SR-71A tail number 17974, Lockheed build # 2025, was the first SR-71 to fly a combat sortie and the last one to be lost in an accident. Glowing Heat I saw the deployment of 3 SR-71s from Beale AFB, CA to Kadena AB, Okinawa with 974 being the second on March 20, 1968. She flew the very first operational sortie on March 21, 1968, with Major Jerry O’Malley in the front seat and Capt Ed Paine as RSO in the back seat. 974 or Ichi Ban departed Kadena AB on her last flight on April 21, 1989, with Lt Col Dan House as pilot and Major Blair Bozek as RSO. The engine compressor bearing on #1 engine froze, thus causing catastrophic failure of the entire engine, which in turn threw shrapnel into the #2 engine causing loss of the second hydraulic system. With both primary hydraulic systems gone, the utility system gave about 10 minutes of controlled flight. Dan brought 974 down from Mach 3 at 80,000 feet to about 10,000 feet off Luzon, the Philippines where he and Blair both ejected. Since Dan ejected about 3 seconds before the RSO, Blair claimed to be the only RSO with solo time in the SR-71. Dan’s comment was, “Yea and he was totally out of control the whole time!” Both crewmembers landed in the water about 200 yards off shore and were rescued by Philippino native cannibals. Fortunately, the natives treated them very cordually. The tribal king is now the only king to have an SR-71 ejection seat as a throne.
I made my model of 17974 from a Monogram 1/72 kit using Model Master Paints and the kit decals. The top and bottom fuselage sections leave a large gap down both sides underneath that had to be filled. This was also true of the joint between the top and bottom wing halves. [alien]
'Bird, great anecdote. Many thanks! But regarding your complaint about the large gap along the bottom join lines: As I understand it, that would be pretty accurate for a 1:1 scale SR sitting cold on the ground, as your fine 1/72 Habu happens to be, is it not? The only thing missing, judging from your equally fine photos, is fuel raining down from every joint on the a/c.
TOM
Kind of ironic that you post this as I sit here with a pile of scrap titanium pieces from an SR-71 sitting in front of me. Lots of carbon fiber inside those wing pieces.
Tom The lines I am referring to under the fuselage start at the nose and run all the way back to the wing, about 1/8 inch in from the chine bay edges. They are definately NOT supposed to be there. The fuselage fuel tanks in the SR did not leak at all or very little. The tanks in the inboard wings leaked like the proverbial sieve. The tech order listed a bunch of points under the plane and a leak limit stated in drips or drops per minute for each. The maximum was 60 drips per minute and many of them were close to this. Yes, it was essentially raining under there. JP-7 is more viscous and very slick compared to JP-4 or JP-5. Walking under the plane could be hazardous to ones health. The term, “Bust Your Ass” takes on a whole new meaning. Allen109 The SR-71s were originally retired in early 1990 with NASA getting the one B model trainer, 17956 and two of the regular A models., 17971 and 17980. They flew 956 and 980 a few times. The USAF unretired 3 airframes in 1995 for about 2 years. Blair Bozek from the above story, was one of the returning crew members. 17980 made the last SR-71 flight ever in 1999 at the Air Show at Edwards AFB. 17971 now resides beside the Spruce Goose in McMinnville Oregon. 17956 B model is in Kalamazoo, MI museum and 17980 is on display at NASA North Base, Edwards AFB. The remaining SR-71s and A-12s were parcelled out to various museums in 1990. Some were flown to their new homes and others were cut up into chunks and made the trip by truck. Swanny Where did you get pieces of an SR-71? The triangular shaped pieces along the leading edge of the wing were made of a composite material of some sort that was radar absorbing to a certain extent. The shape and joints also deflected some radar energy, ala, F-117. [alien]
Bird, thanks. I was being facetious about the joint and the leaking. A great aviator and equally great all around guy, “Fast” Eddie Schneider, our chief pilot at Combat Jets Flying Museum as well as CJ’s F-104 and MiG-15 inructor pilot, was one of NASA’s SR pilots at the time, and he told me about how it leaked until it heated up a speed and altitude, and when it was really honking how it great 11 full inches in length.
As for the kit, I had the same problem with that joint, and again with that joint when building the Hasegawa kit a couple of years earlier (which, for all I know, was what Monogram reboxed for their SR-71 kit back in the mid-80s.) Then, when I built the Testors 1/48 YF-12, same problem, same seams, just longer and bigger. Yet again I battled this kind of kit joint setup when building the AMT XB-70 a few years ago.
I built the Monogram kit when it came out with the D-21 atop it, and as I recall it, the decals were not for one of the drone carriers according to the tail number, but I think that info was still classified then, and we barely knew anything about the D-21. Some aviation buff just happened to be strolling through the D-M boneyard one day with his camera and saw these weird shapes piled up, looking like baby SR’s, and he took lots of photos, which appeared in Aviation Leak, as well as other publications.
Do you know how many Blackbirds were designated for that mission, 'Bird? And what was the designation of those a/c that carried the drone? I know one was lost when the separation went bad and the drone recontacted the aircraft with disastrous results. Unfortunately, when Wings/Airpower did their excellent four-part series on the Blackbird family about three years ago, the D-21 installment, which even went into the air-to-air recovery of them, was the one issue I couldn’t get, and the D-21 program fascinates me to this day.
TOM
There were two Blackbirds built for the drone carrying mission. Both were A-12s that were redesigned for the mission prior to initial build. They were originally called M-12s, but were later changed to M-21 after the D-21 was completed. The two airframes were tail #06940/Article 134 and 06941/Article 135. 941 was the one lost in the mid-air with the D-21 on launch attempt #4, July 30, 1966, about 200 miles west of Pt Magu. 940 is currently on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle with a D-21 on her back. Contrary to what Testors, Monogram and Academy depict in the models, no SR-71 ever carried a D-21 drone . They were not designed to do so and didn’t have the cockpit controls, plumbing, mounting equipment, internal bracing, etc. It would have been impossible.
The A-12 was different from the SR-71 in that it had a shorter, more pointy nose, the fuselage tail stopped even with the elevons instead of extending about 2 feet behind it and there was only the pilot for crew. The area where the second seat was in the SR-71 and YF-12 was called the Q bay and this held the cameras. The SR-71 had the cameras in the chine bays, one in front of the nose landing gear and one in the nose itself. The A-12 had one less fuel tank in the fuselage and was about a ton lighter which made it a couple of hundred miles per hour faster. 3 were deployed to Kadena in 1967 and replaced by SR-71s in 1968. Total Blackbird production was: 13 A-12s, 2 M-21s, 3 YF-12s and 31 SR-71s, 32 if you count SR-71C, 17981, which was originally YF-12 06934.[alien]
I’d like to mention that the nose of the SR was either a camera nose or a Side Looking Radar nose. I worked on the latter and remember when doing a nose change, I usually got stuck standing under the point of the nose and making sure it didn’t fall or tip on the Spider dolly when the clevis bolts were released. Since this was a rather uneventful procedure, I began to think that this was one of those “let’s give the airmen something to do while of NCO’s do the real work” type jobs. That is until I was standing under the tip one day when they released the clevis bolts. It turns out the spider dolly wasn’t adjusted properly, this was also the day I happened to have my head under the nose instead of my should as I usually did. As the weight of the nose hit me, I heard my neck pop in three places. No permant damage was done, but from that day on, I took the nose holding job a lot more seriously. [:D]
