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How they built the Blackbird: Fascinating pictures show birth of SR-71
These fascinating pictures show how engineers in 1960s California secretly developed the SR-71 Blackbird for the US Air Force – a plane which still holds the record for being the fastest ever aircraft. (www.dailymail.co.uk) עוד...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
great job... stories like "you cannot stay in that hotel", PARTS BEING DELIVERED TO PRIVATE HOMES,, "tell security if you plan to leave the country on your next vacation" (i.e. "DON'T YOU DARE").....dedicated phone line that NEVER went microwave, twisted pair all the way across country. and many more...
I was lucky enough to view the mock-up in the very early days of design. A fantastic aircraft, especially considering the state of aerodynamics and computational technologies back then. As for it's speed record, don't forget that it is true for unclassified airbreathing aircraft....enough said
One of the ironies of its' production was, the world's largest producer, by far, of titanium at the time, was...the Soviet Union. There are stories about how enough titanium was procured through third parties in order to build the aircraft.
Yea...the article I read years back said the CIA set up shell companies in several countries to get titanium here.
My father died due to the effects of materials he worked with in the early 60's to mid 70's. Workers today owe a lot to the lessons learned based on the subject matter you reference.
I had a friend you also worked on those classified aircraft and later developed cancer and died. I believe very few people knew hot toxic some of those material coatings were.