Speaker 1: And we continue with our American stories. And our next
Speaker 1: story comes from a man whose YouTube videos are followed
Speaker 1: by hundreds of thousands of viewers of all ages, and
Speaker 1: he's simply known as the History Guy. In nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: an SR seventy one Blackbird disintegrated at seventy eight thousand feet.
Speaker 1: The pilot's first thought was, quote, no one could live
Speaker 1: through what just happened, Therefore I must be dead. Here's
Speaker 1: the History Guy with the story of the SR seventy
Speaker 1: one Blackbird disintegrating at altitudes unknown to most men. There's
Speaker 1: an old airplane story that's called the LA speed Chat
Speaker 1: can go something like that. A pilot of a single
Speaker 1: injin sssna calls the Los Angeles Air Rack Control Center
Speaker 1: and ask for a speed chat. Wants to know how
Speaker 1: fast he's going, and center tells him he's going about
Speaker 1: ninety knots. Immediately thereafter, another pilot, someone in say a
Speaker 1: twin engine Beechcraft, trying to make fun of how slow
Speaker 1: the cessna goes asked for a speed check and the
Speaker 1: center tells him that he's going around one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one knots. But almost immediately thereafter, another voice chimes in,
Speaker 1: and this is a Navy pilot who's flying in an
Speaker 1: F eighteen Fighter Chat and he doesn't really need to
Speaker 1: know how fast he's going. He's got an air speed
Speaker 1: indicator inside his cockpit. He's just trying to prove to
Speaker 1: everybody out there on the frequency that he's flying the biggest, baddest,
Speaker 1: fastest jet in the world and show all those cessna
Speaker 1: and beachcraft owners how fast plane really flies. And the
Speaker 1: LA Center radio's back that he's going an impressive six
Speaker 1: and twenty knots, and you think that would be enough
Speaker 1: to win this little contest. When another voice casually asks,
Speaker 1: this is Aspen three zero, can you give us a
Speaker 1: speed check? And after a moment, the center responds, Aspen
Speaker 1: three zero, we have you going one thousand, nine hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety three knots. That story, which was related in
Speaker 1: Brian Scholl's book Sled Driver Flying the World's Fastest Jet,
Speaker 1: shows how we extreme the world's fastest air breathing manned
Speaker 1: jet aircraft in history. The Lockeed SR. Seventy one Blackbird
Speaker 1: really was. But you know, if you find an airplane,
Speaker 1: they can go more than three times the speed of
Speaker 1: sound and almost into outer space. One thing's important. You
Speaker 1: don't want to fall out, and if you did, it
Speaker 1: would be history that deserves to be remembered. In late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, the CIA approach the defense contractor Lockeed,
Speaker 1: asking them to secretly design an undetectable spyplane. Lockeed's Advanced
Speaker 1: Development project unit was called the Skunk Works, a nickname
Speaker 1: it had gotten since the original facility had been built
Speaker 1: near an old plastics manufacturing plant that produced awful smells.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty five, the Skunk Works had gotten a
Speaker 1: CIA contract to build an ultra high altitude spyplane designed
Speaker 1: for flying over the Soviet Union and photographing of strategic interests.
Speaker 1: The plane was the Lockeed U two, a plane able
Speaker 1: to fly at such a high altitude that it was
Speaker 1: thought to be outside Soviet radar capacity and invulnerable to
Speaker 1: Soviet fighter aircraft and ground to air missiles. The new
Speaker 1: request was for a plane that could go even higher
Speaker 1: and faster than the U two. The plane ended up
Speaker 1: with the designation SR for a Strategic Reconnaissance seventy one,
Speaker 1: painted a blue so dark that was almost black to
Speaker 1: camouflage the plane against the night sky, It earned the
Speaker 1: nickname Blackbird. The SR seventy one was designed for flight.
Speaker 1: It over mark three with a flight crew of two.
Speaker 1: Traveling at supersonic speeds meant that the outside of the
Speaker 1: aircraft would get very hot more than six hundred degrees,
Speaker 1: so Lockeed could not use aluminum. The plane was ninety
Speaker 1: two titanium inside and out, but most problematic is that
Speaker 1: the ore needed to make titanium is rare and in
Speaker 1: short supply in the United States. The major supplier of
Speaker 1: the ore was the Soviet Union. The US surreptitiously worked
Speaker 1: through third world straw buyers to acquire the ore. The
Speaker 1: plane was designed to reduce its radar cross section and
Speaker 1: early version of stealth that, combined with its speed and altitude,
Speaker 1: made the plane virtually invulnerable to countermeasures. There were also
Speaker 1: challenges given the plane's altitude ceiling above eighty thousand feet.
