A well hosted and very well attended event covering the development, deployment and eventual retirement of the SR71. I realised about halfway through that I had read one of Col Graham's books so some of the anecdotes were familiar, but still very entertaining none the less.
Interesting points for me were that the SR71 is now totally declassified apart from two 'sensors' which are still in operational use on something, somewhere and that a lot of their time was spent simply frustrating the 'bad guys' into giving away their secrets by screaming over at M 3.2 (where the aircraft was happiest) and FL800 where as you all know, nothing could touch them, so they gathered what data (I get the impression it was predominately data) and images they could and then went elsewhere rapidly! Hearing talk of putting in the burners and leaving them there for the next 80 mins in full re-heat until it was time to descend to find a tanker was fascinating; still the only afterburning engine certified to do so apparently. He spoke very highly of the tanker crews who he said never let them down and often put themselves in harms way, I guess entering dodgy wx and going across dodgy borders to get the job done.
For the duration of each mission, it was likely only 10-15 people knew they were airborne and above FL600 where nothing was in their way (U2 excepted) everything was switched off, ie VHF/UHF etc. So if they went down somewhere a little unwelcoming it was end game and they knew it. Always two crews ready for each mission in case anyone had a problem on the pre-flight medical and so on and as a crew they stuck together, no changes with driver/rear ever.
Col Graham is an excellent speaker, maybe not such an easy thing when in your seventies and will be a very hard act to follow next month. I didn't get to ask if he'd ever been lost at Mach 3 but I guess he would have said well I wasn't, but the RSO might have been so I decided not to be cheeky...
I highly recommend 'Flying the SR71 Blackbird' written by this chap. Well worth a look.
Apologies if I taught any egg sucking - just trying to give a broad overview for all.
Last edited by Paracab; 12th Sep 2016 at 22:37.