Blackbird

The SR-71 Blackbird might be one of the most amazing machines in the world. In the mid 1960’s a Raf pilot was flying across eastern england in his Lightning where he came upon a mysterious black plane. USAF markings identified it as friendly so he went to pull up alongside to wave at the pilot. However he never got a chance, for a soon as the pilot saw him coming: whoosh. With an explosion of noise he, and the mysterious plane, were gone.

Upon returning to base his colleagues were more thean a little skeptical when he told them of a black plane that rocketed away so quickly that he couldn’t keep up.It did sound absurd at the time as everyone knew, with absolute certainty tat the Lightning was the fastest thing in the sky. Everyone was wrong. The RAF pilot had glimpsed upon The SR-71. The Blackbird. It was, and remains to this day, th fatest plane in the world.

At the time it was top secret, taking off and landing solely at night, with everything turned off (which was why the Americans didn’t see the RAF pilot coming) it was a black shadow in the sky with the same radar signature as a fruit fly. It was a plane built for spying. Carrying no missles, no guns, climed at enormous speed to a height of 90,000 feet (17 miles), 60,000 feet higher than a commercial jet flys, 30,000 feet higher than concorde, from where it was neither audible nor visible to anyone on earth. Once there it would go even faster, moving past 2000mph to three times the speed of sound. At that height and that speed its ability to cover groung was incredible. 100,000 square miles of the earths surface in one hour. It was this speed and height that also made it completley unshootdownabe. One of the pilots once said that if by some miracle he was detected, he still had nothing to fear. ‘We’d see the MiGs coming up to get us  but when they hit 60,000 feet we’d have gone and they’d have fallen out of the sky. ‘Even if a MiG could get a missle off there was no chance of a hit. ‘Think about it,’ said the pilot. ‘ The missle’s going Mach 2, We’re doing Mach 3. That’s a closing speed of five times the speed of sound and no computer at that time could have worked things out fast enough. Believe me we were up their with complete immunity.’