Warbird Information Exchange

I saw a Blackbird in the 1990 timeframe land at Patrick with Mechanical/ Hydraulic issues. I was in the tower when it called in declaring an emergency, I think it used a callsign with "Aspen" in it, which the ATC guys had to look up.

Needless to say, the place went apesh** and they rolled every piece of emergency equipment they could find. Once it landed (uneventfully), the plane was surrounded by firetrucks, police cars, etc. and escorted back to the hangar under the tower. We found several "excuses" to go back and check on the RADAR gear at the tower, giving us an excuse to check it out.

They flew in a team from Beale to fix 'er up, and she flew out a few days later with some temporary improvized art on one of the vert. stabilizers (pilot laying under a palm tree).

There were about 20 wrecks on A1A next to the flight line when she was taxiing out, and when he did the engine runup at the end of the flightline, it burned/ sandblasted the front end of the Aries K SP car following a bit too closely.

what an amazing aircraft. I'm on the side of the others that think there is something bigger/badder/ faster out there.

B

Yet the top speed is STILL classified. There are some things that are secret, Top Secret and color classified. They are that way for a reason. The F-117 was used in Panama for the first time, it has been divulged. Was it used prior to that in action? Do we really need to know if it was?

There is some amount of OpSec that we need to observe on public forums, gentlemen. If there are operations that have been done that are not public knowledge, there is probably a reason for it. remember that anything you type can be readable by anyone in the world. And within a few days has been mapped by any number of search engines.

I can understand that, but what I saw was not classified as far as I know, but I am not about to go into all of the details in public.

_________________
Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Can you understand why so many people are so skeptical of this comment? Seeing as how you were not in the military and therefore not "inbriefed" on classified SR-71 ops, most people would tend not to give your story credance. The only possibility is that you saw one on "display" at a museum. The term "mission ready" implies a jet that is airworthy and ready to fly on very short notice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you use the term "mission ready", I think you mean that the jet could be brought back to operational condition in fairly short order, very similar to the "mothballed" state of aircraft at D.M.

The SR-71 was a huge, very expensive, logistical nightmare, taking an army of support people to launch it. I've been told that it cost the Air Force approximately $100,000 an hour to operate it, given all of it's specialized support structures. I don't think it would be very easy to bring one back to flight state, much less "mission ready" status. I've also been told that the Air Force intentionally destroyed a lot of the specialized logisitical equipment necessary for flying operations, thus making it's "retirement" permanent. They supposedly did this so there would never, ever be a chance to bring the program back. The Air Force, for years in the 90's, fought against Congress who wanted the plane back in service after it's first retirement. The bottom line is, the Air Force considers the SR-71 a "has been" plane who's mission is obsolete and can be accomplished by other aircraft, platforms and sensors.

I could very well be wrong. I never saw it power up or anything. It did have some sort of power cart hooked up to it. It was too small to be an air start though. At any rate, I was not told much about it.

_________________
Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Regardless, this is an interesting thread!

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Chicks Dig Warbirds.......right?

There are several excellent books out about the SR-71/A-12 that has all the specs for it. The top speed was about 3.3 mach, limited by the compressor inlet temperature of 427 degrees C. up to about 85,000 feet. Also, any faster and the shock wave off of the nose would start to impinge on the engine inlets. Normal cruise speed was between 3.0 and 3.2 mach. The A-12 was slightly faster and could fly slightly higher due to its lighter weight. The SR flight manual is available on the internet with everything you want to know about it except the defensive avionics, which is still secret. The engines didn't have a starter like a normal jet engine. It needed a direct-drive cart powered by two Buick and later two Chevrolet engines driving a shaft hooked up to the bottom of each engine. Towards the end they also developed a direct-drive air starter that eliminated the two engines and used two air-start carts to supply air. NASA was the last to fly them about four? years ago.

Hopping between England and the Desert between July of 1990 until I returned home in Feb of 1992.

I seen it take off several times not only from England but from a place in the Middle East ( not going to say where ) so, in fact, I seen it with my own eyes, it was flying during the Gulf War, not matter what those experts tell you. I seen it.

