On Wednesday 3 March 2010, the Trust was delighted to host a talk by Col. Rich Graham, USAF (Ret’d). One of the small band of pilots selected to fly the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance ‘spy plane’, Col. Graham enthralled the sell-out audience at the Orsett Hall Hotel, Essex, with tales of his experiences flying this iconic aircraft.
Using photographs and diagrams which would have been top secret at the time, Col. Graham took the audience through the drawn out planning and pre-flight procedures necessary to ensure a safe and successful mission. The aircraft’s two-man crew would be entering a highly dangerous environment – the Blackbird regularly flew at heights of 70 - 80,000 feet – and the defensive threats from those countries that didn’t wish to be photographed also had to be taken into account!
Col. Graham used the example of a mission from the Blackbird detachment based at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk, to photograph Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet’s base at Murmansk. He explained how shortly after take-off the Blackbird would refuel from a KC-135 tanker over the North Sea before continuing around the top of Norway towards Murmansk. The Blackbird would not overfly the Soviet Union but would fly a ‘sweep’ over the Barents Sea, enabling it to gather information on military installations hundreds of miles inside Soviet territory. Frequent quotes of the speeds and altitudes attained by the Blackbird on such missions demonstrated how special the aircraft was, and how unique the whole programme and its operations were in the history of aviation.
