The official retirement of the SR-71 Blackbird in 1990 was driven more by internal US Air Force politics and budget ...

Called the SR-71—SR for Strategic Reconnaissance—it ... because the U.S. stopped Soviet overflights after the 1960 U-2 incident. However, SR-71s were used over Eastern Europe, the Middle ...

One of its top advantages over the U-2 was its incredible speed that kept it safe. The SR-71 was so quick that it remains the fastest air-fed plane ever built-- even today. With a top speed of ...

Developed by Lockheed at its famously secretive Skunk Works in Burbank, California, the SR-71 was a derivative of the A-12 reconnaissance plane built for the CIA as a replacement for the U2 spy ...

A: The SR-71 ejection seat was a Lockheed-built SR-1 ejection seat. It is similar to the ejection seat in the U-2. Both are derivatives of the Lockheed C-2, which was similar to the Stanley ...

Carpenter also has more than 300 hours in strategic reconnaissance aircraft, including the U-2 and SR-71, and flew missions from Beale Air Force Base in California, Kadena Air Base in Japan ...

In a celebration of the SR-71 and U-2 aircraft, the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, will be hosting an event titled “Secrets Revealed”, in which more than 20 ...

As Cold War tensions heightened during the 1950s, the CIA began flying the U-2 spy plane to keep tabs on ... and later considered a high speed bomber, the B-71 (coming numerically after the ...

Covering the 6,086-mile distance in five hours, the flight underscored the SR-71’s unmatched speed and efficiency compared to the U-2 it replaced. -Unfortunately, this Blackbird, later nicknamed ...

The Lockheed SR-71 and its A-12 predecessor derived from the CIA’s 1956 Rainbow Study initiated in recognition of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane’s vulnerability to Soviet SAMs. The study stated ...

The SR-71, arguably the country's most recognizable spy plane after the U-2, was retired in 1998. But like many human retirees of the same generation, what became known as the Blackbird has had a ...