them, with a canopy over the cockpit to stop aerial shots of the cockpit, and signs posted near the guard perimeter saying "Deadly Force Authorized".   I was tokin on a doobie at the baseball park when a U2 took off, rotated almost vertical and rolled the bottom towards me.  "OH ЅHIT I'M BUSTED NOW".

[scooperhsd]

if you're talking about planes actually still in service - my candidates would be

F15
F22
The latest generation Russian fighters
Typhoon
Saab Griffen
Rafale

However, being the fastest doesn't mean you have a usable advantage. A well trained, experianced aircrew trumps paper aircraft advantages, along with AWACS type support and the aircraft's sensors and knowing how to use them to best advantage (this translates into better situational awareness). The F22 and F35 have a big advantage with their stealth (everybody else is still trying to catch up - we have 20 years experiance on them)

[habu]

I worked on it for ten years. Flight test at Plant 42 Site 2 in Palmdale, Beale AFB, RAF Mildenhall, and Kadena AFB in Okinawa. Best job I ever had.

[czuch]

One of my favorites ever.
It took 4 Western states to make a U turn.
One of the funniest I read, once the Russians built the latest, greatest, newest, record breaking fastest, and set a record.
We'd roll one, at random, out of the hanger, go up, retrieve the record and just go about our business.

[Savago]

There is a really nice video explaining how the Pratt & Whitney J58 engine managed to run in afterburner mode during cruise speeds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3ao5SCedIk

[rocketray]

google Tr-3b astra project