Paracab, thanks for your recap of what's always a fascinating subject.
I'm not sure of the context of this statement:
For the duration of each mission, it was likely only 10-15 people knew they were airborne...
but taken literally the number was certainly far higher than that. It took a large number of people to prepare the crew and the aircraft for flight. Tanker support was the norm, and often involved multiple refuelings. SR-71s (and the intelligence products they enabled) were valuable assets and considerable external efforts were devoted to help ensure every mission's safety and success. Two guys with their space-suited butts on the line, but a big team behind them. On the other side, frustrated bad guys in large numbers along the mission route were routinely aware of its presence. Adding those factors together, I think a good argument could be made that, on a per-flight basis, an SR-71 attracted more total attention than any other aircraft.
SSD - The "dipsy doodle" was simply the most efficient means of transiting a high-drag region 1400+ kts below the normal operational speed for which the aircraft was optimized. No shame in that!