[HN Gopher] Pilot explains how he Survived Blackbird Disintegrat...
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Pilot explains how he Survived Blackbird Disintegration at Mach 3.2
Author : mzs
Score : 316 points
Date : 2022-06-06 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theaviationgeekclub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theaviationgeekclub.com)
| cm2187 wrote:
| To those interested in the blackbird, the museum of flight had a
| series of panels on their youtube channel, including actuals sr71
| pilots and mechanics [1]
|
| Lots of more minor annecdotes (including a brown pants one). One
| thing I learned is that the idea that the sr71 flew faster than
| anti-air missiles is a misconception. But the missiles at the
| time couldn't be reprogrammed once launched, so what made it safe
| is that because the sr71 flies so fast and so high, between the
| time the missile is launched and the time the missile reaches the
| expected sr71 position and altitude, the sr71 will have had time
| to change course and be far away.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbuOD6bgPc4
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1uq-qOzf5o
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54FEBBPCZ-Y
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmiX_JPuir0
| rvba wrote:
| > I didn't appreciate it at the time, but the suit's
| pressurization had also provided physical protection from intense
| buffeting and g-forces
|
| What is "buffeting"?
| Justin_K wrote:
| When airflow around an object is spoiled, not aerodynamic, it
| creates oscillations of high and low pressure. Here's an
| example of buffeting on a wing during a stall.
| https://youtu.be/6UlsArvbTeo?t=94
| myself248 wrote:
| I believe it's related to the phenomenon that makes whistles
| work. A flow instability produces an oscillation, which results
| in intense pressure fluctuations adjacent to a surface which
| then experiences corresponding mechanical forces.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| You can experience this first-hand if you are driving: roll
| down one window and keep the others up while you are at highway
| speeds, oftentimes that feeling of the air vibrating and
| pulsing when you do that is the same effect. Outside air at
| slightly less pressure due to the movement across the car body
| is interacting with the cabin air, causing the whole mass to
| oscillate, also called wind buffeting.
| 83 wrote:
| Just wind hitting the body. If you've ever ridden a motorcycle
| in high winds (or high speeds) it's amazing how much force it
| exerts on your body. It typically "buffets" or feels like a
| rapid series of someone pushing or lightly hitting your body.
| That's at ~70mph, I can't imagine what it's like at mach 3.
| etrevino wrote:
| Basically getting banged around. It's like a series of rapid
| blows. In the case of aircraft it's where everything just
| rapidly swings from side to side.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Eh, no, the pre-stall buffeting in small aviation is more
| like driving on small rubble, or like touching some of that
| vibrating paint marking the side of a highway, maybe a bit
| stronger than that. Some aircraft do not buffet at all when
| approaching critical angle of attack, which is actually worse
| for safety - you're deprived of a useful signal. And
| regardless of whether they buffet or not the standard stall
| warning in big aviation consists of shaking/vibrating the
| stick/yoke (called a "stick-shaker"). Every professional
| pilot is intimately familiar with that kind of feedback from
| their training on smaller aircraft and will instinctively
| push on their controls mostly without thinking. Unless they
| actually want to stall the plane, for example for aerobatics.
| bell-cot wrote:
| tldr version: pilot was extremely lucky, in a situation where he
| had no control and/or was blacked out
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| That was more than just luck, descending in the pressurize suit
| and having the presence of mine to understand the situation,
| ascertain limitations and abilities, saved his life. He
| could've easily panicked on the way down especially with the
| oxygen line the way it was.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Well, yes. But "Lockheed test pilot assigned to fly SR-71's"
| kinda guarantees that he's got "great presence of mind",
| "never panics", etc. down cold.
| gxs wrote:
| Right, for example he said he took off his mask so that he
| could see his altitude and manually deploy his shoot if
| necessary.
|
| The whole story sounds horrific and it's very unfortunate the
| co-pilot died.
|
| The other bit I found interesting was how they were able to
| replicate the accident in a flight simulator. Can you imagine
| the work that went into that simulator as well? Would be
| awesome to see the systems involved.
|
| Very cool story - makes you wonder what the state of the art
| is.
| geocrasher wrote:
| The sim also struck me as very interesting, especially for
| 1960's technology! How much do you want to bet that they
| ran every test flight through the simulator _first_ after
| this accident?
| hermitdev wrote:
| > he took off his mask
|
| He didn't take off his mask, he took off his visor (or
| rather held it out of the way). The flight crew of an SR-71
| wear pressure suits very similar to that of astronauts. The
| helmets they were are also similar in appearance, at least.
