Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
I would love to make a jump from 78,000 feet, but not by being ripped out of the aircraft at Mach 3.2!
Being in the superior protection of the suits the SR-71 pilots wore was likely the reason he lived to tell the tale…the suits they wore were more like spacesuits than the standard aviation issue.
I have no flying experience to relate to this BUT I had my pickup truck rolled by another driver who hit me at over 75 mph once….The quote from the SR-71 pilot ” From that point, I was just along for the ride.” rings a bell. Once I got hit, all four tires lost adhesion with the ground and I too was just along for the ride.
The witness who saw it happen told me that my pick up truck rolled end-over-end at least 3 times (he said maybe as many as five times) but he wasn’t really trying to count…
By sheer luck I rolled into a completely open area in the median and after being tossed around inside my truck like a ping-pong ball in a coffee can, the truck came to rest…All the window were blown out and the only piece of the truck that was left intact was the part I was sitting in…all other areas of the truck had been completely compacted. Saftey Lesson kids – WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT…it saved my life that day.
I got up, and walked away from the wreck to the total astonishment of the first responder who taking a look at my truck stated, ” We usually only get dead bodies out of wrecks this bad.”
This wreck occurred 3 days after I had gotten back from my first tour of the Middle East. I survived one of the most dangerous places in the world, and almost got squashed like a bug less than 10 miles from home by another driver who was likley putting on her make-up or yakking on her cell phone while driving..go figure.
I hope that I’m not repeating myself, but the SR-71 would be an amazing aircraft if it was just unveiled. The fact that it is over 40 yeas old is almost unbelievable. I still remember the televised pres conference where LBJ announced its existence. That’s the moment it became SR instead of RS. The AF change its name rather than embarrass the Prez.
“press” that is, and “were just unveiled”. I always see my typos a second too late.
When I got to my first joint penance job (DIA) in the early 90′s, the SR-71 had just been mothballed (except for the NASA birds) and the AF was trying to do the same to the U-2. Fortunately, they didn’t succeed. Here’s the memo (signed by Dick Cheney)that killed the SR-71:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB74/U2-48.pdf
(see also: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB74/#docs)
and more on the A-12 Oxcart (predecessor to the SR-71):
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/a12.html#
w/r, SJS
Keep and eye on the History channel for the Great Planes epsiode on that fine pice of machinery. I just watched it last week after it had been sitting on the DVR for a few weeks.
And, as a bonus, I now know there is one sitting at the air museum outside the gates of Langley AFB in Hampton, VA. Wasn’t there 11 years ago….
SK1 that wasn’t you rolling down the 101 just north of Santa Barbara was it? The truck roll was amazing to watch but that the dog in the pickup bed got out alive, unhurt and barking up a frenzy…that was amazing. Talk about thrown for a loop!
I read the article a while back–can’t remember where. Always wondered why, considering the speed & alt at which ejections might occur, they didn’t try to mimic the all-in-one clam-shell cockpit/escape capsule which the supersonic B-58 Hustler used to mitigate against hi-speed, hi-alt. ejections. I’d guess it was tot weight restrictions and also resultant fore-aft CG problems inclusion of such a capsule would bring that precluded this, but who knows?
What VX said; those were my questions. Saw the clam shell once at the Pima museum and wondered if it really worked at Mach+. As a buddy once said, you only eject when you know you’re gonna die anyway.
Mongo/
Thinking harder now to recall. IIRC they had some problems with the sys. I think there was one ejection in which either the chute or the bags (ex or internal–don’t remember which) didn’t work as advertised in the front 2 shells and both Pilot & BN were KIA–3rd capsule worked, I think, and WSO/ECM guy survived. (Crew members had to be of a build conformal forht/wt to shell, btw) There is a SUPER COMPREHENSIVE write-up on the ac @
http://www. aviation-history.com/convair/b58.html
But doesn’t mention crash records.
Every time I read about an SR-71 escapade and it’s retirement I wonder…. “If the plane was that good, and it was retired, what do we have now that we don’t know about?” That is the problem with wizbang secrets. If *I* know about them, they are not a secret.
I was awaiting a Space A hop at Kadena in 1975…heading home from 1/c cruise. It was sunset. Some big a$$ black plane just roared down the runway with two white hot cones protruding from the back end. I say: “What was that?” The AF guy standing near me said “You didn’t see anything.” ‘Nuff said…
TRY again:
http://www.aviation-histort.com/convair/b58.html
AGAIN! (Geeze, I’m not even hittin’ the bottle–probably the problem..)
http://www.aviation-history.com/convair/b58.html
Reality is a state of mind caused by alcohol deprivation. Clearly, VX, your problem has reached clinical proportions
Amazing story. I’m not sure if I would’ve climbed back in another one just 2 weeks later.
I was at Edwards AFB (sidebar for USAF/NASA plane pr0n: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18842924@N03/sets/72157622623534464/) this past weekend for their open house, and Sled driver Brian Shul was there selling and signing his books. Brian flew in Viet Nam, was a Sled pilot, and later flew with the Blue Angels AND Thunderbirds–who else has done all that? Anyhow, he has a treasure trove of SR-71 stories and photos in his books ‘Sled Driver’ and ‘The Untouchables.’
Yikes, dorked up the link, try this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18842924@N03/sets/72157622623534464/
Dude flew the run over Libya in 86, too…just before we bombed them.
The author also teaches at the National Test Pilot School where I’ve been for the past three weeks. We were in danger of getting weathered out for our final project flight (OT&E course) and were told that Bill would fill the time with SR-71 stories and a formal presentation. This would have been a double win as if we didn’t get the flights in that day we would have been exempted from the 30 page interim test report as well. Unfortunately, the bkn layer broke up and we ended up flying and missing out on the Habu presentation:( Can’t win ‘em all.
The Orbital L-1011 is parked on the same ramp as NTPS…it’s a neat concept launching sats from an 30 year old airframe. KMHV is the most fascinating airport (spaceport if you ask the locals) I’ve ever been to. An eclectic mix of the antique and the bleeding edge. I shared the traffic pattern with White Knight 2 on my last day…’twas very cool.
Luck is one of those things we cannot quantify, we cannot isolate, the best we can do is come up with quaint sayings like God looks out for drunks and Irishmen or calculate the chances of what we just saw happening and then click in amazement when we ponder the odds.
Being ejected at Mach 3.2 and surviving is amazing.
So is being six months old, in your stroller, and run over by a train.
Spoiler alert! The kid lives, but if you’re a parent you may not wish to watch the video.
http://www.examiner.com/x-25310-Little-Rock-Pop-Culture-Examiner%7Ey2009m10d16-VIDEO-Baby-hit-by-train-and-survives
There are some who would opine of these incidents that “God had a plan other than you dying that day.” I’m kind of wondering what the aetheist, scientific-method, calculate-the-odds crowd thinks on the matter, because near as I can tell unless you believe in miracles neither of these could have actually happened let alone have had survivors.
I’m not a particularly God-fearing, Sunday-go-to-Meeting, on-my-knees-at-bedtime kind of guy, but even I might come to the conclusion that if there are angels looking over us there are two in need of vacation and overtime compensation after these incidents. And my belief in angels looking over us just went up a tad.
– Max
“catastrophic departure from controlled flight”
Almost British in it’s understatement, isn’t it?
More commonly known as an “aww s**ttt!” kinda moment.