The SR-71 Flew Over 2,000 MPH. No Missile Ever Caught It.

Fifteen miles up, at more than three times the speed of sound, a missile warning comes over the intercom. In the spring of 1986, off the coast of Libya, Major Brian Shul had one answer: his hand on the throttles of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet-powered airplane ever to enter service. This is the story of how it was built. It begins on May 1, 1960, when a Soviet missile brought down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 over Sverdlovsk, and America learned that flying high was no longer enough. Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works answered with the CIA's A-12 (Project OXCART) and the Air Force's SR-71: airplanes so hot that their titanium skin grew several inches in flight, so loosely built that they leaked fuel on the ground, burning a special fuel, JP-7, that a lit match could not ignite, and started by carts powered by two Buick V-8 car engines. By many accounts, much of the titanium was bought from the Soviet Union itself, through third parties. It is also the story of the people inside: pressure-suited crews flying above the altitude where blood boils; test pilot Bill Weaver, who survived when an SR-71 broke apart around him at Mach 3 in 1966; CIA pilot Dennis Sullivan, who came home from North Vietnam with a fragment in his wing; Brian Shul and Walter Watson over Libya; and the 1976 world speed record of 2,193 miles an hour, still unbeaten by any crewed jet-powered aircraft. In March 1990, on its last Air Force flight, an SR-71 crossed from Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes and 20 seconds. Crews reported missile launches against the Blackbird again and again; a figure often cited is more than 4,000, though the exact number has never been confirmed. What is certain: not one SR-71 was ever lost to enemy fire. CHAPTERS 00:00 Missile launch 02:18 Seventy thousand feet 04:28 The man in Burbank 06:29 Metal from the enemy 07:06 The metal that cracked 08:53 An airplane that leaks 10:35 Above the line where blood boils 12:22 Breakup at Mach three 13:55 The first missiles 15:23 The Habu 16:47 The run to the coast 18:03 Throttles forward 19:26 Sixty-four minutes 20:55 The hidden domino 22:08 The reflection SOURCES & IMAGE CREDITS All photographs are in the public domain, drawn from U.S. Air Force, NASA (Dryden Flight Research Center), Central Intelligence Agency, National Archives, Nationaal Archief and Wikimedia Commons public-domain collections via Wikimedia Commons. Full per-image credits are in the pinned comment. A NOTE ON THE NARRATION This video uses a synthetic (AI-generated) narration voice. No real person's voice is imitated or cloned. #SR71 #Blackbird #coldwarbeta