| They've got a "sunglass" visor that slides down over the
| transparent bubble of the helmet. This is likely what he
| was "removing". It sounded like the latch that would
| normally hold it in its stowed position broke,
| necessitating him holding it out of the way (mentioned
| several times). You can see a close up of the helmet here
| [0], full body view [1], side view with the visor up [2].
| The crew doesn't wear a mask light you'd see in, say, a
| fighter jet. The entire suit is pressurized. I'm not even
| sure a crew member is capable of removing their helmet
| without assistance. They certainly need help getting the
| entire suit, gloves and helmet on & sealed.
|
| [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brian_Shul_in_t
| he_co... [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SR71_c
| rew.jpg#/media... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi
| le:Brian_Shul_in_the_co...
| robonerd wrote:
| Luck and great engineering. You're right, by the pilot's
| admission he was only along for the ride once the plane
| disintegrated. The headline could be seen as a bit misleading,
| but the story as told by the pilot is pretty interesting.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Reminds me of a quote attributed to Picasso: Inspiration
| exists, but is has to find us working. The hard engineering
| work and planning is what enabled the good luck to exist.
| moritonal wrote:
| "along for the ride" as 100 engineer's work simultaneously
| attempt to keep him alive.
| robonerd wrote:
| The work of the engineers that kept him alive was all done
| before the accident, not simultaneous to it. When the
| accident was unfolding, the engineers were either unaware
| or assumed the pilot was dead.
| dtparr wrote:
| I parsed it the way you did at first, but on second
| reading, I believe it could be rephrased to "the work of
| 100 engineers simultaneously attempt" to make it clear
| the simultaneity referenced all the various systems
| working together.
| moritonal wrote:
| Ah, my dyslexic brain might have misused an apostrophe?
|
| My belief is that "engineer's work" changed the subject
| to the work.
|
| Whilst "engineers work" makes the subject the engineers.
| Is that right or wrong?
| dboreham wrote:
| The unstart problem was eventually solved by microelectronics
| becoming sufficiently advanced to add a digital computer
| controlling each engine spike, I believe based on a 68k.
| beagle3 wrote:
| Tangentially related: An F-15 pilot managed to land an F-15 with
| (essentially) one wing. https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/that-time-
| an-f-15-landed-withou... , and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxJcEz3h4tU
| more_corn wrote:
| This is the most exciting story I've read this year. What a ride.
| The bit at the end about his copilot wondering if he's still
| there was awesome. Netflix should make a series about this.
| iammru wrote:
| I'm also curious how Marevick survived the destruction of
| Darkstar going Mach 10.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Plot armor.
| the_watcher wrote:
| Randall Munroe references this in an answer to a What If?
| question (my very quick Google of it doesn't find it on the site,
| so it might be book only).
| labrador wrote:
| If like me you have a hard time reading this low contrast text,
| here's a bookmarklet to bold it
| javascript:(function(){let list =
| document.getElementsByTagName('p'); for (let element of list) {
| element.style.fontWeight = 'bold'}})();
| mattlondon wrote:
| I love hearing these stories about these little automatic backups
| and failsafes kicking-in and heroically doing their jobs in the
| case of unthinkable situations (e.g the flight suit emergency
| oxygen, automatic parachute etc here). I get kinda goose pimples
| thinking about all the systems that were probably spasmodically
| firing off in that last second or two or flight (and perhaps in
| the split seconds after breakup if they had power still?), trying
| their damn best to valiantly do their final important tasks, even
| when doomed to fail.
|
| Kudos to all the engineers involved.
|
| Anyone got any other first-hand stories or links to similar
| stuff?
| mzs wrote:
| Auto-GCAS https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/auto-
| gcas_pe...
| jaywalk wrote:
| I've watched the video on that page numerous times, and it's
| still amazing.
| austinl wrote:
| I'd highly recommend the book _Skunk Works_ by Ben Rich. It 's
| about the engineering team at Lockheed Martin that designed the
| Blackbird (and the U-2, and several other amazing planes), and
| describes many of the engineering challenges in detail.
| jeffdn wrote:
| Such a fascinating read! I particularly enjoyed the part
| where they are testing the radar cross section of Have Blue,
| the initial design for the F-117. They had put it up on the
| test stand, but think the radar is malfunctioning, as they
| don't see any returns on the scope. Finally, they get a tiny
| return -- a bird had landed on the test object!
| hef19898 wrote:
| The F-117 is such great plane, and defense project.
| Developed as complete black project, it was delivered in
| time and, allegedly, in budget. The latter point is hard to
| verify, after all they used parts from the F-15 and F-16
| programms. Up to the point where congress challenegd the
| spare needs for those programms.
|
| Plus, it was a beautiful plane.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The B-2 and F-117 are so bizarre and alien looking
| compared to everything that came before and after (in a
| good way). If we were picking planes for a space opera,
| IMO the big villain guy would fly around in a B-2, his
| minions would get F-117s, and probably the hero would get
| a Blackbird (although, with a less menacing paint job).
