SR-71 Overview by Col. James H Shelton, Jr USAF (ret.)

[@joeg5414]

I just think it's funny that a 30 something guy like myself finds Peninsula senior videos to be one of the better channels on YT lol

[@taofledermaus]

Love these personal stories from the pilots. Little tidbits of info you'd never hear otherwise.

[@donmoseley6074]

Had the pleasure and honor to work with Jim at Lockheed on F-117 program. One of the nicest people you would ever meet. The real deal!!

[@BarefootBill]

Col. Shelton gives a darn good lecture about the A12 - SR71 and his experiences with them. Thank you!

[@dankuettel5063]

Awesome once again. Thank you for sharing these historic stories.

[@94Whiskey]

Just incredible lives lived by these humble warriors! God truly blessed America with such warriors!

[@bend1483]

Thank you so much for uploading this. Fascinating!

[@andyharman3022]

The engineering geek in me loves the slides that Col. Shelton showed in the presentation. Pause the video at 19:52 and feast your eyes on the J58 on test at night in full afterburner. That glowing metal of the afterburner liner must be 1800F. P&W built one amazing engine there! The core engine temperature of 2000F was decades ahead of what other companies could build their engines to withstand, and the afterburner temperature of 3400F is at the stoichiometric limit of hydrocarbon fuels. Just amazing that the engines didn't have to be rebuilt after every mission. It took me a while to figure out what the note "13A/B pressure Jewels" meant: it's the number of shock diamonds that can be counted in the lower photo of the nozzle.

Really enjoyed Col. Shelton's talk, very informative and entertaining. Great video A+

[@abtechgroup]

Terrific, thank you!

[@JIMJAMSC]

Myself and co-pilot saw what I learned later was a B2 stealth a good 5 years before its was announced to the public just south of Shaw AFB in SC at low altitude . Reported it to ATC as unknown traffic.ATC responded no radar and after a call the AFB reported no traffic in the MOA which was cold. I have seen most everything but never a SR in flight. Great video. Thanks.

[@oxcart4172]

JIMJAMSC But the B-2 was shown publicly at its roll-out!

[@JIMJAMSC]

Not when we saw it. Iirc it was a good 5-7 yrs before it was rolled out. Which btw a tidbit of info. There was a temp restriction over the area when they rolled the B2 out. However, a local pilot noticed, again iirc it was surface to 3000. So he flew overhead at 3 and got all the great shots which at the time was a big deal. Another coincidence, later I worked for the State of SC Aeronautics Comm and SC was dedicated a B2 in its name. I had creds/sec clearance etc and was given a personal tour at KCAE where it was dedicated.

[@AvengerII]

Sounds like you saw a subscale demonstrator or prototype. I doubt it was a production plane. Then again, they did studies on these planes for years and I worked with someone who claimed to have seen one years before (but he was civilian, not military). My impression was that he saw it in the 1970s or early 1980s. He was about 15 years older than me... He DID live out West for a while (Oklahoma) so it's possible he saw something. Never did get an answer about what time he saw it. Who knows? The B-2 is basically a modernized YB-49. Is it possible DESPITE scrapping all those original flying wing bombers (B-35s, B-49s) and wrecking a few in test that they DID build and operate test planes over the years PRIOR to the official B-2 program start (late 1970s/early 1980s) and well before the public reveal? Hell, yeah! They kept other things secret or lied about them! (Most of what I think was kept secret or lied about are spy planes and captured/"repatriated" Eastern bloc planes. I'm skeptical about the X-Files B.S. myself.)

[@andyharman3022]

The slide at 21:08 shows a schematic of how the propulsion system works at Mach 3.2 design speed. I believe it shows that there is an oblique shock generated at the tip of the spike, and then normal shocks further down the nacelle. It is the shock waves that provide air compression at Mach 3.2: the engine is only generating 17% of the thrust at that point. Since the ambient air pressure at 80,000 feet is only 0.4 psi, and the pressure at the inlet to the compressor is 15 psi, that means the shockwaves are providing a pressure ratio of 37.5:1. Because compression through the shockwaves heats the air, the temperature goes from -60F ambient to +800F at the face of the compressor.

