Skunk Works

The Blackbirds flew 3,500 operational sorties over Vietnam and other hostile countries, had more than one hundred SAM SA-2 missiles fired at them over the years, and retired gracefully in 1990 after twenty-four years of service as the only military airplane never to be shot down or lose a single crewman to enemy fire. Which was truly amazing because the Blackbird and its crews continuously drew the most dangerous missions. At such tremendous flying speeds, the margin for judgmental or mechanical error was zero, and at times crews flew fourteen-hour round-trip flights more than half-way around the world, from their base in Okinawa, for example, to the Persian Gulf, providing fast, urgently needed intelligence estimates on missile emplacements along the Iranian coast.

The complexity and duration of some of these missions defied belief—with ten or more air refuel rendezvous strung out along the tens of thousands of miles of the typical long-range Blackbird route. One screwup could result in tanks going dry, a crashed airplane, and a lost crew. But it never happened. Not once during a total of 65 million miles of flying, mostly at three times the speed of sound.

Like the U-2, the Blackbird was not an easy airplane to fly. It demanded a pilot’s total concentration and was unforgiving of even smallish mistakes. The recollections of pilots and crews attest to the awe and challenge of flying at speeds almost beyond human comprehension. Personnel were assigned to the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing out of Beale Air Force Base, near Sacramento, California, composed of thirteen two-man crews flying nine active Blackbirds and supported closely by a fleet of twenty-five KC-135s, the huge fuel tankers that fanned out across the world to rendezvous with thirsty Blackbirds for air-to-air refueling. The crews who flew these missions were selected by SAC from the top of their list: of the first ten pilots chosen, nine ultimately became generals. To a man, all the pilots and their Reconnaissance Systems Officers (RSOs) in the second cockpit regarded their tours as members of the elite Blackbird unit as the highlight of their Air Force careers.