Great read!

http://gizmodo.com/5950763/holy-fcklook ... socialflow

I had no idea they made that many! Amazing to think it dates from the same time as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Cortina

I love aircraft ,,and those thing's are spectacular said you could feel the heat off them 20 feet away for an hour after landing,,

Geeks! Lol.

You'd all love it at my work at the mo, as there is a multi-national "air warfare" exercise on. Loads of aircraft of all types keeping me awake, the noisy bastards!!

Those are the most awesomest jets ever made. I don't think any jet made today even compares in the speed and altitude the SR-71 could reach. The U2 probably can reach similar altitude, but is much slower. Maybe someday someone will build a scramjet, but until then SR-71 will reign supreme.

Excellent read!

Thanks Klink!

Your timeline's are a bit off,,,,the "first" blackbird,,,then called the A12, was designed in the late 50's and first flew in 1962, with it's first mission flown in 1964 over SE Asia,,,after those first mission's it was given the SR-71 designation with the upgrades it had recieved due to those mission's,,,the first "jet" powered bomber that went into service in 1947 was the B47 wich flew until being replaced by the B52 which in turn had been under development since 1954 and didn't go into service with SAC until 1961-1962,,I grew up with relative's that worked at a SAC base in northern Maine,,,Loring,,,my uncle's farm was right on the aprroach to the base,with the stratofortress flying over almost daily at very "low" and slow altitudes,,like a couple of thousand feet or less, along with F111's,,pretty awesome watching them getting refueled in air and heading off to their mission's to the north,,,,,, the C130 has been in service since 1956 and had "Allison" engines that were upgraded then replaced with more modern design's since that time,,,can't kill off a good overall design,,,,

Apparently we are all keen.....

In the words of a since deceased scholar...."Can't we all just get along?"

None of it would have happened without this man:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Whittle

we have one about 7 miles from our house here in front of the aviation museum. awesome to see one that close.

You guys'll love this one then..

http://wesclark.com/burbank/sr_71.html

Blackbird had a little brother - its unmanned drone ship the D-21 a mach 3+ UAV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21



originally designed to be launched from the M-21 a prototype SR-71 but this did not go so well and resulted in a mach 3.3 collision between the drone and tail of the mother aircraft..... resulting in a Mach 3 ejection for the crew



Subsequent launches were carried out from a B-52 and it completed 4 missions over china before the program was scrapped due to unreliability. One of these missions the drone went off course and failed to self destruct until well into russia where it was swept up and reverse engineered by the tupolev although they never actually built their own copy.

Never seen this thing,,,,kinda like a "pre Aurora" craft,,,to go faster than SR-71,,,,,thing's I've read about Aurora have mentioned about the pilot lying in a "inverted flight position" (lying down flat) looking into a monitor for forward vision,,,seem's in that position the human body can better take the G forces without blacking out,,,they could also be pilotless,,,,where G"s won't matter ,,,,,can only speculate on all this however,,,someday we will know,,

What the hell is this flying over the UK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)