[@MurrayJoe]

When he was commenting on some of the stories told about the SR 71 and he said when you hear some stories about the speed, altitude, etc, I think he was hinting at reliability of some the stories from one or two SR 71 pilots.

[@Zany4God]

Excellent and interesting. Thank you, very much!!

[@nicklewis2268]

you sir are a legend ! god bless 1

[@janeriksele]

The SR-71 had an emergency landing in 1987 in Norway - (Stavanger) after damaging right engine and wing - burning - lovely airplane:)

[@betherealdeal]

All 120 pilots that had the privilege of flying the Blacbird are getting old The plane remains SEXY

[@petero.7487]

It's interesting how there's often overly simplified explanations for things 1. Development of the A-12: The first proposals for the U-2 replacement included stealthy designs, fast designs, then later on stealth and fast designs. The fast designs included... a. Project Suntan: A liquid hydrogen fueled design, which looked vaguely like a scaled-up F-104, except it had two engines on the wingtips (Boeing also looked into a few LH2 bomber designs as a B-52 replacement). It used a new type of propulsion system that used the ambient air-temperature, and combustion air temperature to vaporize the fuel, which would drive a small turbine to very high RPM, a gearing system would reduce the RPM and drive a multi-staged compressor, which would feed into the combustion chamber with the now vaporized fuel (it also had an afterburner), and even LH2 circulated under the skin in some areas to cool the plane down. It was ultimately cancelled because of the difficulty in setting up a LH2 infrastructure, the limited ability for growth (LH2 has a very low density, so you cannot carry that much fuel weight per gallon of volume, and the wings were too thin to attempt to put fuel in), and the fact that one could achieve adequate performance using hydrocarbon fuels b. Angel(?) / Archangel: It didn't exactly look like an F-104, the wings were trapezoidal (they had a much lower aspect ratio and were swept more up front than in the back), and had a cruciform tail. Early designs had J58's (they were very different from the later engines, lacking the bleed bypass system and designed for a USN program) under the wing-root or mid-span only (To increase maximum-mach number over the baseline configuration, the variable inlet guide-vane was complemented by multiple variable stator-vanes so as to decrease pressure ratio at high speed); ramjets were added at the tips early on. The gas-turbines would be shut-down at high mach, and the ramjets would run solo from that point: This was abandoned because the ramjets used pentaborane (it's highly toxic, cannot be used for the gas-turbine except the afterburner, and produced a persistent white-exhaust trail that gives ones position away), an the bleed-bypass system was adopted. c. Fish / Arrow: Convair built a ramjet-powered parasite recon (or recon bomber, I'm not sure) called the Super-Hustler; the Fish was basically a similar concept to the Super-Hustler, and the Arrow was built by Lockheed, for the same purpose. All were to be carried under a B-58B, which was probably done in when the B-58B was cancelled, and it was probably preferred to just takeoff and land under one's own power. The stealthy designs included project gusto: A subsonic design that kind of looked like the Jetson's flying car with wings, and winglets that had a rudder on each one. It wasn't supersonic (except maybe in a dive) and was designed to get by on a low RCS. It was ultimately ruled out later on in favor for requirements that favored speed and stealth, and that lead to the A-12. 2. Intended SR-71 Role: Lockheed submitted several ideas to the USAF: A reconnaissance aircraft, a bomber proposal (it could carry 1 polaris-sized nuclear-warhead, 4 smaller nuclear-bombs, or a proposed kinetic-kill warhead which the USAF probably had no interest in), and a reconnaissance-bomber proposal, which was well-received, but at the time they were trying everything short of murder to either keep the XB-70 program alive, or revive the program, so they asked Lockheed to hold-back on the proposal at first. When the XB-70 was scaled back into a test-program, they had proposed a reconnaissance-strike version of the B-70 called the RS-70 that was designed to assess damage following a nuclear strike, and then take out whatever survived with additional nuclear-warheads: It called for some RCS reducing measures (probably useful anyway as the XB-70 had a higher RCS than the B-52 from certain angles), photo-reconnaissance equipment, side-looking phased array radars in the neck, and provisions for strike-missiles (presumably a progenitor of the AGM-69). After the RS-70 idea kind of floundered, they proposed an RS-71, which was designed for the same mission but with greater speed & altitude, as well as reconnaissance. The modular nose, modular sensor bays reflected this purpose. A chine-bay carrying a sensor pod could be replaced with one carrying a missile inside it (and so on), the extended tailcone improved aerodynamics and made room for extra ECM equipment. General LeMay supposedly asked President Johnson's speech writer to change RS to SR, and decided to use the term strategic reconnaissance instead. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is (it seems less aggressive, I suppose, but the whole purpose of deterrence is to scare the bejeezus out of your enemy figuring if you can scare them enough, they won't attack you). 3. Inlets: High performance supersonic inlets use a convergent-divergent shape and those with variable geometry in one way or another adjust to narrow the convergent area and increase the pressure inside the duct. Some designs like the F-111 actually had an expanding spike (basically, the spike consisted of a series of sliding interlocking components that would allow this) that also retracted rearwards, the B-58 had the spike move forward due to the shape of the duct having a small convergent area with the rest being fairly substantially bell-mouthed (the spike would provide the convergence). I know this might be hard for some people to believe, but I read a lot...

