A Feat Of Engineering

I had a day with Oliver today, and took the opportunity to go somewhere I have been hankering to go back to for many years. The Duxford Museum (Imperial War Museum). I can remember going there as a child, and loved it. Since I last went it has expanded enormously, and this picture was one of the reasons I wanted to go.

If you don't know (and why should you, you aren't all nerds like me about this kind of thing) this is the Lockheed SR-71 'Blackbird'. It was developed by their secret facility known as the Skunk Works. They had a very special arrangement with the Pentagon. Tell us what you want, we will tell you how much it costs. Give us the money and we will deliver. It worked well, and relied on mutual trust.

This aeroplane was pretty much a direct response to Francis Gary Powers being shot down in his U2. The US wanted to not have the same diplomatic incident again, so Kelly Johnson (head of the Skunk Works) proposed a plane that would fly higher than the Soviet missiles could reach, and faster than them too. This plane was 50% faster than Concorde, mach 3 (3 times the speed of sound) on the fringes of space. It needed specially developed engines, a special design and is made from titanium as it gets so hot and expands so much when it is flying due to the friction of the air.

As a feat of engineering it is phenomenal, designed and built in something like 4 years (which is just staggering these days) breaking all kinds of new territories for airplanes and engineering. This was all done over 50 years ago now too!

If you like planes, and are looking for a day out Duxford is pretty damn good. I was spoilt for choice on blips today, I have uploaded a collection to Flickr here should you want to have a look. I feel some were better pictures, and I thought I would give Oliver the day off too ;-)