You’re looking at the business end of a Lockheed M-21 Blackbird engine, currently on display at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, a place I first visited this week and which I cannot recommend enough.
They have a real Blackbird cockpit on the floor next to the M-21 that you can climb into, shake the stick around, and make whooshing noises with your mouth to augment the ones coming from a little speaker. Even though all the instrument and control panels were cover in thick plexiglass, my heart still raced as I pretended I was cruising at Mach 3.
If you can, peek into the second hatch and take a look at the screen the drone operator would have used. (I am presuming the whole rig is from another M-21, but maybe it was an A-12 or SR-71.) I don’t know what would be more scary: doing Mach 3 while able to see where you’re going, or only being able to look out from tiny windows on the sides.
My love affair with planes goes way back, and upon moving to Seattle 3 years ago I was thrilled to learn we have such a great air museum in our region. Now, if only there were a world-class dinosaur museum.
Hey, why the hell is there no dino museum here? Doesn’t Bill Gates have some leftover money to throw at one?
Awesome stuff.
My wife and I recently visited the Stephen F. Udvar Hazy Center in VA. where they have a blackbird on display.
)
(No touchie though it’s smack dab center when you walk in, and they do have talks there very much closer than you would normally get.
Theirs broke world speed records flying from CA., where it landed at Dulles and they taxied it to the museum to hand ‘em the keys via an access road made for the purpose.
I made a point of looking into the business end of those incredible engines and it’s an awesome sight.
That and being nose to nose with the Shuttle Enterprise were two visceral experiences of many at that fine museum.
Two days of awesome for the two of us.
I grew up an Air Force brat, and spent a lot of time getting impromptu tours of flightlines and military jets; I even got to sit in a few (the FB-111′s cockpit is truly amazing), and crawled in beside the boom operator in a KC-135 once to watch him refuel a B-52 in the air. I haven’t been lucky enough to sit in even an amputated SR-71 cockpit (would LOVE to!), but I did get up close to the one sitting on the display grounds at Marshall Space Flight Center. I don’t think most people realize just how small an SR-71 really is. It is truly the exotic sportscar of jet aircraft. The pilot is surrounded by the canopy so closely that it’s hard to imagine being able to turn your head without rubbing your helmet against it. In the variants with a back seat, THAT space is even more cramped. This is not an aircraft for claustrophobic pilots. In relation to the size and weight of the airframe, the engines are absolutely monstrous.
What an amazing aircraft for anyone lucky enough to play pilot.
SR-71A, tail number 61-17977, lost October 10, 1968 at Beale Air Force Base. RSO ejected, pilot stayed with aircraft; both survived.
-=TT=-
What stuns me is that the SR-71 was designed by guys with sliderules.
…What pisses me off is that the Blackbird, inarguably the pinnacle of manned flight is relegated to collecting dust instead of still pushing the envelopes to their limits. AKA the “Habu”, this was the Skunk Works and Kelly Johnson’s Magnum Opus, and deserves to still be flying a half-century after its conception. Those responsible for grounding it have truly earned their place in Hell.
“(No touchie though it’s smack dab center when you walk in, and they do have talks there very much closer than you would normally get.
)”
…One of the reasons for the “no touchie” rule lies in a rather shocking fact about the titanium alloy skin of the Blackbird. If you take a Sharpie(*), draw a circle in it, and go to lunch, by the time you finish lunch and go to the can afterwards, you’ll find that the ink from the Sharpie will have eaten through the skin and cut a nice hole in it. During the development of the A-12, a Skunk Works engineer had drawn such a circle on one of the wings to denote where a sensor was to be attached for first flight tests, and much to everyone’s surprise the chemicals in the ink were caustic with regards to titanium.
(*) Side note: all associated with the various Blackbird programs over the life of the design have been mum on whether it was actually a Sharpie that was the marker used in this incident, especially since the incident reportedly took place in 1962 while Sharpies didn’t hit the market until 1964. Best guess has been that the marker brand in question was Marks-A-Lot, but like Tabasco, Sharpie has become the “generic” name for a “magic marker”.
And also of some historical note (to me, anyway), was that I saw a Blackbird fly at an airshow in the late 70s. We lived in SoCal and made the airshow rounds every year. One year, they featured a Blackbird flyby landing, ‘chutes and all, at March AFB.
@#2, Is the Hazy Center the same facility that used to be called Silver Hill? I remember going there in about 1978 or so, and we had to pre-book a private tour. It was (is?) the staging and restoration facility for the Nat’l Air & Space Museum. Saw the Enola Gay in pieces, as well as many other historical wonders.
I’m calling BS on #6. I make fighting robots with titanium parts, and I’ve noticed no such effect.
Here’s mine, shot at the Strategic Air and Space Museum at Ashland, NE. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mforeman/419635840/sizes/m/in/set-72157594585537345/ Really nice collection, active restorations ongoing.
That plane is AMAZING in person. Definately woth checking out. I’ve got a bunch of photo too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96804092@N00/sets/72157617620947192/
Used to watch them takeoff and land @ Kadena AB in the early-mid 80′s. Amazing planes and loud as hell on the ground.