| tomcam wrote:
| Analysis: True
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| There's an audiobook of it which was pretty well done
| 0000011111 wrote:
| I 2ed this recommendation. After reading the book, I felt
| like I understood the fundamentals of why the Blackbird
| program was limited in scope and time in contrast to their
| cheeper to build and operate style aircraft.
| gumby wrote:
| I second this recommendation. I've read this book more than
| once. I'm amazed at how quickly they developed and shipped
| product, and developed their own tooling in the process.
| inasio wrote:
| My favorite part of the new Top Gun movie was the first 10-15
| minutes. It features a very nice looking plane with a cool
| skunk logo [0]
|
| [0] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-
| martin/a...
| Victerius wrote:
| (Spoilers?)
|
| I thought the Darkstar plane (or a copy, since it
| disintegrates in flight) would return at the end of the
| movie to save the day or as a surprise, but it didn't.
| narrator wrote:
| (Spoilers?)
|
| I don't think disintegrating at mach 10 would be
| survivable. You're basically a meteorite at that point
| burning up in the atmosphere, not to mention the speed at
| which you'll hit the ground even with a parachute if the
| parachute could even stay intact at that speed.
| twh270 wrote:
| Yeah that scene completely ruined my suspension of
| disbelief (which was already set to 7/10 because Top Gun
| is pure entertainment anyway).
|
| I guess you could theorize a 'capsule' consisting of some
| part of the cockpit that would last long enough to
| decelerate the pilot to a "more survivable" speed, no
| idea what the engineering tradeoffs are there though.
| edrxty wrote:
| I got the feeling they recut a lot of the first act in
| post. A lot of effort was put into the darkstar both in
| production and in marketing and it was turned into a
| throwaway
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I could have literally been thrown together for marketing
| reasons. It was turned into a nice promotional event in
| both microsoft flight simulator and Ace Combat 7
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Spoilers:
|
| Maverick died during that crash and the whole movie is
| just his last DMT hit before brain death. (Not my theory,
| lifted from the internets)
| [deleted]
| K2h wrote:
| Related to backups and fail-safes heroically doing their jobs -
| Found on HN awhile ago - stories of successful ejection seat
| deployment saving each pilots life. https://martin-
| baker.com/ejection-tie-club/
| yardie wrote:
| I wonder how many HNers grew up on Top Gun and thinking
| ejection seats are inherently dangerous because Goose died
| while operating one.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Ejection seats are inherently dangerous for sure. Even an
| ideal ejection is a big enough hit on your spinal column
| your height will measure different for a bit afterwards.
| fsagx wrote:
| Ward Carroll (a former F14 rear-seater) has a good
| breakdown on F14 ejection issues (and the dreaded flat
| spin) on his youtube channel:
|
| The Truth About the F-14 and Goose's Death:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwS1k8LKxJg
|
| Synopsis: Goose's death was based on a real accident, but
| ejection protocol was changed by the Top-Gun timeline. Had
| Goose followed procedure, he should have survived the
| ejection.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Considerably related: if you enjoyed this article, you need to
| see Top Gun Maverick for its SR
| aliswe wrote:
| SR?
| forbiddenlake wrote:
| The article is about the SR-71 Blackbird. The new Top Gun
| features a plane based on the unreleased SR-72.
| royalewithchees wrote:
| "Pete Mitchell explains how he survived his SR disintegration
| at a speed of Mach 10.4."
| munchler wrote:
| Good story. I think this line was the most surprising to me:
|
| > The SR-71 had a turning radius of about 100 mi. at that speed
| and altitude
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Keep in mind it is traveling at 2,200 MPH so it both has an
| immense amount of inertia, and also travels through that turn
| faster than it might sound.
|
| At speed, that is about 4 minutes to make a 90 degree turn,
| traveling an arc length of 160 miles.
| kurthr wrote:
| "On the planned test profile, we entered a programmed 35-deg.
| bank turn to the right. An immediate unstart occurred on the
| right engine, forcing the aircraft to roll further right and
| start to pitch up. I jammed the control stick as far left and
| forward as it would go. No response. I instantly knew we were in
| for a wild ride." ... at Mach 3.2 and 78k ft.
| eismcc wrote:
| "unstart" - while a terrifying euphemism - is there is reason
| "stall", or similar, is not used?
| chiph wrote:
| Because "inlet fart", while descriptive of what happens,
| wasn't socially acceptable.
