How Was The Blackbirds Program Kept Secret?

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In the 1960s, secrecy, ingenuity and cooperation resulted in a series of airplanes that were invulnerable missiles, because they could outrun them. The best video on YouTube about the SR-71 and the rest of the Blackbird family, is #NotWhatYouThink #NWYT #longs

Music:
Are You Ready - Philip Ayers
Lead - Farrell Wooten
Family Badass - Rockin' For Decades
Flightmode - Chris Shards
This Is Not It - Philip Ayers
Hiding in the Shadows - Experia
Stellar Minds - DEX 1200
Cloak - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
What We Discovered - Philip Ayers
Solve It - Max Anson
There Is No Sequel - Philip Ayers
Torpedo - Tigerblood Jewel
One Last Drama - Philip Ayers
Sidelined - Dip Diet
Full Cycle - Jon Sumner

Footage:
Select images/videos from Getty Images
Shutterstock Enterprise
Videoblocks
Russian Ministry of Defense
National Archives
NASA
US Department of Defense

Note: "The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement."

REFERENCES:

00:00 What's inside the box?
1:33 The Blackbird Family
3:36 Play War Thunder
4:58 Why were the Blackbirds built?
6:38 The Blackbird's performance
9:30 The Engineering Challenges of the Blackbirds
13:11 The Engines that powered the Blackbirds
15:19 Why did the SR-71 Blackbird leak fuel?
18:36 Blackbirds' missions and trolling other nations!
20:07 Why I couldn't pilot the Blackbird
21:43 Were any Blackbirds ever shot down?
22:51 What happened to the Blackbirds?
24:23 Play War Thunder

[NotWhatYouThink]

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[Nexxarian]

Imagine being the bus driver and accidentally scraping a wide load truck. You ask what's in the box and they joke it's an alien spacecraft, then men with suits and dark shades step in and give you thousands of dollars to fix your bus and say to not file an insurance claim.

[ClubBergevin]

It's 2022, some 60 years later, and you're still digging up content on the blackbird that I've never heard of before! Great job!

[johnny_eth]

The SR-71 and the Concorde are some of the most impressive feats of aviation engineering in the cold war era. What incredible machines, all developed with slide rules.

[krattfan]

My grandfather helped design parts of the Blackbird. He helped with some of the electronics on board. My dad loves to tell the story of when he was in a car with my grandfather and there was a bad driver and my dad had said something like "It would be really cool if we could read their license plate from space" and my grandfather said something like "we already can" before he realized he had to shut up because he wasn't supposed to talk about the plane at the time as it was a government secret.

Edit: I don’t know why everyone is so skeptical. I never claimed he made the whole plane or invented it or was the only reason the plane exists. He was an electrical engineer at a time when electrical engineering was huge, especially for the military. He helped design some of the electrical systems on the aircraft. Thousands of people helped create that plane, it wasn’t just one person who made the whole thing happen.

[garagegamer]

It's actually a myth that engineers couldn't get the Blackbird to not leak fuel. The engineers did develop a way to 100% stop leaks. The problem was the time it took to maintain it was longer than the required turn around time for the Blackbirds next mission. The Air Force just simply didn't have the time to do the required maintenance. Because of this the Air Force adopted acceptable drip rates before resealing the planes skin.

[TheConleyman]

My Grandpa was an engineer on the SR-71 project at skunk works, he has some of the coolest diagrams & pictures I've ever seen of the aircraft. As well as some of the greatest stories from working on it.

[bluesky]

I spent a fair amount of time at Air Force Plant 42 outside of Palmdale CA back in the 90's while working on a U-2 program. The U-2 and SR-71 were housed in the same hanger. The path through the hanger was marked in yellow tape on the floor and we were not allowed to wander outside of the tape.

The SR-71 would make test flights a couple of times a week. Everything would stop as everyone on the ground would watch it take off. Absolutely amazing.

I have many memories of working on our equipment in the U-2 super pods while the bird was parked behind the hanger. The slightest breeze would cause the wings to flap about 3 feet up and down. Also got to sit in the U-2 cockpit.

There was an SR-71 engine test stand about a mile down the road from our trailer. When it would fire up, the vibrations felt like an earthquake in the trailer.

