Without a doubt, the SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ has to be one of the most incredible aeroplanes ever built, while at the same time being one of the most beautiful. Few aircraft invoke such a visceral sense of awe amongst aviation enthusiasts as this one does!

She was futuristic, stealthy, and with a performance more akin to a spacecraft than an atmospheric ‘air-breathing’ aircraft.

Her stated performance was impressive; however, as she was a secret ‘spy plane’, her true performance was not released until after she was retired from service. She holds the ‘official Air Speed Record for a manned air-breathing jet aircraft’ of 2,193 mph (around Mach 3.2; 3.2 times the speed of sound), set in 1976, and a reported ceiling (maximum altitude) of 80,000+ ft (which is all the US Air Force will admit to). However, on the return transatlantic flights of the Blackbirds back to the USA from their deployment bases in the UK, higher figures of 2,275mph were reported (possibly apocryphally!) and altitudes (depending on the source) of between 87,000 and 100,000ft. Of course, even the Blackbird needs sufficient air for the engines to function – it is not a rocket, after all! – and a more reasonable figure of 85,000ft as a designated maximum altitude, with inadvertent flight up to 87,000ft, has been reported, again unofficially*. And she could maintain that performance for over an hour! This is noteworthy since most supersonic aircraft (a notable exception being the Concorde) can only maintain their top speeds for a few minutes at best.

So, an aircraft steeped in mystery, but somehow even more impressive for all that.

The Blackbird, though, unlike all the aircraft I have covered so far in this series, was not an armed combat aircraft. She wasn’t made in order to bomb or shoot anything; she was a reconnaissance aircraft. She was designed to go and look at things in hostile territory, to see what is there. And in order to do that, she had to have a performance that would ensure her survival. Hence, Mach 3.2+ and above 80,000ft, for long enough to make a difference.

Whereas fast jet aircraft from the Sea Vixen to the Typhoon have been designed in more or less similar ways, essentially including the same conventional technology of other aircraft of the time, in terms of engines, aerodynamics and materials science, what made the Blackbird so special was that she was conceived in a completely different manner and using so many advances not only in technology but also in design philosophy. If you like, the aircraft was designed ‘from the ground up’ to operate in that specific performance envelope. The factor that made the similarly – performing XB-70 Valkyrie obsolete was the rapid advances in surface-to-air missile (SAM) technology, that is, missiles fired from the ground in order to shoot down their targets. The SAMs could now reach fast, high-flying aircraft, and so their threat was what forced other reconnaissance and bomber aircraft of the time to abandon the upper air altogether and rely on low-flying in order to accomplish their missions. This is why all modern air forces practice low-flying. And this is why the XB-70 was abandoned – because her incredible performance had become irrelevant.

But the Blackbird had to be designed in order to operate at such extreme altitudes and speeds, and with the range she required in order to complete her mission, because she simply had to fly high enough to be able to see what she needed to see, because she was a reconnaissance aircraft, and from higher up you can see more. Low level was not an option for the Blackbird’s mission. And so, several design factors had to be built into her from the start, in order to give her the performance she needed to survive in the SAM threat environment.

The first factor was in the Blackbird’s engines. To make things simple, I will eventually put all the technical stuff on a separate page, but basically the Blackbird’s engines were a type of hybrid engine known as a ‘turboramjet’. At high speeds, all of the thrust was provided only by the air intakes and the afterburners, and the actual jet engine in between could be, well, essentially shut down. This produced an incredibly efficient engine in terms of thrust per unit of fuel, far more efficient than the simple afterburning turbojet engine.

The next factor was of course her speed and altitude performance. Blackbird could fly higher than the XB-70, but even so, it is virtually impossible for a manned combat aircraft, even the Soviets’ MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’ interceptor, to intercept an aircraft flying that high and that fast, and then actually get into a position to shoot it down. In addition, Soviet air-to-air missiles (missiles launched from an intercepting aircraft in order to shoot down another aircraft) simply did not have the performance, at those altitudes, to be able to catch a Blackbird.

Which leaves the question of how the Blackbird managed to avoid the SAM threat, when the nearly-equally-performing XB-70 couldn’t.

The SR-71 has the (as far as I know) unique reputation that not one example of the aircraft has been lost to enemy action, even though used operationally in hostile airspace.**  Even though the performance of the SR-71 is similar in many respects to that of the XB-70 Valkyrie, whose development as a manned combat aircraft was discontinued because it would have been vulnerable to interception by surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), it was still not vulnerable to SAMs as the XB-70 would have been, despite its blistering performance. This is because the SR-71 had not only powerful electronic jammers to fool hostile radars, but also an excellent combination of stealth technologies including radar-absorbent paint; radar-absorbent material wedges in the leading edges of the stabilisers, wings and fuselage; blended wing/fuselage shape and so on, which gave it the same radar visibility as a small aeroplane like the ones I fly. In other words, it looked tiny on radar.

