Private and commercial pilot Joe Shelton looked at this question closely on a post he wrote for Quora. “The SR-71’s fuselage had very little room for internal ordnance. Almost all of it was ...

As former SR-71 pilot Dave Peters would later recall, the speed gate (a filter set to narrow down radar returns to only legitimate threats) had been set to 1,500 miles per hour. “We were ...

and the capture of pilot Francis Gary Powers, emphasized the need for a new and less vulnerable aircraft able to fly both at high altitudes and at high speeds. The resulting SR-71 remains one of ...

I show 1,742 knots" "No further inquiries were heard on that frequency" In another famous SR-71 story, Los Angeles Center reported receiving a request for clearance to FL 60 (60,000ft). The ...

The SR-71 Blackbirds were used in intelligence-gathering operations over the Soviet Union and Vietnam. As Washington and Beijing race to produce the world’s first-ever sixth-generation aircraft ...