Battle Stations - SR-71 Blackbird Stealth Plane - Full Documentary

Video from the channel Molo about Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 1:04:01. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary from the Battle Stations series devoted to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the United States Air Force's strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It combines archive footage, re-enactments and crew testimonies. It closes with an extensive interview with a former wing commander, who had flown the U-2 for almost nine years and was in command between 1973 and 1975. The final section includes a period USAF film about the program.

The starting point is the U-2, created at Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works, which had been flying over the Soviet Union since 1956. Soviet radars tracked it, and on 1 May 1960 an SA-2 missile shot down Powers' aircraft. Replacing it required a much faster, higher-flying aircraft. The heat of Mach 3 flight forced the airframe to be built in titanium. To reduce the radar signature, specific shapes were combined with radar-absorbent composites, covering around 20% of the surface. The first flight took place on 22 December 1964 with Robert Gilliland at the controls: it lasted a little over an hour and exceeded 1,000 mph. In 1966 the first SR-71 arrived at Beale Air Force Base; the first aircraft of the 9th Wing was an SR-71B trainer. The aircraft carried a pilot and a reconnaissance systems officer (RSO), both wearing pressure suits. Its J58 engines were started with triethylborane.

The first operational sortie departed from Kadena on 21 March 1968, targeting Vietnam. During the Yom Kippur War, the Giant Reach mission of 12 October 1973 took off from Griffiss with Jim Shelton and lasted 11 hours and 20 minutes, with six in-flight refuelings. Eight more missions followed. In 1974 the SR-71 broke the record between New York and London, with 1h 55min 42s, and also set a mark between London and Los Angeles. In April 1986, Brian Shul and his RSO, Walter, took off from Mildenhall to photograph the damage from the F-111 strikes in Libya, dodging a missile during the mission. Due to its cost, the aircraft was retired in the late 1980s; the farewell flight was held in Burbank on 20 December 1989. According to the documentary, more than 4,000 missiles were fired at the SR-71 without downing a single one, and no crew member died from enemy fire.