![]() ![]() I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. 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. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. 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. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. 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. I came across this story from, Blackbird Pilot, Brian Schul and it gave me goosebumps…Īn excerpt from Brian Schul’s book Sled Driver : Flying the World’s Fastest Jet. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 80’s or maybe it’s just a fact: there is nothing more bad-a$$ than an SR-71 Blackbird. There have been some cool jets at different times in world history, the Wright Flyer, the P-51 Mustang, an F-16 or F-18 is always a head turner. ![]()
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