[@mickd894]

Colonel I downloaded sensors after some of your flights. SLR. Oh yeah preflights to. We were the guys that hung the nose on what you flew. Sir, I was of the guys that preflighted your flight. You flew Glowing Heat, maintainers got you there. Give us old maintenance guys something.

[@williamsburgkavanagh1710]

my grandfather was bill shelton so this particular indivdual is close to my heart. a great story teller da man fer sure, but as i stated im a bit partial...0

[@gilgrosvenor5341]

37:31 Sure wish he could've told Dad.

[@robertkerr3059]

one of the A-121s appears to be on a pole outside the operators main offices

[@foremasp]

Air Force politics...they badly wanted shiny new space based observatories, killing the SR-71 insure they would get the funding from Congress. The thing I always hear about dooming this plane (true or not...) is the air tanker support, they say it was prohibitively expensive but it just can't be anywhere near the cost of lifting a single payload to low-earth-orbit. If they kept a few SR's on reserve status the tankers wouldn't fly much. I also recall the Air Force had updated the SR's tanker fleet from the venerable KC-97 to the KC-135 not too long before the program was axed. This feels similar to the Marines attempt to retire our A10's, both these aircraft are similar in that no plane exists that can entirely do their mission, missions that are still useful in todays world. It is far more affordable to over fly a spot on the earth (and usually quicker too) with the SR than to relocate a satellite using it's limited fuel and taking not insignificant risk by moving its orbit, space debris is a serious worry. Hell I bet the Japanese might have chipped in to keep that one-of-a-kind jet stationed at Kadena AB on Okinawa, I would too with North Korea being a neighbor and if not Japan, I guarantee Taiwan would be interested. Fear Factor counts and that plane had it in spades, the respect received (out of admiration or fear) from all nations was second to none. Lastly, had it stuck around who knows the resultant technology and possible aircraft that could have been because of it, i.e. the MiG25. Viewing the SR-71 in person is great but it's also a sad sight because it wants to be up in that thin air - the spear tip of our Democracy and those airframes sure had a bunch of life in them.

[@advorsky1]

Broke some windows and cracked a few foundations!!!!

[@garryclarke7695]

Even though they are clearly anything but, I'm always surprised how ordinary these men look.

[@timrogers2045]

Clarence Leonard 'Kelly' Johnson looked ordinary as well, Garry..