What is the fastest plane of all time?
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(CNN) --
During the Cold War, this plane could fly higher and faster than any other ... And 55 years after its first flight, it still does.
The Lockheed SR-71, secretly designed in the late 1950s, was capable of flying close to the edge of space and outpacing a missile.
It currently holds the records for the highest altitude in horizontal flight and the fastest speed for a non-rocket powered aircraft.
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The Blackbird still holds several aviation records.
In 1990 she flew from US coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Washington, in 67 minutes.
She knows more in the gallery.
Credit: NASA
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The SR-71 Blackbird was built from titanium, which had to be procured indirectly from the world's largest producer, the USSR.
Credit: NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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In this 1997 photo, at NASA's Dryden Station, an SR-71 aircraft is accompanied by an X-31, F-15, F-106, F-6XL, Ship #2, X-38, Radio Controlled Mothership and an X-36.
Credit: NASA
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Engineers mount test equipment in the back of an SR-71.
Credit: NASA
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The SR-71 needed a landing parachute.
Credit: NASA
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In Japan, the SR-71 was called "Habu", referring to a local poisonous snake.
Credit: NASA
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The Blackbird aircraft were capable of analyzing nearly 100,000 square miles of airspace in an hour.
Credit: NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
It was part of a family of spy planes built to venture into enemy territory, without being shot down or even detected, in a time before satellites and drones.
The black paint, designed to dissipate heat, earned it the nickname Blackbird, and together with the sleek lines of its long fuselage, made the plane look like nothing it had done before, a design that has not lost none of its splendor.
An SR-71 "Blackbird" during a training mission in 1997. Credit: NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
"It still looks like something from the future, even though it was designed in the 1950s," Peter Merlin, aviation historian and author of "Design and Development of the Blackbird," said in a telephone interview.
"The way the fuselage bends and the wing curves and twists, it looks more organic than mechanical. Most conventional planes look like they were built by someone... this one almost looks like it's grown."
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A CIA spy
In May 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace while taking aerial photographs.
Initially, the US government claimed it was a missing meteorological research plane, but the story fell apart when the Soviet government released photos of the captured pilot and the plane's surveillance team.
The incident had immediate diplomatic repercussions for the Cold War and reinforced the need for a new type of reconnaissance aircraft that could fly faster and higher, safe from anti-aircraft fire.
"The CIA wanted a plane that could fly above 90,000 feet or more, at high speed and as invisible to radar as possible," Merlin said.
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The task of designing such an ambitious machine fell to Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, one of the world's top aircraft designers, and his secret engineering division at Lockheed, called the Skunk Works.
"Everything had to be invented. Everything," recalls Johnson, who died in 1990, the same year the Blackbirds were decommissioned.
The original Blackbird family aircraft was called the A-12 and made its maiden flight on April 30, 1962. In all, 13 A-12s were built, and the aircraft was a top-secret, special-access program operated by the CIA.
titanium skin
Since the plane was designed to fly over 2,000 mph, friction with the surrounding atmosphere would heat the fuselage to a point that would melt a conventional fuselage.
For this reason, the plane was made of titanium, a metal capable of withstanding high temperatures and, at the same time, lighter than steel.
However, the use of titanium posed other problems.
First of all, a new set of tools had to be made, also made of titanium, because the normal steel ones would break the brittle titanium on contact.
Second, obtaining the metal turned out to be a complicated task.
"The USSR was, at the time, the world's largest supplier of titanium. The US government had to buy a large amount, probably using fake companies," Merlin said.
Early aircraft flew completely unpainted, displaying a silver titanium skin.
They were first painted black in 1964 after it was found that black paint, which effectively absorbs and emits heat, would help reduce the temperature of the entire fuselage.
And that's how the "Blackbird" was born.
Wingspan: 16.94 meters
Length: 32.73 m.
Altitude record: 25,929 m
Speed record: 3,529.6 km/h
Source: NASA, Smithsonian Institution
Graphic: Caitlin Clancy, CNN
Same plane, different names
The A-12 soon evolved into a variant designed as an interceptor, a type of fighter aircraft, rather than a surveillance aircraft.
In effect, this meant adding air-to-air missiles and a second cockpit, for a crew member to man the necessary radar equipment.
This new aircraft, which looked identical to the A-12 except for the nose, was named the YF-12.
While the A-12 remained secret, the existence of the YF-12 was revealed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and three of them were built to be operated by the US Air Force.
A third variant, called the M-21, was manufactured around this time, which had a pylon on its rear for mounting and launching one of the first drones.
Two were built, but the program was halted in 1966 after a drone collided with their launch craft, killing one of the pilots.
The final derivative of the A-12, with a double cockpit and increased fuel capacity, was called the SR-71, for "Strategic Reconnaissance" (strategic reconnaissance), and first flew on December 22, 1964. This is the version which would continue to perform intelligence missions for the United States Air Force for more than 30 years, and a total of 32 were built, adding 50 members of the Blackbird family.
The double cockpit of a Lockheed SR-71.
Credit: Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Getty Images
A plane more than sneaky
The SR-71's airframe included some of the first composite materials used in an aircraft, making the aircraft more difficult for enemy radar to detect.
"It was basically sneaky before the term was used," Merlin said.
Flying higher than anti-aircraft fire could reach, faster than a missile, and barely visible to radar, the Blackbird could enter hostile airspace virtually unmolested.
"The idea was that by the time the enemy detected it and fired her missile, she would already be back," Merlin explained.
"But this was before we had real-time data links, so they would take photos on film and bring the film back to base to be processed and studied."
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As a result, no Blackbirds were shot down by enemy fire.
However, her reliability was a problem, and 12 of the 32 were lost in accidents.
It was also a complicated aircraft to operate and fly.
"It took an army of people to get the plane ready. An operational Blackbird mission essentially had a countdown, like a space mission, because there was so much preparation for both the crew and the vehicle, an incredible amount of effort and hand work," said Merlin.
The pilots also had to dress in a special way, due to the extreme conditions that occur at high altitude.
"They were basically wearing a space suit, the same kind of thing that would later be seen on space shuttle crews," Merlin said.
"The cockpit also got very hot when flying at high speeds, so much so that pilots used to heat their food on long missions by pressing it against the glass."
The Blackbirds never flew over Soviet airspace, something the US government stopped doing altogether after the 1960 incident, but they continued to play an important role in the Cold War and flew missions in other critical arenas such as the Middle East, Vietnam and North Korea.
An SR-71 during a NASA-managed test flight.
Credit: NASA
In 1976, the SR-71 set the records it still holds: flying at a sustained altitude of 85,069 feet, and reaching a top speed of 3,529 kilometers per hour, or Mach 3.3.
The program was discontinued in 1990, with a brief resurgence in the mid-1990s, once technologies such as spy satellites and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) became more viable and offered instant access to data. of vigilance.
The SR-71 was last flown by NASA in 1999, which used two of the planes for high-speed, high-altitude aeronautical research.
Since then, all surviving Blackbirds are in museums.
Fighter plane