Speaker 1: A normal pilot's mass cannot provide enough oxygen for a
Speaker 1: pilot above about forty thousand feet, and breathing becomes impossible
Speaker 1: above forty nine thousand feet as the pressure at which
Speaker 1: the lung s excrete carbon dioxide exceeds outside air pressure.
Speaker 1: At sixty two thousand feet some eighteen plus kilometers, the
Speaker 1: pressure reaches something called the Armstrong limit. The Armstrong limit
Speaker 1: represents the altitude above which atmospheric pressure is sufficiently low
Speaker 1: that water boils at the normal temperature of the human body.
Speaker 1: Simply put, a human cannot survive above this limit, as
Speaker 1: their blood would literally boil to a steerd the conditions.
Speaker 1: Aircrews for high altitude craft have to wear pressurized suits.
Speaker 1: In the Terrible scenario where an aircrew had to eject
Speaker 1: at extreme altitudes, the suit had built in oxygen tank
Speaker 1: designed to keep the suit pressurise. Of just thirty two
Speaker 1: SR seventy ones built. Twelve were lost to accidents, and
Speaker 1: the first of those accidents occurred during the plane's testing
Speaker 1: phase of January twenty fifth, nineteen sixty six. The plane,
Speaker 1: tail number nine to five two, took off from Edwards
Speaker 1: Air Force Base at eleven twenty am. The pilot was
Speaker 1: Bill Weaver and experienced Lockeed test pilot. Jim's were a
Speaker 1: Lockeed flight test reconnaissance and navigation system specialist was in
Speaker 1: the rear. The two were investigating procedures designed to reduce
Speaker 1: trim drag and improved high mock cruise performance. Weaver increased
Speaker 1: the plane speed to mock three point two and climbed
Speaker 1: to seventy eight thousand feet. Several minutes later, the right
Speaker 1: engine automatic inlet control system failed, requiring a switch to
Speaker 1: manual control. This was common in the early test phase
Speaker 1: of the aircraft, but as Weaver took the plane into
Speaker 1: a scheduled thirty five degree bank turned to the right,
Speaker 1: the right engine suffered a dreaded inlet unstart. The resulting
Speaker 1: asymmetric thrust caused the plane to roll further right, increasing
Speaker 1: the bank to sixty degrees and pitch up. Knowing the
Speaker 1: chances of surviving an ejection at mocked three point one
Speaker 1: eight and seventy eight eight hundred feet was not very good,
Speaker 1: Weaver hoped to be able to get the plane to
Speaker 1: a lower altitude and speed to allow a safe ejection.
Speaker 1: He yelled for his war to stay with the planes
Speaker 1: as they tempted to gain control, but the G forces
Speaker 1: were so strong that the words came out garbled and unintelligible.
Speaker 1: The radical G forces were beyond human limits, and weavern's
Speaker 1: way or lost consciousness, neither able to activate the ejection system.
Speaker 1: SR seventy one Tail number nine five two disintegrated in midair.
Speaker 1: Back at Edwards, a plane disappeared from radar and they
Speaker 1: lost radio contact. The initial assessment was was that the
Speaker 1: flight crew could not have survived such a violent break
Speaker 1: up at that speed and altitude. When Bill Weaver woke up,
Speaker 1: he thought he was having a bad dream. His next
Speaker 1: thought was, no one could survive what just happened. Therefore
Speaker 1: I must be dead. But as he became more aware,
Speaker 1: he could hear rushing wind and what sounded like straps flapping.
Speaker 1: He was alive and had somehow separated from the aircraft
Speaker 1: despite not activating the ejection system. In fact, he had
Speaker 1: been thrown clear in the accident. His ejection seat was
Speaker 1: still with the wreckage of the plane falling to Earth
Speaker 1: at that very moment. The flight suit had apparently done
Speaker 1: its job with the oxygen tank that was attached to
Speaker 1: the parachute harness, inflating the suit to keep it pressurized.
Speaker 1: That was itself astounding given the violence of the plane's breakup,
Speaker 1: and it was a good thing otherwise Weaver's blood would
Speaker 1: be boiling. But the visor on his helmet was iced over.
