You may have heard of the supersonic stealth spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird. It was designed to go fast. Faster than any jet fighter in existence. Faster than the sound itself.

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The story started in the thick of the Cold War, the battle of the world’s two superpowers to showcase their military might. “Nuclear missiles are being developed and manufactured like hot cakes”, said a Russian Military spokesperson, and the Americans needed to know any new kinds of them being produced as soon as possible, so they could develop a countermeasure. Every single innovation on one side will help turn the tide of the war when It came. The Americans had their solution: the Lockheed U2 spy plane, the product of an ingenious innovation to reduce radar cross-section and make it invisible to Russian ‘eyes’. At least one plane was in the Soviet air 24/7, clicking images of factories below. But it was not as successful as the Americans thought, as on May 1, 1960, pilot Gary Power’s U-2 was hit and disabled by Soviet surface-to-air missiles.

Lockheed Martin was given the order to build the impossible. A plane that cannot be shot down, as it would be invisible.

The theory was that a plane that could go faster than the speed of sound, would cover so much distance per unit time, that it would not even register on the radar screens as it reloads. So, that was what they were going to do.

But this rang dozens of alarm bells, the most important being the immense heat generated by air friction. As a plane went supersonic, friction would heat up the body of the craft to over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit-enough to melt any conventional airframe into a supersonic liquid blob of metal.

There was only one metal up to the task. Titanium alloy was the only option for the airframe —providing the strength of stainless steel, a relatively lightweight, and durability at excessive temperatures.

Titanium, however, proved to be a particularly sensitive material from which to build an airplane. The brittle alloy shattered if mishandled, which meant great frustration on the assembly line, and new training classes for Lockheed’s machinists. Conventional cadmium-plated steel tools, it was soon learned, embrittled the titanium on contact; so new tools were designed and fabricated—out of titanium. The plane was also painted black, to absorb the heat and dissipate it, hence earning itself the name “Blackbird”.

The original Blackbird was designated the A-12 and made its first flight on April 30, 1962. The single-seat A-12 soon evolved into the larger SR-71, which added a second seat for a Reconnaissance Systems Officer and carried more fuel than the A-12. The SR-71's first flight was on December 22, 1964.

Breaking records nearly every time it flew, the Blackbird achieved a sustained speed above Mach 3 on July 20, 1963, at an astounding altitude of 78,000 feet. The challenges kept coming: Zipping across the sky at 3,000 feet per second, the rules of navigation needed to be rewritten. Visual references for conventional flying—highways, rivers, and metropolitan areas—were rendered obsolete, giving way to mountain ranges, coastlines, and large bodies of water.

At that speed and altitude, even the best air defense systems had no hope of catching the Blackbird. When anti-aircraft weapons were fired, a warning light glowed red on the control panel. But that would typically be the last the pilot would see of the attempted attack, as surface-to-air missiles consistently missed wildly, exploding many miles from the intended target.

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Records were set: The Blackbird was and remains the world’s fastest and highest-flying manned aircraft. Most importantly, the aircraft delivered on its strategic responsibilities, providing the United States with detailed, mission-critical reconnaissance for more than two decades; its legacy as a game-changer will be admired for generations to come.

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Credits: lockheedmartin.com