I bet. The pilot was a really nice guy. He stood by the plane
waiting for security and guards. We were run off once they came.

It has been so long more than 50 years that I forget if I had my
camera with me. I suspect so. Might have a shot on old slides or
b&W as I did both and often had two cameras with me. I shot for
AFRS (before television was added) and ran the chem lab in special
services for the Army. Just had my film taken once. It was a flight
of officers on a small jet headed for Viet Nam. One of those things -
might have been someone there that didn't want tracking or
identification. CIA or High Military staff.

We were 2500 N-Mi south west of Hawaii.

Martin

On 1/21/2016 5:32 AM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 21:22:24 -0600, Martin Eastburn
wrote:

On the ground the tanks leaked. They took off with nominal fuel and
filled to full after the liftoff and at that level nominal leaking
and at flight altitude there wasn't leaking. It was the design. At
the flight characteristics, something had to give - design for flight
to get the full bore ability. If not - altitude would cause leaks.

But, the SR's flying out of Beal made some short training flights
where they didn't do any in flight refueling. My Sgdn. Commander who
went through the "up-grade" scheme that gave other pilots the chance
to fly and theoretically qualify, in the SR, said that he made 30
minute training flights. No refueling.

It wasn't altitude that made the fuel cells leak it was temperatures.

I think that the take off and inflight refueling routine was more
likely for longer flights. As I said, they took off from Beal and
landed at Kadina, which is a longish flight.

I got to be within maybe 50' from a U2 that landed in a Typhoon. Made
it's run but the return was limited to our tiny island. They took off
the wings and took it home in a C-130 as I recall.


I was at two bases where U-2's were stationed and they are a really
close mouthed bunch. Keep the airplanes in the hanger and only let
them out when they are flying :-)

One of the ground crew did tell me that preparing for a flight is a
several hour long procedure as the pilot first makes his preflight
inspection and then gets suited up and has to spend an hour or more
breathing "pure oxygen" to purge nitrogen out of his blood. then he
can go fly.

The ground crew guy said that the pilots get rather short tempered
going through all that :-)



Martin

On 1/18/2016 6:42 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 09:50:43 -0600, dpb wrote:

On 01/18/2016 6:05 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
...

I wonder if the pilots really memorize and strictly observe all those
temperature restrictions and limits. The CIT limit of 427C is easy if
you're into hot Chevys but the others would confuse me, ...


Years ago I hired a (near) kid fresh out of Air Force who had served as
air traffic controller at Kadena while the Blackbirds were stationed
there. He said (amongst other stories) they had only a _very_ limited
time of a few minutes to get traffic cleared and them off the ground
before they leaked so much fuel they wouldn't have enough to get to the
refueling rendezvous point. It took getting to airspeed and resulting
friction heating to expand and seal the tanks, apparently.

I'm not sure about that. While I wasn't in the SR-71 Squadron at Beal
we did do a certain amount of support work for them, and our Squadron
Commander even went through the up-grading program and was qualified
on them. I never heard that they allowed fuel leaks.

But, depending on a lot of things they might have been taking off with
minimum fuel which would limit their time on the ground.
--

Cheers,

John B.

--

Cheers,

John B.