On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:09:50 -0400, Venik wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote:
On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 06:02:23 -0400, Venik wrote:

The fact that it happend a grand total of ONCE and it took six of the
USSR's top of the line interceptors to do it makes your claim that it
was the reason for the SR-71's retirement pretty weak.

It happened once that we know of and, apparently, it was enough.


Your logic escapes me. It happened once and four YEARS later the
SR-71 gets retired therefore once caused the other? That would be
like trying to blame the implosion of the USSR on the Stalin Purges.
So instead of continuing to say "ya huh" how about showing us some
evidence there is a correlation? The fact of the matter is that even
if six Foxhounds pulled up alongside the Blackbird (in a Mig pilot's
wildest dreams) they couldn't do a damn thing in international
airspace without causeing a stink that would make KAL 007 look like a
fender-bender. And both sides knew it.








SR-71's
missions were planned farther and farther from the Soviet airspace
because of the MiG threat. And the number of MiGs needed to intercept
the SR-71 is not really relevant - it's an interceptor designed to
operate in groups. Not like the US had any great number of Blackbirds
anyway.

Well 50. AFAIK that's more than the number of Blackjacks produced.





There are accounts of SR-71s flying *directly over* SA-5 sites. In
other countries.

Exactly my point.

And what would that be? That an SA-5 COULDN'T bring down a Blackbird?