Watching the SR-71 land was even more fascinating. It would come in pretty fast, smoke would pour off the brakes and then the drag chutes would deploy. Took more runway to land then it did to take off. The U-2 would kind of float into the sky on take off and quickly disappear. The SR-71 took off like a rocket in a steep climb.

[augl]

The knowledge provided by the Blackbird family of aircraft is invaluable.
NASA used theirs as a Mach 3+ research platform. At one point they put early GPS tech onboard and flew it at altitude and tested the instruments.

[Tyraeous]

The irony of Titanium from the Soviet Union was, at the time, the Soviets themselves could not afford to use it in their top end aircraft - it was too valuable as a trade commodity to be sold to other nations. So their own aircraft would have things like strips of titanium to reinforce steel panels, rather than being fully titanium.

[KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking]

My Dad programmed the SR-71 flight simulators - with punchcards. [Edit: HOLY MOLY - I think that's him at 20:31, in white!!!] No mouse, no keyboard - they didn't exist yet. (And he's intimidated by Windows 10! I said Dad, Dad - computers with mice should feel like a cakewalk!) The computers were so large, they didn't fit in a single room. They had to be air conditioned. Dad - today you don't even have to change the drip pans on computers! (He thinks that's marvelous.) He told me, the first simulators were on trains. So top-secret, they didn't have a central location that could be found out. Later, gets moved to Beale. Our family had dinner parties with pilots and crew. My God I'd give anything to remember what was said. Took it all for granted. Today, Dad is shy about talking about it, and is reluctant for me to interview him. Could ya'll do me a favor, and tell him he's wrong? That you'd like to see this? He doesn't even understand the love the community has for this plane.

[octoglazed]

Thank you so much for the metric units on display! I'm not familiar with imperial units at all, so the inclusion really help me visualize!

My father was one of the CIA men at Groom Lake during the early 60's, when they were testing the A12s. I was a newborn baby at the time. I didn't know about this until about 10 years ago. Actually I knew he worked for the CIA, but not what he did until that time. Imagine finding out my own dad worked not only at A51, but also with my favorite airplane of all time. =) He has a lot of stories, such as being parked next to the runway one day when one of the planes crashed on landing right in front of him. One of the stories he told me was about the road-trips they took to transport the planes to A51. Just as was mentioned here, he told me that they got so tired of people asking what was in the giant boxes that they just started telling people, "Well... I shouldn't tell you this, but it's a crashed UFO we found". I'm 58 now and he's I think 78, and we still talk on the phone and the A12 frequently comes up. Next year he's going to fly up to visit with me for a while, and I plan to take him to the Seattle Flight Museum where he can see the M21 we have there - the only one in existence in the world. It will be interesting to see how he feels being in the presence of one of the very planes he once walked past or underneath on a daily basis, so many years ago, as a young man.

[tomaskovarik]

Yes! Blackbird is one of the coolest aircrafts ever built together with XB-70 Valkyrie

[fvlse_]

1:49
“Relatively small scale”
*oh yea they built the hubble
💀

[strikye]

16:46 Thanks for the warning bro, I almost did that with my leftover JP-7 fuel.

[tubosolinas]

Technology from the 60's that's still mind boggling. Can't imagine what they're making in 2022 behind closed doors

[EnnesArms]

This plane was groundbreaking In every sense of the word. The materials, engines, tools, and auxiliary equipment all had to be designed with this bird and the feats it was capable of in mind. Even the _starter carts_ had to be designed. They took two buick V8 engines (for each cart), coupled them together through a gearbox, and used that to start the blackbird’s engines. They blew up so many engines that they exhausted the supply and had to switch to chevy engines!
From nose to tail the blackbird is just _crazy_

[nickstone]

This is my favorite plane ever. One time I was in florida and accidentally drove down a road that was a one way to a Lockheed Martin factory. Security was on us when we were leaving. No joke there

[EllissDeeyoume]

“There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment. It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80, 000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet. I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury. Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace. We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground. Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the “ HoustonCentervoice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houstoncontrollers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that… and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios. Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his groundspeed. Twin Beach, I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed. Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground. And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn. Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check? There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground. I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: Ah, Center, much thanks, We’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money. For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the HoustonCentervoice, when L.A.came back with: Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one. It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work. We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast. For just one day, it truly was fun being the fastest guys out there.”