Bob, I'm certain that you have enough material for a second book.
Another part of the story is the secrecy. I talked to some SR71 pilots that lived in the SF valley,not on the base. Their wives didn't know what they did. They would go to Van Nuys airport and then to Groom Lake. This may have been when they were still CIA planes,not even painted black. I have the hero collecting bottles and thought of by locals as a trash picker with no idea of his secret role. i even know a 3-Ferrari collector in LA who is a confirmed batchelor who picks radios out of the trash and tries to fix them. If you saw him picking your trash you would never believe he a former ex-AF jet pilot with millions in Ferraris and real estate. If anyone wants to read the story i can send it as a PM. It's for an anthology of car stories but may get rejected becuse there's not enough car in it.
So I actually have some direct experience somewhat related from the 80's, even pictures to prove it if I can find them. I lived in Alma, Kansas for 3 years 1982-1985 or so. This was west of Topeka a little bit and just east of town was a military low level corridor. I'm not talking 1,000 foot, I'm talking slammed on the ground 300-500'. The B-52's were usually 1,000'+ which was still unbelievably impressive such a big bird. The F-4's and A-7's would get low. Usually they were just east of town, but especially the B-52's would come right over and my school was on a big hill. They made a huge racket and would shake the windows, but although I never personally saw windows broken, there were stories of it in years past. Pretty sure this sealed my love for aviation and military aircraft. Terry, you ever fly that low level corridor west of Topeka?
Rob: should I post the story here? It's just fiction, won't malign anyone. The theme of the story is a guy who is thought of locally as a bottle collector is actually a SR71 pilot. I don't mind if it gets picked part on details, I'll improve it. But I'll change the height of the buzz to 1,500 ft.
1,500 really isn't a buzz, I think 1,000 in a SR71 would be pretty exciting though. This video first pass after take off about 400' +/-, the 2nd pass about 100'.
Sean- No, that B-58 record was made at high altitude, with inflight refueling on the way. At low altitude supersonic fuel consumption is unbelievably high. As an example, an F-111 at low altitude in max AB burned ~120,000 lbs/hr of fuel (internal fuel at start 34,200 lbs of JP8). At 49,500' and Mach 2.5, the burn rate was ~50,000 lbs/hr. Too much resistance in thick air at low altitudes to stay low level supersonic for more than a handful of minutes. The turbofan TF30s in the F-111s were way more efficient than the turbojet J79s in the B-58, so burn rates would have been even higher. Rob- Affirmative, on the way to a range near Wichita (Smoky Hill). Never supersonic, though, that would have gotten us hung.
very cool! I actually moved to Salina, Kansas after Alma. We would go out to Smoky Hill almost every year to view from the tower. They would do strafing runs next to the tower into the magnetic counting trap and then they had towers set up XY for accuracy with dummy bombs. You would also come over lake Kannopolis west of Smoky Hill real low setting up for a run. In 2000's there was a premature release and people fishing saw the dummy bombs skip across the water and hit the dam.
Rob- BDU-33s most likely. Those only weighed 25 lbs each and would not do too much damage to a dam. They will go through a house, though, proven a couple of times on Melrose range in New Mexico. Home owner had been resisting selling so we could expand the range, but an erant BDU-33 ended up next to the bathtub with her in it, so she sold the house and land to the AF. Another owner sold his place after a fatal F-111 accident. Said he did not mind a bomb or two on his place, but when they started dropping entire airplanes, it was time to leave.
Similar passes I would see at Kadena and Beale, except in Kadena they would throw on the afterburners for a little more affect, one thing I never saw was an SR-71 touch and go, U2's all the time.....
Not sure of the exact date but I’m pretty sure the SR continued to fly for NASA after 1990. I was TDY to Edwards in the mid to late 90s and was lucky enough to to see one take off. We were parked out on the ramp and were fairly close to the runway. Very impressive!
The B-58 was subsonic at low altitudes. There is a B-58 group on FB. If you’re on FB look it up and ask to join. Lots of good info there.
Rob- Forgot to mention, the scoring sensors at the ranges for strafing were microphones that picked up the supersonic shock wave of the 20 mm or 30 mm projectiles as they passed the sensors. Very accurate. When I was a range officer in the UK, we used to hate the A-10s because they often took out the sensor poles when they strafed and it was a lot of work putting up new ones. Looked like somebody had plowed a field where those 30 mm rounds impacted.
that's awesome, A-10's were my favorite. this was late 80's and I was lucky enough to see some now retired planes like the F-4 and A-7. also most of the time when the group was done a few would buzz the tower.
Rob- We did not spend much time at Smoky Hill, mostly saving it for check rides, so F-111D visits were probably pretty rare. Plus it was a long ways from home, around 400 nm.
Buzzing a small town in an SR-71 would be like taking a top fuel dragster to the local drive fast food drive through. Technically you might be able to do it but for practical purposes it would be damn near impossible. With other planes you can come up with a variety of ways to do it but a Blackbird can’t plausibly do practice approaches at random airfields that can be used as a pretense to flyover a particular town. Having said that... if I were to want to wedge it into the plot of a book and be semi plausible I would use something like the air show flyovers mentioned. Do some research for some other adjacent city which would have a good size air show and make it part of that. The pilot chose to orbit over X small town for timing before conducting the air show flyover. Not saying I have done such a thing recently (obviously not in an SR-71) but sometimes you gotta pick a convenient point to orbit over to kill five minutes. GTHill’s Missile Silo comes to mind... NASA was flying them with the LASRE (I think that is what it was called) aero spike project up until the mid/late ‘90s. NASA still had a bunch of the Blackbird stuff on the Dryden side of Edwards as late as ‘01 but I believe they had stopped flying them for a couple years at that point. The USAF had a couple in (supposedly) close to flyable status in a hanger on the Edwards side but I suspect they were really just waiting to go to museums.
When I was a Wad at the Zoo, SRs would fly over our basic cadet training activities from time to time at around 500 feet but I’d guess they were flying at 300-350 Knots or so. Same for the occasional football game fly by. When I was in the jump team I got to watch an SR fly over the stadium from above while waiting to jump into the game. That was cool as we could hear it, even from about 5K above the SR and inside a Twin Otter! There are several aircraft that have standing waivers to the 250 Knot below 10K rule because they don’t fly well that slow. T-38, SR, and 104 are on the list if I recall.
I attended a lecture at an EAA meeting that was presented by an F-104 pilot. He said that if you got below 245K dead stick in an F-104 it was punch out time because they were uncontrollable. Final approach required 80% thrust to feed the blown flaps up to touch down. Without that, the airplane was a streamlined brick. I saw them fly several times at Abottsford and they were the most spectacular aircraft of all. A touch and go in front of the crowd was a most exciting act. As soon as the wheels touched , the afterburner was kicked in and a roaring climb out followed with a ghostly duct howl. The RCAF guys were really good with these things.
I recall that the semi span of the wing was 7 1/2 feet from the side of the fuselage to the tip. Made up of machined aluminum planks.
Think I read somewhere that they had to install protective strips on the edge of the wing on the ground to keep ground crew from injuring themselves while doing maintenance.