I met and chatted with an SR71 driver once for about an
hour at Mildenhall, England. His face was disfigured from some kind of
burns incident, would that be the face-distortion you're talking about?

Marc was not speaking about Brian Shul as you might have thought...Brian did
sustain burns from a T-28 he was flying for Air America......Marc was talking
about John Stapp when he face was distorted during his deceleration tests on
the rocket sleds.


As to the pilots of the SR calling them sleds...this term actually came from
the U-2 drivers talking "down" in a teasing way about then SR's. A bunch of
the SR drivers still won't call them sleds.