In this article:
The Blackbird
During its career, the SR-71 Blackbird gathered intelligence in some of the world’s most hostile environments.
Throughout its nearly 24-year career, the SR-71 remained the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour.
The SR-71 was conceived to operate at extreme velocities, altitudes and temperatures: actually it was the first aircraft constructed with titanium, as the friction caused by air molecules passing over its surface at Mach 2.6 would melt a conventional aluminum frame.
Its engineering was so cutting edge that even the tools to build the SR-71 needed to be designed from scratch.
The first man picked for the SR-71 program
The mission of the SR-71 was to take photographs, to use its sensors to pick up electronic surveillance. To safely navigate close to the enemy’s border. The Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO) handled all of that and more.
The RSO was the Officer in the SR-71 that, ran the checklist for the Pilot. He had to know his job and the Pilot’s job. He did the Navigation in the SR-71 if the Pilot had to make an emergency landing, which happened more often than you would think he would ask his RSO’s “Where am I landing?” and get the exact coordination from him.
Before the SR-71 was taken out for its first flight, the cockpit was rearranged. It was very expensive to rearrange this cockpit but simply it wasn’t functional.
My father, then Captain Richard “Butch” Sheffield, was the first man picked for the SR-71 program. Colonel Doug Nelson hired him away from the B-58 program. He had a perfect bomb run record after flying the B-58 for five years.
After leaving Little Rock Air Force Base (AFB) arriving at Beale AFB in California, my father was then sent down to Southern California. He went to flight test school at Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA the class was taught on the top floor by a Lockheed employee and Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich.
Rearranging the SR-71 RSO cockpit
Dad, Coz Mallozzi and Tom Schmittou (the first three RSOs chosen for the program), did not like what they saw in the RSO Cockpit hence it was rearranged. It was very expensive to rearrange the cockpit but simply it wasn’t functional. So my father, Schmittou, and Mallozzi demanded that they had to redo the cockpit otherwise the program probably would’ve failed….and they did.
The following story is a small portion from my Dad Colonel Richard “Butch” Sheffield’s book Ohio to Supersonic: Flying the SR-71 Blackbird to the secret world of the Skunk Works.
‘While attending class at the Skunk Works, I saw the insides of the Navigators’ (later the RSO cockpit) of the SR-71, I asked one of the Lockheed SW engineers who designed the layout, and his response was, “NO ONE.” He went on to say, Kelly told us to put the instruments “anywhere they would fit.” What a mess! Airspeed indicators were on one side, attitude indicators were on the other, altimeter gauges were in the middle, and we couldn’t even tell what time it was. It was a nightmare. We, the first three SAC Navigators who were headed for Edwards, Beale and back to Strategic Air Command (SAC) went to see test force personnel who could see we were upset at the lack of design for the RSO human factors layout.
Funds to rearrange the RSO cockpit
‘They said that it would cost money to rearrange the RSO backseat. We said that the SAC crews would not sign off on this type of cockpit arrangement. When they saw that we were serious and would hang tough, they gave us a phone number in Washington, D.C. to ask for help obtaining the funds to rearrange the cockpit. We made a classified call and the person on the other end of the line listened and said, “I will tell the Skunk Works (SW) to do as you say”.
‘The person I was talking too was Tom Jones and he was in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) program “D” office in Washington.
‘NOTE: IN 1976-1979, TOM AND I WORKED TOGETHER IN THE PENTAGON WHEN I WAS CHAIRMAN OF THE SPECIAL RECONNAISSANCE GROUP (SRG). THE SRG HAD REPLACED THE NRO PROGRAM “D”.’
Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Twitter Page Habubrats SR-71 and Facebook Page Born into the Wild Blue Yonder for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.
Photo credit: U.S. Air Force
