Originally Posted by
tdracer
Impressive aircraft - that they designed it over 50 years ago using slide-rules just makes it that more impressive.
A few years ago I visited the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at IAD. An SR-71 was parked next to an F-35 in the entrance hall. I remember thinking of the contrast of the design histories of these Lockheeds decades apart.
Originally Posted by
VIProds
AIRBUBBA: I have looked for the names that you mention & the only similarities are::-
Thanks for taking a look, I appreciate it.
I did find a possible hit in a 2013 Dayton, Ohio newspaper article. Dayton is near the Air Force Museum.
Former SR-71 pilot Jack Mecham offers his take on why the SR-71 still captivates so many people, “Most people are really enthralled with the SR-71 because it was a different type of aircraft. The world’s fastest. It did things that no other air-breathing aircraft could do.”
...Mecham is well qualified to discuss these spy planes. Besides spending a couple hundred hours flying them, mostly out of the Lockheed plant at Palmdale, Calif., Mecham has a history of flying covert missions in support of the Central Intelligence Agency. He recounts, “In Vietnam, I flew H-3 helicopters in support of the CIA. We weren’t CIA. We were Air Force. The CIA was a customer, but the Air Force had no control over us. My point of contact was the State Department. We didn’t fly any missions in South Vietnam. It was mostly in Laos. I was the first to go north of Hanoi in February of [19]67. That same month, I was the first one to go into Cambodia, which we disavowed for many years.” Mecham flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam and will share the exploits of his “Black Mariah” helicopter, the helicopter with a bounty on it, at the presentation.
It?s a bird? It?s a plane? It?s both! Dayton City Paper
And another reference to an SR-71 pilot named Jack Mecham in a Corvette forum:
"It's a myth. Flying the top secret A-12, being “civilian pilots” contracted to the CIA, marriage was a requirement. Flying the SR-71 for the USAF, marriage was not required." You could be right. My friend who flew them, Jack Mecham, indeed had to be married. He was a test pilot for the a-12 and then into the sr-71. He continued flying it while it was the sr-71. He said that he and the other pilots had to be married.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1588872631
Was Jack Mecham a Plant 42 production test pilot perhaps? Were there missions that are still not recorded in the seemingly exhaustive published logs of Blackbird sorties?