The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3-strategic reconnaissance aircraft remained the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft throughout its nearly 24-year career.
From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour. And in the off chance an enemy tried to shoot it down with a missile, all the Blackbird had to do was speed up and outrun it.
SR-71 is indeed an impressive record thanks to its unique features, such as being able to fly over Mach 3.5 (4,287 km / h) at an altitude of 88,000 feet (26.8 km), Radar Cross Section (RCS) is low and warfare systems sophisticated electronics. Which also makes it the fastest aircraft in its time.
In this article, we will share with you an interesting clip showing Blackbird information with a F/A-18 included in a 48-min video that was posted on YouTube.
Here’s the video (Clip at 24min):
According to the description of the video on YouTube, the full video “covers the 1% of the nailbiters, High Angle of Attack Flight testing, to include the spin chute deployment, engine failure with the Japanese pilot in the front seat, high speed (1.93 Mach) run, engine restart testing, and some avionics testing. It ends up with the Live HARM missile launch.”
For a quarter-century, Lockheed’s Mach 3 SR-71A Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft dominated the skies as no other. As SR-71 pilot and author Brian Shul once noted, more people have stood atop Mt. Everest than have flown what remains the world’s fastest, highest-flying jet. A total of 32 aircraft were built.