This meant that the SAM operators would have far less time to alert their systems; in fact, not enough time for any launched SAM to get up to the Blackbird’s altitude. And the same would apply to any defending fighters, for whom their performance (and that of their missiles) would be so much inferior to that of the Blackbird that she would be long gone by the time they got up to anywhere where an air-to-air missile just might be able to bag her.

And so that was how the Blackbird managed to survive the – literally thousands – of SAMs fired at her. A combination of sustained high performance, and stealth technology which together minimised the engagement envelope of the opposing air defence system.

The end of the Cold War signified the deactivation of so much of the Western military; the Blackbirds, however, soldiered on until about 1998. There’s always a need for reconnaissance! There are two airworthy examples which are however no longer operated, but the rest are in museums. Here’s a photo of the example at the USAF museum at Duxford, UK:

And finally, here’s a lovely poetic piece expressing the sense of wonder engendered by this amazing aeroplane, by the brilliant Jeremy Clarkson:

There we are then. The amazing SR-71 Blackbird – not a Destroyer per se, but beautiful nevertheless.

For a couple of interesting anecdotes about this aeroplane, check out my previous blog posts here and here.

*However, the Blackbird’s Flight Manual, released now to the public, specified that operations above 85,000ft had to be ‘specially authorised’ (whatever that means!) and it is also apparent from that manual that the maximum airspeed depends largely on the external air temperature, in order to maintain the aircraft’s outer skin temperature within safe limits.

**Actually, now I think about it, the Vulcan was used on live combat missions into hostile airspace in the Falklands War of 1982 without losing one to enemy action; however, one was interned in neutral Brazil for nine days when it had to make an emergency landing there due to an aircraft technical fault.

The DeHavilland Sea Vixen is a gorgeous vintage jet fighter from the same era as many of the aeroplanes in this series, including the Hawker Hunter, the Tu-95 ‘Bear’ and the Vulcan.

My regular readers will know that although I love modern military aircraft, I have an especial love for jets of the ‘Golden Age’ of combat jets, mainly from the Cold War era.

In that period of history, jets were far from the all-singing, all-dancing marvels of technology that we have nowadays; aircraft like the Typhoon, Tornado and Su-30 which can handle more or less any role that is thrown at them. Back in the late 40’s and early fifties, when the Sea Vixen and its contemporaries were specified, designed and developed, the concept of the jet-powered combat aircraft was still in its infancy. These aircraft were, like most of their contemporaries, right at the forefront of what was possible given the engineering, weapons technology and materials science of the day – still marvels of technology, of course, and even then they were extremely capable aircraft.

And the Sea Vixen was no exception. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Avon 208 engines, she was just capable of supersonic speeds in a shallow dive. She was not only capable of performing her design role as an all-weather fighter, but was also designed to operate as a fighter-bomber as well.

With six weapons pylons (those vertical white parts under the wings, two of which are occupied by white fuel tanks in the above photo), she could carry Red Top or Firestreak air-to-air missiles, fuel tanks, bombs, rocket pods or Bullpup air-to-surface missiles. Although the original design was for the Sea Vixen to carry four 30mm Aden cannon, none were fitted in the production versions.

The thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that the Sea Vixen (although you might have guessed it from the name!) was a carrier-based fighter; that is, she was designed to operate from aircraft carriers, with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. A carrier-based aircraft has to be not only built to be capable of performing all its intended roles, but also to be able to cope with the huge stresses of launch from the flight deck of the ship by means of a steam catapult. Landing on an aircraft carrier is even more stressful because you’re thumping some fourteen or fifteen tons of aeroplane down onto a solid deck that is moving in four different directions all at once,* and then being stopped by snagging a big hook under the rear of the aircraft onto a thick cable (known as an ‘arrester wire’) strung across the deck, which yanks you from your flying speed of about 150mph down to a dead stop in a matter of 200 feet or so. Now that means that your aeroplane has to be unbelievably tough! In fact you could even say it’s more like a ‘controlled crash’ than a landing… 😉

Here’s a photo of Sea Vixens operating from the steam catapults of HMS Centaur in 1964:

…and then another of a Sea Vixen less than a second  from catching the arrester wire, again on HMS Centaur in 1964:

I have to say at this point that this is what I call amazing flying. Even at Bodmin Airfield, where I have been based for the last few years, the main runway is a mere 600 metres long. That looks tiny from the air, and requires precision flying to get in safely even in an aeroplane that lands at about 50mph and weighs just a bit less than a car. It’s much harder than landing at, say, Exeter, with their 2076 metre tarmac runway, and requires skill and experience. Compare that with landing fifteen tons of metal at 150mph on a pitching, rolling flight deck which looks to be the size of a postage stamp (your landing area is only a few tens of metres!), in the middle of nowhere, maybe in the dead of night, possibly also in atrocious weather – now that takes a level of skill and guts possessed by few individuals. It makes my kind of flying look like a walk in the park. All respect to these guys!

I love the shape of the Sea Vixen; she combines lovely lines, sleek and graceful, with an underlying toughness that is of course essential for a carrier-based aeroplane. Sheer beauty and class.

The Sea Vixen is a really photogenic aircraft, as are many Cold War jets, and she presented some great photo opportunities when recently she flew in formation with other Cold War jets like in the air-to-air picture below (sadly not taken by me!):

And this is a really lovely shot of the Vixen and the Vulcan together – a sight we shall never see again, since dear old ‘558, the Vulcan, will never fly again:

Finally, here’s a great video of the Sea Vixen in a recent display at RNAS Yeovilton, where she is (very fittingly**) based:

And at the time of writing, I am really looking forward to seeing this aeroplane display again when she comes to the Torbay Airshow, not far from where I live.

Anyway I hope you have enjoyed this little foray, not only into the history of this beautiful aeroplane, but also into aircraft carrier operations and the incredible skill involved in flying aircraft from carrier decks.

Beautiful Destroyer – the Sea Vixen. What a beauty!

*Four directions? Yes: the carrier could be pitching (tipping forwards and backwards), yawing (swinging left and right) and rolling (tipping from left to right) and all the while it is moving forwards through the sea at a speed of something like 35-40mph. At least airfields stay still when you’re trying to land on them; aircraft carriers don’t!

**Why is it fitting that the Sea Vixen is based at Yeovilton? Because that’s the main Fleet Air Arm airfield in the south-west of England (there is another at RNAS Culdrose) and it’s also the location of the Fleet Air Arm Museum which has a huge collection of historic Fleet Air Arm aircraft, and some of their erstwhile enemies too, including a MiG-15. It’s well worth a visit if you’re down this way. And there’s a Sea Vixen among the exhibits there too.

It’s been a while since my last post in the series ‘Beautiful Destroyers’. But here the series is back on track again with some lovely pictures of three beautiful aircraft participating in the joint Royal Air Force/Indian Air Force exercise ‘Indra Dhanush 07’, which took place in, you’ve guessed it, 2007.

In these pictures, we see the RAF’s latest fighter, the Eurofighter Typhoon, flying in formation with the RAF’s other main front-line fighter, the Panavia Tornado F3, and the Russian-designed Sukhoi SU-30MKI, which still carries the NATO reporting codename ‘Flanker’, which is currently in the inventory of the Indian Air Force. For identification purposes, in the header picture for this post and in the shot below, the aircraft nearest the camera is the Tornado, then the Typhoon, and the one furthest away is the Su-30.

Clever stuff, all that formation flying; amazing what you can do with being able to keep an aeroplane straight and level. I’ve done formation flying myself only once, and I was too busy avoiding collisions to take any photos. But it’s an amazing feeling, seeing an aeroplane only a few metres away (in this case piloted by my son) and seeing it just like floating there. A photo doesn’t really do it justice; it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen. There’s this plane just hanging there in the clear air, and you can see there’s nothing really holding it up. Remarkable.

Anyway back to the pictures:

In the picture above, you can see the Su-30 in more detail. An extremely powerful, agile and well-armed aeroplane, the Su-30 (which is a derivative of the original Su-27) is a very capable combat aircraft, in fact probably one of the best in the world. She weighs 22 tons but her pilots throw her around the sky like she’s a Spitfire….

And finally, another photo like the main header photo above, but taken from a slightly different angle. And it’s bigger….

