Redirected from SR-71
Throughout its nearly 30+ year career, the SR-71 remained the world's fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth's surface per hour. On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 miles per hour and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet. When the SR-71 was retired in 1990, one was flown from Palmdale Airbase to go on exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC setting a coast-to-coast speed record at an average 2124 miles per hour. The entire trip took only 68 minutes.
On March 21, 1968 Major (later General) Jerome F. O'Malley and Major Edward D. Payne made the first operational SR-71 sortie. During its career, this aircraft accumulated 2,981 flying hours and flew 942 total sorties (more than any other SR-71), including 257 operational missions, from Beale AFB, California; Palmdale, California; Kadena Air Base, Okinawa and RAF (Base) Mildenhall, England. The aircraft was flown to the United States Air Force Museum[?] in March 1990.
Thirty-two planes were built. Of these, 12 were lost in flight accidents but all crews ejected safely.
The original designation for the aircraft was the RS-71. However when the aircraft was announced by Lyndon B. Johnson on February 29. 1964, Johnson accidentally switched the letters for the name of the aircraft, which forced Lockheed to instantly change the name of the aircraft.
Similar to the SR-71 were the A-11 and A-12 which were prototypes for the Blackbird, and the YF-12 which was an attempt to convert the SR-71 into a long range fighter.
The only surviving D-21B drone from the M-21 program is on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, USA.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump