SR-71

Been lurking and not posting but think this will be of interest to
all.

Wheee. Look at the numbers )

Big John
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FLYING THE SR-71 AT A "LEISURELY CRUISE" OF M3.0+ AT FL800

An SR-71 flight in the 1973 Yom Kippur War
by Col. Jim Wilson, USAF (ret.)

On Oct 6th 1973, the armies of Egypt and Syria opened an offensive
against Israel on two fronts, launching a coordinated series of air,
armored and artillery attacks across the Suez Canal into the Sinai and
on the Golan Heights. The preemptive strike came as a result of a
failure to resolve territorial disputes arising from the Arab-Israeli
War of 1967.
These disputes involved the return of the Sinai to Egypt and the
return of the Golan Heights to Syria. UN Resolution 242 and Egyptian
President Sadat's peace initiative failed to bring peace. Sadat
wanted to sign an agreement with Israel provided the Israelis returned
all the occupied territories, but Israel refused to withdraw to the
pre-1967 armistice lines. Since no diplomatic progress was being made
toward peace, Sadat was convinced that to change things and gain
legitimacy at home, he must initiate a war with limited objectives.

Along the Suez Canal, 80,000 well-equipped members of the Egyptian
army who had crossed the Suez on rapidly constructed pontoon bridges
attacked fewer than 500 Israeli defenders. In the Golan Heights
approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian
tanks. Initial Israeli military losses were significant and assistance
was requested from the USA.
National reconnaissance satellites did not have the capability at the
time to provide the intelligence that was needed to sufficiently
assess the situation. The 9th SRW at Beale AFB, CA was alerted to
prepare to fly SR-71 missions from Beale AFB, over the area of
conflict and recover at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, England, a
mission within the design capability of the aircraft, although a long
and logistically difficult mission never accomplished before in an
operational environment.

Within the first few days of the conflict the supporting Arab nations
initiated an oil embargo, making oil a weapon of war and contributing
to a decision by the British government to deny approval to use
Mildenhall as a recovery base.

Plan B was rapidly drawn up to fly the SR-71 out of Griffiss AFB New
York, through the area of conflict and recover back at Griffiss. These
never before accomplished 12,000 mile missions would require five air
to air refuelings, the deployment of sixteen KC-135Q supporting
tankers with special JP-7 fuel to Spain and a specialized maintenance,
intelligence and operational support planning staff to Griffiss. The
9th SRW was well prepared and in utmost secrecy the forces were
mobilized and deployed. The first mission was successfully completed
on Oct 13th.
I was a fairly young pilot in the squadron at the time, with only one
operational tour and about 120 hours of SR-71 time under my belt. On
Oct 20th I was assigned to fly a backup SR-71 from Beale to Griffiss
and to stay at Griffiss in an alert posture, prepared to fly follow-on
missions. We flew successful missions on Oct 25th and Nov 2 where I
served as backup pilot.

My turn as primary came up on Nov 11th. The excitement level was
high, as I certainly wanted to be part of the Air Force and the Wing
success in completing the mission as tasked.
Takeoff was at 2AM on a brisk and clear autumn night with about
fifteen inches of snow already on the ground. It was peacefully
calm---until I lit each of the 34,000 lb thrust afterburners. The
first 450 miles had to be flown subsonic at .9 Mach, since we had to
clear the commercial aircraft flight tracks out of Boston and New York
to Europe before we could safely conduct air-refueling operations.
Radio silent electronic rendezvous with three tankers, 250 miles out
over the North Atlantic at 3AM went well, as did the 70,000 lb (10,600
gallons) fuel offload.
You don't know the true meaning of dark until you've been in a
situation like this. We likened it to refueling in an inkwell. After
completing a few post refueling checks, I lit the afterburners and
started my acceleration to a leisurely Mach 3 cruise across the
Atlantic. The airplane performed flawlessly, thanks to the extra
special effort by the maintenance guys. About 2000 miles across the
Atlantic on an easterly heading I watched with excitement as the sun
peeked over the horizon and came up right in my face, in about a
minute and a half, a nice vantage point for viewing this daily event.

The second refueling was conducted in daylight, a couple hundred miles
north of the Azores. This was another 70,000 lb offload, 35,000 lbs
from each of two tankers while the airborne spare tanker was not
needed. I started my second acceleration and headed for the straits
of Gibraltar. Cruising through the center of the narrow straits at
80,000 feet with clear weather 100 miles on both sides providing quite
a spectacular view.

As we proceeded down the Mediterranean toward the mid-east the weather
grew gradually worse, as forecast. The third air refueling south of
Crete, although in poor weather, went as scheduled. After packing in a
full load of 80,000 lbs of JP-7 fuel, I lit the afterburners and
started the acceleration toward the target area.

At .98 Mach, just prior to going supersonic, maximum fuel flow in full
afterburner, a red engine oil quantity low light illuminated steady on
my emergency warning annunciator panel. I stared at it in almost
disbelief, while scanning engine instruments, oil pressure, rpm,
exhaust gas temperature, nozzle position for other indications of
trouble. Although there were no confirming indications of problems, I
couldn't just ignore the situation and continue on into the target
area with the possibility of an engine failure at supersonic speed
over the Sinai. We had no viable emergency airfields and I did not
want to be a no-notice, no-flight plan, single engine emergency
arrival at David Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, especially since the
Israeli government had not been informed in advance about the missions
and they were in a battle for survival.

To my pleasant surprise, a few seconds after coming out of afterburner
the red emergency warning light went out. I was by now fairly well
convinced that it was a false momentary indication, but it had cost me
2500 lbs of critically needed fuel. My tankers were now 80 miles
behind me heading further away. Getting rejoined to top off with fuel
would present a new set of problems. I decided to light the burners
and press on. Except for a 5 second flash during acceleration I never
saw the light again.

My flight track went down the Suez canal past Cairo before making a
left turn at Mach 3.15 to the north across the battle lines in the
Sinai. I continued on a northerly course across the Dead Sea and over
the center of the Golan Heights with the panoramic and point cameras
providing imagery of hundreds of targets on both sides of the
aircraft. Approaching the Lebanon border I made a sweeping right turn
out over Syria and then back into the Sinai on a parallel flight path
for maximum coverage. The airplane was running well and I pushed it up
a bit to Mach 3.2 before exiting the area near Port Said.

Once out over the Mediterranean I started a descent to 25,000 feet for
my fourth refueling. As fate would have it, not only was I low on fuel
because of my previous oil low warning problem, but also a
thunderstorm had moved in over the scheduled air refueling contact
point. My Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO) using electronic
azimuth and distance measuring equipment got me to within less than a
mile behind my tanker, but the visibility was so poor that I couldn't
see the tanker. We continued 20 miles down track in lousy weather with
only one half-mile and 1000 feet separation before a small break in
the clouds permitted hookup. When we made contact and started
transferring fuel I had less than 15 minutes of fuel remaining and was
75 miles from the closest straight in emergency-landing runway on
Crete.

We completed a fifth 70,000lb air refueling near the Azores before the
leisurely Mach 3 flight across the mid Atlantic with a landing at
Seymour Johnson AFB North Carolina. We were met by 9th SRW download
crews who had the photo and electronic intelligence equipment
downloaded and on a dedicated AF courier flight to Washington DC and
the National Photo Interpretation Center within twenty minutes. The
flight covered 12,181 miles in 10 hours 49 minutes and included 6
hours 41 minutes of supersonic time and 5 air refuelings. After
landing, I remember wondering what Charles Lindberg would have thought
about the advancement of aviation technology in less than 50 years.
The 9th SRW was tasked to fly nine missions of this type and completed
them all successfully.

The missions were not declassified until the early 1990's when the
SR-71 program was closed as a result of the end of the Cold War. The
airplanes are all in museums now, with tail number 964, the one I flew
that day, as the centerpiece at the Strategic Air and Space museum
near Omaha, Nebraska.
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(This article originally appeared in the McClellan Aviation Museum
Foundations newsletter 'CONTACT' and appears again here with
permission of Colonel Jim Wilson, USAF (retired), former Blackbird
pilot and now a member of the Board of Directors of that Museum. The
photograph of his aircraft appears courtesy of Lockheed-Martin
Aircraft).