Much like they said we didn't have "baby" nukes in the Middle East, that is also not a true statement. We had enough over there if Saddam was going to pull out Gasing troups, it was going to hit the fan big time over there.

Oh, One more thing, the Tail Numbers and markings were NOT on the aircraft at all....I looked and saw nothing to provide a national ensignia anywhere on it.

NAW, you only saw a gorilla with a derby and a cigar flying an airplane with no propeller.



Works for me Ernie. Personally, I feel the REAL secret replacement plane would be the....................................................................................SR-71. They just washed waxed and changed the fluids in them, and caoted them in PAM

HHHmmm, very interesting. FWIW, I too, have friends that claimed to have seen the SR-71 in operation well past it's "official" retirement date. It seems the Air Force wants us to believe otherwise.

BTW, that airplane you talk about above. Is it possible that it was something entirely different from the SR-71? Rumors have abounded for many years concerning a new type of recon aircraft that doesn't exist that served during the Gulf war. Some suggest that it's designation would have been either the TR-3 Black Manta or Aurora. Are you absolutely positive it was an SR-71, or did you only see it from a distance? Just curious. After your response, we should probably let this aspect of the thread die, as we don't want to give our enemies any intelligence, no matter how old the info.

I know it was an SR-71, it was parked in the hangar next to our aircraft ( RC-135) and even when I was in the UK in the summer of 93, I saw several flights taking off to unknown locations.

No, it was not the Aurora or any other mystery plane, it was an SR-71, no markings, nothing on it. Usually the ones I have seen had Red tail #'s on it and this one had nothing on it, non tail#, nothing, pure black and blue.

I am past my 10 year mark on classified information. Though there are somethings I cannot even after the 10 years mark talk about.

When I tried to talk to one of the ground crew at one time, I said, "Hey I thought they retired these aircraft?" He looked at me and stoned faced said, "What aircraft?"

I turned around and left the hanger, knowing what he was telling me.

I don't doubt that what Paul saw was an SR-71. The USAF ones were gone by then. NASA still had theirs. The lack of markings means it was going on a misson somewhere since on a lot of missions SR-71 markings were removed.

BUT, seeing it doesn't mean you know where it was going or what it was doing. For all we know NASA was using it to track bird migrations over Europe.

Mark H

Didn't the NASA birds have the big yellow stripe across the tail?

_________________
Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Paint is cheap..."Hey buddy, remember that thing we lent you?..We need it back
for a little bit."

Interesting!!! A bird which operated before it was publicly known....being operated as a Spook after it was publicly gone!! Habu..the legend continues..

I saw a helluva an aerial display of an SR-71 departing Randolph AFB on a Monday after
an airshow/openhouse, I attended held there at the base that weekend...'bout '82 or '83.

I was a sheetmetal mech installing the metal roofs on Boysville..that day we were doing the gymnasium roof.
Boysville, is directly across the street from the north/south runway..I guess 'bout halfway down the length.
I hear this HUGE RUMBLE, and look over my shoulder from the peak of the roof towards the runway.
I see the SR-71 launch off the runway and execute a tight climbing bank...pivoting a 180 around me from my left to right!!!
I sat down on the roof..'cause I almost fell off of it due to vertigo focusing on the '71.

He straightened out of the turn and dropped on the deck on a course bisecting the base where repeated the maneuver
completing a huge tight figure-8 which put him back where he started at the north/south runway heading south.

He POURED the coals to 'er.. and when he got near the end of the runway..he hauld back on 'er into
a 45 degree climb...crackling..popping..roaring...like a Saturn 5 launch...till he was out of sight!!!

Simply..F*cking...Stupendous!!!! What a machine!

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DBF

Thanks for the story Paul. That is very interesting. It is entirely possible, as Airnutz suggests, that the Air Force "borrowed" the plane back for a temporary or perhaps one-off mission. This is not without precedent, as the Air Force "borrowed" one of NASA's ER-2s and put it back into service. This was due to losing several U-2's in accidents and impinging on the mission capability of the Air Force.

Yep, no markings usually indicates a secret mission of some sort.