Big, Black & Bold

Twenty years ago, on 26th April 1962, the world’s most technologically advanced aeroplane took off on its maiden flight. The same design is not only still flying, but is still unmatched by any other. When describing the aircraft, one cannot avoid the repetitive use of superlatives-the most, the fastest, the highest, the hottest, the best… The aircraft is the Lockheed Blackbird.

The Blackbird was designed to replace the Lockheed U-2 subsonic high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, which first flew in 1955. The U-2s made overflights of the Soviet Union until May 1960, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down and captured. Methods of upgrading the U-2s’ survivability were investigated, including the installation of electronic jamming equipment and the use of new fuels. These studies proved to be ill-fated, but the need still existed for what was required to have a cruising speed of over Mach 3, cruising altitude of over 80,000 feet, small radar signature over a wide frequency range, and electronic countermeasures and advanced communications capabilities. The project was to be jointly funded by the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Lockheed Advanced Development Division (known as the ‘Skunk Works’), under Clarence L. (Kelly) Johnson (chief design engineer for the F-104 Starfighter and the U-2), made a series of proposals for a suitable reconnaissance aircraft, as did the General Dynamics Corporation (Convair Division) and the United States Navy. The Navy in-house proposal proved unfeasible, being a rubber-inflatable ramjet machine carried aloft by a balloon. Before long it was found that the balloon would need to be a mile in diameter to lift the unit, which had a wing area of 117th of an acre! General Dynamics proposed a ramjet-powered Mach 4 aircraft, known as the Kingfisher, to be air-launched from a B-58 Hustler. This proposal, however, was eliminated in favour of the Lockheed design.

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