Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
There was an article circling around some years ago that captured a talk given by an old Blackbird pilot who described how long it took him to turn around after a photo run over Lybia. I'll see if I can find the link, but I also think that somewhere on this very forum that story is available. First search didn't find it, though.
That would be a nice find as these anecdotal / real-world accounts from Blackbird pilots are usually illuminating as reading the books does not give justice to the complications of flying this beast at the edge of the performance envelope whilst actively controlling and/or monitoring the limits of engine technology,
metallurgy, fuel tech, atmospherics et al, all whilst doing an operational job.
From the limited teaching we had on the SR-71 on the hard sums coarse I know that a suitably light SR71 that was somehow / actually in the best bit of the CofG envelope, with sufficient LN2 density, operating at a lower altitude that also happened to be unusually cold, with intakes in fully automatic (and trusting that they would remain so(!)) at a reduced mach number (say M3.0 or below), in a flight regime that allowed up to 25º AoB whilst remaining within the limited AoA range etc, then you could probably achieve a turning radius of under 100nm. Easy.
I recall that real-world ops tended to have few, if any, of the favourable conditions above and with an AoB limits reducing towards zero makes turning at operational altitudes / mach a serious challenge. I do recall (with reasonable certainty) that any manual control of the intakes (as an example) at typical operational altitudes had a 0º AoB limit. Tricky.
I doubt any of us without direct experience of this incredible aircraft will ever appreciate the performance complexities that came with operational flying. What was routine for them would normally require an experienced TP, telemetry, support TPt and a massive technical support team behind them working the live data at carefully controlled test points. It was in a whole different league.
I think LOMCEVAK had a very good insight into the aircraft at one point and I am sure he would have loved to have added it to his logbook. I don't think we have any ex-Blackbird pilots on this forum and those that may have flown a similar type probably don't exist anywhere!