Speaker 1: While I could tell that he was falling, he couldn't see.
Speaker 1: The parachute system was supposed to initially deploy a small
Speaker 1: chute that should keep him from tumbling, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: be sure that it had deployed, as he had no
Speaker 1: idea how long he'd been unconscious. He didn't know how
Speaker 1: far up he was or how long before he might
Speaker 1: experience the rapid deceleration caused by colliding with the earth.
Speaker 1: But the small shoote had deployed and he was falling vertically.
Speaker 1: The main shute should open automatically at fifteen thousand feet,
Speaker 1: but it could not be sure the automatic systems were functioning.
Speaker 1: He tried to find the manual activation for the shoot,
Speaker 1: but his hands were numbed by cold, and with the
Speaker 1: suit inflated, he couldn't find it. But just then he
Speaker 1: felt the reassuring sudden deceleration caused by the opening of
Speaker 1: the main chute. He lifted the face plate on his visor,
Speaker 1: only to find that the latch was broken and he
Speaker 1: had to hold it up. Given the plane speed, he
Speaker 1: couldn't even be sure which state he was going to
Speaker 1: land in, and the ground below looked desolate. He could
Speaker 1: see the burning wreckage of the airplane on the ground
Speaker 1: some miles away. And most importantly, he was reassured to
Speaker 1: see Jim's Weyer's shoote open some distance off. Despite being
Speaker 1: an experienced test pilot, we never actually jumped out of
Speaker 1: an airplane before. This was his first parachute landing, and
Speaker 1: he said it went okay, despite nearly landing on what
Speaker 1: appeared to be a very surprised antelope. Given the side
Speaker 1: that the search area must be, he figured he'd have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to survive the night before he
Speaker 1: could expect rescue. But on that account he was wrong.
Speaker 1: He was busy trying to collapse his parachute while having
Speaker 1: to hold up his faceplate when he heard someone behind
Speaker 1: him say, can I help you with that? It turns
Speaker 1: out the plane had broken apart over a New Mexico
Speaker 1: ranch owned by Albert J. Mitchell Junior. Mitchell and several
Speaker 1: ranch hands were Brandon Colts. They heard a noise and
Speaker 1: saw parachutes descending from the sky several minutes later. Mitchell
Speaker 1: was a pilot and owned a small Hughes three hundred
Speaker 1: helicopter and immediately flown to where Weaver had landed. After
Speaker 1: helping Weaver collapse the shote, Mitchell flew to where Jim
Speaker 1: Zueer's shoot had landed, only to find that Zueer was deceased.
Speaker 1: His neck had apparently snapped when the airplane broke up.
Speaker 1: After the accident, we were found out that the flapping
Speaker 1: noise that had been hearing as he was falling was
Speaker 1: because the heavy nylon straps that had strapped him into
Speaker 1: the aircraft had been shredded by the accident. And that
Speaker 1: shows how impressive it was that his flight suit held
Speaker 1: together through all of that. But also found out that
Speaker 1: the oxygen tank that connected to his flight suit was
Speaker 1: connected by two tubes and one had torn loose and
Speaker 1: the other was barely hanging on. If that second tube
Speaker 1: had torn loose, and then the flight suit would not
Speaker 1: have inflated and he would have died. Albert Mitchell flew
Speaker 1: Weaver to the nearest hospital, which was in took him
Speaker 1: carrying New Mexico, and Weaver remembers being terrified because Mitchell
Speaker 1: kept the little helicopter speed above the red line for
Speaker 1: the entire trip, and Weaver was thinking how ironic would
Speaker 1: be that if he survived falling out of an SR
Speaker 1: seventy one at seventy eight thousand feet only to die
Speaker 1: in a little helicopter on the way to the hospital.
Speaker 1: The Air Force retired the SR seventy one in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight and NASA retired THEIRS in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: but there are persistent rumors that the skunk Works is
Speaker 1: working on a successor to the SR seventy one that
Speaker 1: some people claim will be twice as fast. In its
Speaker 1: thirty three years of service, Jim Sware was the only
Speaker 1: SR seventy one crew member to die in a flight accident.
Speaker 1: Bill Weaver was backflying SR seventy ones within a week
Speaker 1: and eventually became Lockheed's chief test pilot. He retired and
Speaker 1: lives in Carlsbad, California. The man who survived the disintegrating
Speaker 1: Blackbird his story, Bill Weavers. Here are now American stories