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A little video that brings a tear to the eye


GentlemanJim

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That was waaaaay cool. :cheers:

Scott

In the early 70's I saw a couple take off out of Kadena on Okinawa. They were kept in an isolated part of the field that I heard was called the Habu Pit. It was incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen a B-52 and a B-1 takeoff ,but an SR-71 would be a whole different experience.

Scott

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That was waaaaay cool. :cheers:

Scott

In the early 70's I saw a couple take off out of Kadena on Okinawa. They were kept in an isolated part of the field that I heard was called the Habu Pit. It was incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've seen a B-52 and a B-1 takeoff ,but an SR-71 would be a whole different experience.

Scott

It's LOUD!!!! Worked the flightline at Mildenhall when we had the SR-71 there. Thing could rattle the teeth out of your head on take off.

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I got to see them up close at Kadina...What a machine :cheers:

Every now and the one would take off in a hurry with several stages of afterburn :surprise:

They looked like a needle in the sky...and the locals there did call them the Habu.

My boss and I used to watch them regular...thats why he sent me the link.

I miss those days...and people :wub:

Jim

Edited by GentlemanJim
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I had a commander that was a back seater in them for quite some time and then was the base commander at Beale. Many of the facts from Jim's link are exactly the same as the stories he told us. One time I asked him if he'd been shot at by SAM's and he sort of chuckled and said "well, I saw the lights indicating that we'd been shot at plenty of times, but never once did a missile get close enough for us to see it". He said that some of the pilots had been known to slow down to let a missile get closer and then accelerate away as the missile ran out of fuel. One pilot he flew with had a habit of flying straight and level for over 100mi when overflying Red Square, then he'd make a big 180 and leave from the exact direction that they'd come, but added one little annoying thing for the Soviet's.....he'd dump fuel (the fuel dump vent/drain is in the center of the tail cone) for a few seconds and then light the afterburners and leave a flaming streak miles long as they went back over Red Square :roflol:

I do recall he said that each airplane had it's own personality and some were great, some good and one or two really annoying. One was such a hanger queen that the AF told Lockheed to come get it because it was more trouble than it was worth. Hell, they grew something like 18" in length when they got up to normal temperature...yikes!

They used to have one on static display at Lackland (might still) and I spent quite a bit of time walking around and just staring....just flipping amazing.

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In our country's current situation it is nice to remember a time when we had some balls. It was a comfort growing up under President Reagan and benifiting from projects like this one. Change?...keep it

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Nice one Jim. :cheers:

When I was still a teenager (like 25 yrs ago <_< ) I once worked helping setup and tear-down the tents at the Dayton Air Show, and while we were tearing everything down the SR-71 made 3 successive flyovers, each one lower and lower to the ground until finally on the 3rd pass he broke the sound barrier (I guess) because there was a BOOM so loud it actually knocked us down.

:rolleyes: Now THATS what I call FUN! :cheers:

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In our country's current situation it is nice to remember a time when we had some balls. It was a comfort growing up under President Reagan and benifiting from projects like this one. Change?...keep it

Many folks suspect that the reason the SR-71 was retired was that there is something else vastly more capable that has replaced it ;)

Putting 2 and 2 and 2 together I got 6 and think that there's something to that theory...I was in the USAF in a unit that required ridiculous clearances (typical time to get them was 18mos) so we sorta got folks with rather "unique" backgrounds. That, plus a few interesting construction projects (read really, really, really long runways in some places) make me a little more than suspicious. There's more, but I think it's all too coincidental to be crazy. R,

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