Skunk Works book
Many of you might know that Chuck is not only a fan of Corsairs but of everything that flies really fast and really high. So naturally, the SR-71 Blackbird presents itself as one of Chucks favorites. There isn’t much out there that goes faster than the SR-71. And it’s not just Chuck. I think this airplane is one of the most fascinating aviation engineering feats of the century.
There is an old book out titled “Skunk Works” which is written by Ben Rich, one of the iconic Skunk Works engineers and designer of the F-117 “Nighthawk” which revolutionized stealth technology. His book leaves out any conspiracy theories and focuses mostly on the Skunk Works designs from the U-2 up the F-117. I also really enjoyed how he described the aircraft industry changing with the years. As far as I am concerned, this is a must-read book for any aviation design enthusiast (and no, I’m not getting paid to write this, I really enjoyed the book). I’m not sure if it is still getting published, but I bet you can find it online.
And contrary to Chuck’s believes, it’s actually not highly classified (anymore) so you can actually put it on your shelf at home 😉
Yup, even the Flight Manual for the SR-71 has been declassified a few years ago: https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/ Fascinating stuff.
The astro-inertial navigation computer (https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system) is unbelievable for this era. As long as it could see stars, it could determine its position completely automatically to an accuracy of 90 m. If possible it would start this during taxiing, otherwise as soon as you got above the clouds. Much harder to spoof than GPS.