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Old 28th Nov 2008, 12:43
  #8 (permalink)  
chevvron
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Wildest Surrey
Age: 75
Posts: 10,859
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About 15 years ago almost daily I observed traffic routing south - north over the London area indicating FL660 on SSR (there was no primary return) and which I assumed at the time were TR1s/U2Rs bound for Alconbury or Mildenhall.
I read somewhere that the (early) version used by Gary Powers operated at about this level, but you only had about a 4kt boundary between stall speed and mach buffet when this high, and he was brought down not by a direct hit, but by a missile exploding near his aircraft causing it to exceed these parameters - not sure whether it said he stalled or whether it just broke up due to exceeding its mach limit.
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