“Faster than a speeding bullet” may bring to mind a certain superhero from the planet Krypton, but it was literally true of the SR-71 Blackbird, the sleek, stealthy Air Force spy plane taken up for its first test flight 50 years ago on December 22, 1964. Created by Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works team—a top-secret crew of techno wizards—at the height of the cold war, the Blackbird cruised at more than three times the speed of sound. That translates to better than 2,000 miles per hour—at altitudes between 75,000 and 85,000 feet, too high and too fast to be shot down by an enemy fighter or a surface-to-air missile.
Expensive to maintain and fly, the SR-71 was retired from the Air Force in 1990. Blackbird number 972, which set four international speed records that year, now is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Standing before the aircraft, it’s not hard to understand the feelings of Air Force test pilot Terry Pappas, who says that of all the planes he flew, the SR-71 “is at the pinnacle. When you walk up and look at it for the first time, it’s kind of hard to believe they built something like that.”
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