Raider Fan Loc: Lake County, IL.

The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by Lockheed and its Skunk Works division. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the design's innovative concepts. During reconnaissance missions, the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outfly the missile.

The SR-71 served with the U.S. Air Force from 1964 to 1998. A total of 32 aircraft were built; 12 were lost in accidents, but none lost to enemy action. The SR-71 has been given several nicknames, including Blackbird and Habu. Since 1976, it has held the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, a record previously held by the YF-12. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

These photos of the blackbird were taken at the SAC Museum in Ashland, NE. which is approx. 30 miles west of Omaha, NE. headquarters of what was then SAC. Along with the SR-71 there is a B-52,B-36,B-17,B-29,B-58,which held the air speed record of London to Tokyo in 8.5 hours at a distance of over 8K miles.

No PP other than adding of my watermark and some cropping. I hope you enjoy my work and thanks for looking.

The underside

photophile Loc: Lakewood, Ohio, USA

Very futeristic looking plane.

Murex Loc: Bainbridge, Georgia

Thank you for posting really good pictures of this great bird. My husband served in both TAC and SAC and one of the last trips he made was to the SAC museum. I tried to get good shots of the F-86D but lighting was poor and my efforts were not nearly as good as yours. Thanks for the memories.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Especially when you consider it "officially" first flew in 1964!

Bruce with a Canon Loc: Islip

I was told the SR71 could fly coast to coast in 90 MINUTES.
Commercial flight is 6 hours NY to Seattle.

foehner Loc: St. Louis, Missouri

Great photos! I really love this plane and am in awe that it was built so long ago. It looks like it could jump off the design table today... or out of a SF movie. I think you can see one at the Smithsonian Air Museum as well.

Gramps Loc: Republic of Tejas--Tomball, TX

Thanks for the memories. I worked on materials related to stealth composites in her fuselage. You left out some interesting things, in the bird's past ie an alleged October flight, round trip, to Europe, with Bush 1 and while at rest, on the ground, she leaked like a sieve. She belonged mach II and better. She was neither an official SAC or TAC mission---she was CIA up to her ailerons.

Kingmapix Loc: Mesa, Arizona

One of the biggest advancements in aviation of all time.
This plane "grows" by a few inches in flight due to heat buildup

wrrea

this will always be an incredible plane that everything else will be compared too. I just saw a documentory on the history channel, some 5,000+ surface to air missiles had been fired at them. Not one intercepted! it set a new LA to DC speed record, wheels up, to wheels down, in I believe it was less than 59 minutes.

wrr

Nosaj Loc: Sarasota, Florida

This was a super, awesome, stupendous aircraft. I saw one a few years ago at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, took many shots, but the memory card data was obliterates at the airport when a TSA idiot took it out of the camera and scanned it with his manual sensor! It should be re-commissioned as a defense against the TSA!!
Thanks for the posting.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Scanners will not erase data on a solid state device like an SD or CF card. The data is still on the card up until the time you reformat the card and remove that data. Even then it can still be retrieved via recovery software until you take more shots and overwrite that portion of the card containing those images.

Nosaj Loc: Sarasota, Florida

You're correct, but the agent put it into a slot of some type of weird looking box, flipped a switch to see the contents, and another switch that eventually ejected it. When I put it back in the camera, the card was blank. I tried some recovery measures, but they failed. Later, I learned that the airport was "experimenting" with a new electronic surveillance gadget that day and I was one of its first victims. The practice was stopped soon thereafter. If I challenged that idiot (I was told), I would have been detained to a holding room for questioning, miss my flight, and wind up paying many hundreds of $$s for a new flight. This happened about 6 years ago. This is our tax dollars at work!

planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

Neat plane pics. When I lived in Rockford, IL I went to a program where the guest speakers were the only (as of that date, anyways) the only husband and wife SR-71 drivers. They put on a really cool slideshow presentation, not only of graphs and data, but also some air-to-air shots.

Gramps Loc: Republic of Tejas--Tomball, TX

What model f4 is that in yer avatar. I spent a lot of time in and out of MAC when they were slowing down on the F4 and delivering the K/UK Model! Used to love to sit across the road on the Holiday Inn Hill at dusk, drinking beer and watching "today's" F4 deliveries taking off.

austintxous Loc: Austin, TX

Just when I was beginning to think people were getting SMARTER, you had to bring up this baby. Didn't we put men on the moon a few years ago too? Can you imagine? And this was WITHOUT twitter, facebook, or quad core processors!