So there we go. Sorry to have kept my aviation-fanatic readers so starved over the last couple of months. I know of one guy at least who only reads my blog for the aviation stuff; Captain ‘Pyet’, this one’s for you mate 🙂

I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is with about this aeroplane that I like so much. Maybe it’s the lovely wing-sweep angle and the slim area-ruled fuselage*. Maybe it’s the typically down-to-earth practical Soviet solution to a problem unique to their country, as it was (of course, the Soviet bloc has now broken up). Possibly it’s the idea of a dedicated pure interceptor designed solely to shoot down enemy nuclear bombers over huge mission distances. Or perhaps it’s the whole ‘Cold War’ flavour of the whole thing; an aeroplane which, when it was designed, was at the forefront of its technology era. And based at freezing cold, snow-covered airfields in some of the most remote places on Earth.

The Tu-128 is the largest interceptor ever built, measuring nearly 100ft long and with a 57ft wingspan. Although its NATO reporting codename was ‘Fiddler’, the initial ‘F’ signifying a fighter, this aircraft was never designed to go into combat with other fighters. The Tu-128 was designed purely to shoot down intruding enemy nuclear bombers, those entering Soviet territory over the more remote of their borders.

Some understanding of this huge aircraft can be gained by looking at an atlas. What was then called the Soviet Union had an air defence problem of truly mammoth proportions, and no amount of money could ever provide a totally comprehensive defence of the entire frontier. While most of the Soviet Union’s population and industry (and therefore the really heavy air defences) was concentrated in Western regions, there were still many important regions in the interior of that vast country which would have been vulnerable to attacks from aircraft entering via the more remote frontiers, for example, from the Arctic Ocean direction and/or over Siberia.

The aircraft had to be so big in order to house all the fuel necessary for it to be able to fulfil its role, that of ‘long-range interceptor’. It would most likely have been used to mount standing patrols in times of tension, and then directed to its targets by radar-equipped airborne warning and control systems (AWACS). Certainly the aircraft would have been vectored (steered) to its target by radar controllers, whether ground-or air-based, because the speeds and distances involved would have been so great.

We can understand, then, that the operational requirement for the role was for a supersonic aircraft with enormous fuel tanks for both a good patrol time and a long range, a capable radar, and the most powerful air-to-air missiles possible. And so they came up with the 43-tonne Tu-128, of which weight about a third was taken up by fuel. It was capable of Mach 1.5 speed, and with a combat radius of about 1,600 miles and an armed ceiling of about 51,000 feet. However, with a maximum g-loading of only 2.5g, it was certainly never going to be dogfighting with small fighters. But that wasn’t what it was designed for anyway.

Armed with four Bisnovat R-4 air-to-air missiles (NATO codename AA-5 ‘Ash’), two of which were radar-homing and two of which were heat-seekers, a Tu-128 would likely have been more than capable of knocking down one or two American B-52s, should the unthinkable ever have happened.

Here’s a series of shots showing the crew getting out of their aircraft, and then the instrument panels in the front and rear cockpits respectively.

I get the impression that the whole operation would have been carried out mainly by remote direction; a radar controller would detect targets and guide the interceptor into the correct position for it to acquire the target using its own radar, and then it would proceed to attack the bomber using its own fire-control systems. All the time, the pilot himself would have been only the driver, obeying commands from the ground or AWACS plane at first, then relying entirely on the radar officer in the back seat to complete the weapons acquisition and release. But it would get the job done.

I particularly like this fascinating picture; you can see where there’s been a dog patrol walking round the aircraft, and also where the ground crew have been walking around her in order to clear snow and ice from the airframe:

Here’s another of my favourite shots of this aeroplane – the supersonic area-rule design* is clearly visible, and you get a good look at all four of the missiles on their pylons:

This next shot is a classic Russian winter shot, in Siberia perhaps?

So, there she is, the Tu-128 ‘Fiddler’; an odd-looking aeroplane in many ways, but she certainly has a fascination all of her own. Another ‘Beautiful Destroyer’.

*Area-ruling is an aerodynamic principle seen in most supersonic aircraft, that is, those that can fly at speeds faster than the speed of sound. It can be seen easily in the Tu-128 in the views from above; the ‘wasp-waisted’ shape of the fuselage is the key giveaway. The fuselage is wider nearer the front, tapers inwards to a narrower ‘waist’ and then flares outwards again towards the rear.

I’ve always loved the F-111. Big, beautiful, fast, loud, capable – and packed-full of impressive features that, as with so many Cold War jets, were at the forefront of technology.

