SR-71 Final Anecdote-I promise!

[Bill Glaze]

Hope I don't get removed from the list, but inasmuch as you folks seemed
to find this interesting--
I had a co-pilot once who had been an instructor in F-104's.  One day
(he told me) he and another instructor were up in a F-104F two seater.
As he put it, "a couple of instructors trying to scare each other."
They went into afterburner, and put the airplane in a 45 deg. climb
until the engines flamed out from lack of air.   They were sitting in
the airplane as it completed it's ballistic climb.  The altimeter read
over 100,000 ft. although, as he says, it works on air, and there wasn't
any.  The sky had turned blue, and you could see the earth's curvature.
The airplane was slowly tumbling, the controls were slack. As the
aircraft went end-over-end, they looked above them, and saw a contrail.
It was so far above them, they couldn't see any airplane at the head.
They called Denver Center: "Denver Center, Air Force XXX, Say type
aircraft at our 12:00 position."
Denver didn't answer.  They repeated twice more; Denver still didn't
answer.
Finally, a different voice came back, and they realized it was the pilot
of the mystery airplane.
All he quickly said was:  "SR-71"
How high?  How fast?  The government admits to Mach 3 and 80K feet at
the max.
My guess, (and my co-pilot friends) are much greater.
I hope I haven't offended anybody by being so far off pattern; thanks.

Bill Glaze

=====================================
# To be removed from this list, send a message to 
# discussion-request at nsrca.org
# and put leave discussion on the first line of the body.
#