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The Blackbird
The SR-71, unofficially known as the “Blackbird,” was a long-range, Mach 3+, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft.
The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., in January 1966.
The Blackbird was in a different category from anything that had come before. “Everything had to be invented. Everything,” Skunk Works legendary aircraft designer Kelly Johnson recalled in an interesting article appeared on Lockheed Martin website.
The speed of the SR-71 exceeded 2,000 mph. Other planes of the era could, in theory, approximate that speed but only in short, after-burner-driven bursts. The Blackbird maintained a record-setting speed for hours at a time. At such velocity, friction with the atmosphere generates temperatures that would melt the conventional airframe.
Two Buick Nailhead V8 engines to start the Blackbird Mach 3+ plane
When Kelly Johnson was designing the A-12/YF-12 /M-21 and SR-71 he didn’t want the weight to be added for a starter on the airplane. He said the more it weights the more fuel it will need. It was decided that two Buick Nailhead V8 engines would be able to do the job.
Not only starting the Blackbird, the fastest airplane in the world, was exciting, but also sounded like the Indianapolis 500 was getting the SR-71 ready to fly thanks to the two V8 engines.
As already explained, for this purpose alone, two of either above-mentioned Nailhead V8s were fused together via a common transmission and drive shaft to work in tandem, then placed inside a metal housing mounted on four wheels with a trailer hitch and dubbed the AG330 “start cart.” The resulting Chimera was attached directly to the Blackbird’s two engines.
However, no one imagined that the SR-71 start cart would have been used to awake someone.
Using the SR-71 start cart (featuring 2 V8 engines) to wake up a maintainer
Everyone connected with the SR 71 program was highly motivated. But as in any organization, there’s always one who is the exception to the rule.
‘I am not naming any names,’ S/Sergeant Skip Hosler, former SR-71 crew chief, explains in Paul Crickmore‘s latest book “Lockheed Blackbird Beyond the Secret Missions. ‘We had this one guy on the SR flight line maintenance swing shift that we could never find when we had work for him to do, so one night, we started searching. We pushed open an AFT (back) blow in the door near the engine exhaust.
‘There, he was sleeping with the exhaust plug pulled in.
‘So, we had a good idea: let’s get a Buick start cart. We hooked it up, hit the starter, put the throttle fully down, and then up a couple of times. The problem was solved. The sleepy guy came flying out of his hideaway.’
This is what a start cart sounds like.
Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Twitter X Page Habubrats SR-71, Instagram Page SR71Habubrats and Facebook Page Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder Habubrats for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.
Photo credit: John Freedman and User:Jaydec via Wikipedia
