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Saw one at one the air & space museums – I think the Smithsonian near the airport. Even standing still it is one amazing, mean looking machine. Neat video!
Jeremy Clarkson of ‘Top Gear’ fame and a notorious Anglophile named the SR-71 one of the three most beautiful machines ever built. There’s one on display locally at the Evergreen Aviation Museum: the aircraft is a work of art for sure.
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Stationed in Okinawa we saw this about 5 times a week. They would come in low and slow over Hiway 58 at the end of the Kadena AFB runway, drew all the locals to come out and stare. The Jap communists would picket for their removal but even they stood in awe of Darth Vader’s Corvette.
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I read once that a representative from Pratt and Whitney had to be on site for start up, I assume a complex procedure.
“She weeps and cries when she is grounded. Always longing to be back where she belongs.”
;)
I wonder how many engineers and pilots this aircraft spawned, this aircraft captured my imagination as a pre teen, it is in a word iconic, for its technology in the day and for many decades into the future.
This aircraft is incredibly complex to ready for flight and the support crew needed is a small third worlds army.
There was one at the Kalimazoo air zoo museum.