Interviewing Legendary SR-71 Spy Plane Pilot Brian Shul | John Arc Show

Video from the channel John Arc Show about Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 43:36. Language: English. Video type: News.

Interview from the John Arc Show with retired United States Air Force commander Brian Shul, SR-71 Blackbird pilot. Over about forty minutes he looks back on his calling, the shoot-down that nearly cost him his life in Vietnam, his long recovery, and his years flying the reconnaissance aircraft. The host introduces him as a veteran of 212 combat missions and the author of several books, including Sled Driver, which recounts his time on the SR-71.

Shul says he decided to become a pilot around age eight, after watching a big air show at Andrews. At the end of the Vietnam War his T-28, which had no ejection seat, went down over the jungle near the Cambodian border. He suffered burns so severe that doctors in Okinawa did not expect him to survive. He spent two months in intensive care and nearly a year at Fort Sam Houston, and credits his recovery mainly to attitude and hope. He flew again for about twelve years in the T-38, A-10 (he was part of the first squadron) and A-7 before volunteering for the SR-71, for which he passed an astronaut-level medical exam at Travis without waivers.

On the aircraft, he explains that training lasted a year and that the most demanding part was manually managing the inlet system. Missions lasted three to six and a half hours. After air refueling, the aircraft climbed with afterburner from about 26,000 to nearly 80,000 feet in roughly fifteen minutes, cruising with afterburner. According to his account, the windows reached about 865°F and the aircraft carried about 80,000 pounds of fuel. He mentions missiles fired at him that never reached him, three missions in three days during the Libya crisis flown from England, and an inlet failure over North Korea from which he returned to Okinawa.

In the final part, Shul gives his opinion on today's fighters and laments how few flying hours pilots receive now. He also looks back on his later career as an aerial photographer with the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels, his retirement from flying in the mid-1990s, and a possible film project about his life, which he sees as a message of overcoming adversity rather than one about aviation.