The F-111 (pronounced ‘F-one-eleven’) was operational with both the US Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, and was originally notable for being the world’s first production aircraft that featured a fully-variable-sweep wing, or ‘swing-wing’; that is, the wing can be swept forward for slow flight – say for take-off or landing – or it can be swept fully aft for high-speed flight, or used at any angle in between. Here’s an excellent series of pictures showing the wing-sweep sequence:

It also pioneered both afterburning turbofan engines (as opposed to turbojet engines; turbofans are much more efficient), and automated terrain-following radar, in production aircraft. This latter enabled the aircraft to perform high-speed, low-level flight in all weathers and at night. Although a few military aircraft these days can do that, in those days this ability was absolutely revolutionary and really impressive, as indeed it still is.

F-111s were first used in action by the US Air Force in the Vietnam War, where three of the first six F-111 aircraft sent there were lost – but these aircraft were lost to structural failure rather than to enemy action. In all, F-111s flew more than 4,000 combat sorties and in all that action, only six were lost to enemy action. That is a really impressive combat record by any standards.

Although the ‘F’ designation in ‘F-111’ strictly speaking denotes a fighter aircraft, these aircraft, however, are bombers. True, they can carry air-to-air missiles for self-defence, but the primary role of the F-111 has always been that of precision all-weather strike. Here’s an Australian F-111C taking off for an evening practice mission – with full reheat:

Daylight takeoff:

You can just imagine the noise…..

During the Cold War, many F-111s were based in the UK, at RAF Upper Heyford and RAF Lakenheath. This F-111 is a Lakenheath bird – this is denoted by the ‘LN’ on the vertical stabiliser.

From these two bases, the US Air Force launched a strike mission against targets in Libya, on 15th April 1986; this was called ‘Operation Eldorado Canyon‘ and I remember it vividly – because I saw the F-111s on the outbound leg of their flight, on the evening of 14th April 1986. I can clearly remember having just got out of the car at a place called Yelverton, in Devon, UK – where we were on holiday for the week – and all of a sudden, a whole string of F-111s flew over us, one after the other. We heard of the air strikes the next day, and we wondered if those aircraft had been involved; only later were we certain when we saw maps of the route that the aircraft had taken. Quite a sobering thought, to think we had seen these aircraft setting off on a combat mission – one from which one aircraft – and both its crew – did not return.

Now for a series of dramatic pictures of this lovely aircraft. In this first one, we can see the feathers of vapour forming above the wing, as the aeroplane pulls appreciable ‘g‘-forces in its turn:

Here’s the same aeroplane pulling ‘g‘ again, this time with the wings swept back:

…..wow…..

…and here’s another of my favourites: an Aussie F-111 buzzing the control tower at low level and high speed:

The aircraft was unofficially nicknamed the ‘Aardvark’ because of its long nose; interestingly, only on the type’s retirement from USAF service was the nickname ‘officially’ recognised.

Talking of low flying, here’s a dramatic shot of an F-111 running in fast and low with the wings swept fully aft – and with the ‘burners lit. This would have made quite a noise….but you’d not have heard it until the aircraft was nearly past you, if even then:

An interesting feature of the F-111 was that it had its fuel dump vent at the rear of the aircraft, between the afterburners. An aeroplane might need to perform a fuel dump (getting rid of unwanted fuel) for various reasons, and the idea is that the fuel can be dumped overboard safely without setting fire to the aeroplane, usually via fuel dump ports on the wingtips or similar. On the F-111, though, things are a little different because of the positioning of the dump vent between the tailpipes. Because of this, the F-111 can perform what’s known as a ‘fuel dump and burn’: by spraying the unwanted fuel out into the sky behind the aeroplane when the engines are running on afterburner, the fuel is ignited and it catches fire in a most impressive fashion:

I love this next picture in particular because it also shows the vortices of turbulent air over the wings, backlit in orange/red by the fuel burn flare:

I have been under an F-111 when this happened – we were at an airshow at RAF Finningley in 1977 when the displaying F-111 performed this trick over the crowd – back when display aircraft were allowed to fly over the crowd, that is! Even though he was probably several hundred feet above us, the heat was quite astonishing. What’s the point of the fuel dump and burn, apart from it being a spectacular crowd-pleaser? Well, all that hot gas behind the aircraft gives an excellent alternative target for heat-seeking missiles. In other words, that giant flame can defend the aeroplane by providing a decoy, thus distracting incoming missiles from their true target. Clever.

Two more shots of the F-111, then, before I finish. These are USAF models: the top picture is of an aircraft based at Upper Heyford (‘UH’ on the fin) and the one banking away from the camera is an F-111F version, this is apparent from the round dome of the PAVE TACK sensor pod visible under the fuselage.

What an impressive machine the F-111 is, or was at any rate. The type has been retired from USAF service now for nearly 20 years; the Australians retired theirs just over five years ago. Another Beautiful Destroyer.