AF Says Bye-Bye Blackbird as Spy Jet Sets Record

The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane roared into history Tuesday with a record-setting cross-country flight and a roof-rattling sonic boom heard across Southern California.

The Mach 3 high-altitude jet flew from Los Angeles to Dulles International Airport near Washington in an official time of 68 minutes and 17 seconds. It averaged 2,112.52 m.p.h. on its way to retirement on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution.

The old record for coast-to-coast flight was 3 hours and 38 minutes, set in April, 1963, by an American Airlines Boeing 707 on a commercial flight from Los Angeles to New York. That plane averaged 680.9 m.p.h.

The Blackbird, shaped like a pointy-nosed manta ray, is being retired for budgetary reasons after 25 years of secret service, Air Force officials said. Most of its highly classified photographic surveillance missions are now performed by spy satellites.

The aircraft took off from its Mojave Desert airfield in Palmdale at Air Force Plant 42 at 4:30 a.m. PST. It flew out over the Pacific, was refueled for its transcontinental flight, then took a running start across the California coastline near Oxnard, accelerating to top speed with a massive blast as it broke the sound barrier.

“It was awesome,” Air Force Col. Tom Hornung said of the predawn liftoff from California. “It was a fitting end to a great Air Force program.”

The sonic boom was felt across a wide area north of Los Angeles, from Newhall to Van Nuys to as far west as Oxnard in Ventura County. Some police departments reported a rash of calls from people thinking it was an earthquake or an aftershock from last week’s quake centered near Upland.

The plane climbed from 60,000 feet as it burned off fuel, eventually reaching an altitude “in excess of 80,000 feet,” said pilot Lt. Col. Raymond E. Yeilding, who was accompanied by reconnaissance systems officer Lt. Col. J. D. Vida. The pilot said tail winds of 6 knots were not a factor in the plane’s speed.

It crossed the East Coast east of Salisbury, Md., was refueled and then cruised into Dulles airport in Chantilly, Va., about 20 miles west of Washington.

Yeilding’s Blackbird set three other point-to-point speed records: Los Angeles to Washington at 2,153.24 m.p.h., Kansas City to Washington at 2,200.94 m.p.h. and St. Louis to Cincinnati at 2,242.48 m.p.h.

The records were certified by the National Aeronautic Assn., keeper of the nation’s aviation and space records, association President Malvern J. Gross Jr. said.

The sinister-looking twin-engine SR-71 is the fastest, highest-flying production aircraft ever built.

“It seems awfully ironic on the final flight of this aircraft to be setting these records,” Gross said. “Usually, records are set at the beginning, not the very end of the program. One has to wonder whether it really makes sense to retire this aircraft.”

“Bye-bye, Blackbird,” said Ben Rich, director of the Lockheed Aeronautical System Co.’s “skunk works” in Burbank who helped design the Blackbird. “I cannot honestly say this is a happy day for me.”

It was not a happy morning for a lot of other people, either, but for a different reason.

“It sounded to me like an explosion and woke me out of a sound sleep,” said Sgt. Denny Phillips of the Oxnard Police Department. “My next thought was it was an earthquake, like when you get those jolting kind of quakes. This thing was probably 10 times the magnitude of a shuttle landing and I’ve heard almost all the shuttle sonic booms.”

Police said calls reporting windows rattling and houses shaking started lighting up switchboards shortly after 6 a.m., primarily from communities in the Antelope and San Fernando valleys, where the sonic boom was heard the loudest.

Burbank police officer Dan Crawford said he heard “one loud boom, although other people heard two. At first I thought it was the space shuttle coming in, but then I remembered it had already come down. It shook the windows pretty good.”

What they heard was SR-71 model No. 17972, which was headed for the Smithsonian. The donated plane will be displayed at a Dulles airport wing of the National Air and Space Museum. Eight other Blackbirds are going to museums; three will be given to NASA for aeronautical research, and three are being mothballed in Palmdale.

Air Force officials have rarely displayed the plane, and many of its performance characteristics remain classified. The service will not even say how many of the planes were built.

The spy plane ended its flight by diving to 200 feet above the Dulles runway as it screamed, with afterburners lit, past rows of dignitaries assembled for its retirement ceremony.

The Blackbird has been a major source of aerial reconnaissance photographs of targets around the globe for U.S. military and intelligence agencies since it first began flying in 1964. The SR-71, which can outrun any fighter jet in the world, has never been shot down or captured.

It succeeded the U-2 surveillance plane, one of which was shot down over the Soviet Union in May, 1960. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was seized by the Soviets and pleaded guilty to espionage charges but was released two years later in a spy swap.

The SR-71’s old world record for absolute speed was 2,193 m.p.h. It also holds the record for sustained altitude in horizontal flight--85,069 feet. One Blackbird flew from New York to London in September, 1974, in 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56 seconds at an average speed of 1,807 m.p.h.

“It’s a beautiful aircraft and I’m glad that, if they are going to retire it, they’re giving one to the Smithsonian so generations of the future can see our technology,” Gross said.

Staff writer Richard Beene in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

BLACKBIRD--A SYMBOL OF COLD WAR RETIRES

America’s premier spy plane--the SR-71 Blackbird--broke four speed records as it headed for a final resting spot in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

After 25 years of supersonic snooping, the black, dagger-shaped aircraft flashed coast to coast in 68 minutes, 17 seconds--three times faster than the old record of 3 hours, 38 minutes set in 1963 by a Boeing 707.

Tuesday’s flight set speed records of 2,153.24 m.p.h. between Los Angeles and Washington; 2,242.48 m.p.h. between St. Louis and Cincinnati, and 2,200.94 m.p.h. between Kansas City and Washington. Sonic booms were reported in various communities along its flight path.