SR-71 Final Anecdote-I promise!

[Jason]

Bill,

I appreciate any SR-71 stories......it's my favorite plane!

Thanks for the story,
Jason

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Glaze" <billglaze at triad.rr.com>
To: "NSRCA discussion" <discussion at nsrca.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 10:21 AM
Subject: SR-71 Final Anecdote-I promise!


> 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



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