| corrral wrote:
| Looks like it's a technical term for a particular type of
| supersonic behavior:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstart
| eismcc wrote:
| The semantics is start/unstart are definitely more
| interesting in this context and seem less dramatic in the
| context of wind tunnel tests
| hinkley wrote:
| In movies you see military folks with a very dry sense of
| humor. Doubly so for Airforce/Navy pilots, and then test
| pilots just bury the needle.
|
| Having worked with a few different veterans over the years
| (army, Intelligence, and submarine) I don't have anything in
| my small but diverse sample size that disagrees with that
| mythos.
|
| Golden Era NASA was mostly pilots and quite a few of them
| test pilots. "Houston, we have a problem" is iconic but as
| far as I can tell, not exceptional.
| yesenadam wrote:
| I read Chuck Yeager's autobiography when I was a kid. I
| remember from that that when a fellow test pilot fatally
| crashed, they'd say he "bought the farm".
| eismcc wrote:
| I do wonder if the words should be further away from each
| other phonetically though - start ... unstart seem close
| enough to be confused if the radio is noisy
| jaywalk wrote:
| Nobody is going to be talking about an unstart over the
| radio in an emergency situation. It took 2-3 seconds
| between the unstart and the aircraft disintegrating.
| marktangotango wrote:
| > Houston, we have a problem
|
| A lot of people comment on this, but it succinctly relays
| the severity, in that the the pilot is alive, and the radio
| works.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > "unstart" - while a terrifying euphemism - is there is
| reason "stall", or similar, is not used?
|
| "stall" has a specific meaning, and it isn't what happened.
| kurthr wrote:
| The supersonic shockwave-cone would enter the engine intake,
| which leads to an un-start. The weird cones that stick out
| the front of the engines can be manipulated to slow down the
| incoming air and keep it below supersonic at the intakes,
| which is normally done automatically with little analog
| computers that apparently failed somewhat regularly and in
| this case spectacularly during a banking turn.
| Wistar wrote:
| In the course of helping an acquaintance do research for a
| book, I listened to hours of interviews with an 80 year old
| aerodynamics specialist who worked for Boeing for decades.
| It was fascinating stuff. One of his specialties was the
| design of the inlets for jet engines and, through the
| conversation, I learned that the inlet is the entire
| aerodynamic approach to the actual engine intake, starting
| before the air even encounters any of the structure of the
| aircraft. Turns out that certain designs cause turbulence
| out in front of the aircraft and all of that path to the
| intake must be taken into account.
|
| He referred to the SR-71 inlet design and called the
| potentially catastrophic disruption of the air an "inlet
| unstart."
| Merad wrote:
| An unstart is a specific phenomenon where supersonic flow of
| air into the engine gets disrupted. It's very different from
| a compressor stall where the airflow _inside_ the engine is
| disrupted. Wikipedia has a pretty decent explanation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstart
| Flatcircle wrote:
| wait so did his copilot survive?
| dgritsko wrote:
| No, unfortunately he did not survive:
|
| > After helping me with the chute, Mitchell said he'd check on
| Jim. He climbed into his helicopter, flew a short distance away
| and returned about 10 min. later with devastating news: Jim was
| dead. Apparently, he had suffered a broken neck during the
| aircraft's disintegration and was killed instantly. Mitchell
| said his ranch foreman would soon arrive to watch over Jim's
| body until the authorities arrived.
| FredPret wrote:
| For more like this, read Skunk Works, by Ben Rich, former
| director of the same. Brilliant book
| anonAndOn wrote:
| This story is missing one important detail. It may have seemed
| superfluous at the time, but we now know it's not. Did Jim have a
| son?
| 1shooner wrote:
| >"The next day, our flight profile was duplicated on the SR-71
| flight simulator at Beale AFB, Calif. The outcome was identical.
| Steps were immediately taken to prevent a recurrence of our
| accident."
|
| When he says 'flight profile', is he referring to the full flight
| plan/mission (i.e. it could have been simulated beforehand and
| prevented the crash), or does he mean the specific circumstances
| that arose during the flight (the malfunction)?
| hinkley wrote:
| Educated guess they mean the moments leading up to the
| accident. FTA this was an incident during a test flight. If
| they lost the plane during a normal mission then they'd need
| repro steps, but in this case the flight was itself an
| experiment, so the distinction between the two is pretty fine.
|
| > On Jan. 25, 1966 Lockheed test pilots Bill Weaver and Jim
| Zwayer were flying SR-71 Blackbird #952 at Mach 3.2, at 78,800
| feet when a serious engine unstart and the subsequent
| "instantaneous loss of engine thrust" occurred.
|
| A bit later he says:
|
| > "On the planned test profile, we entered a programmed 35-deg.
| bank turn to the right. An immediate unstart occurred on the
| right engine, forcing the aircraft to roll further right and
| start to pitch up. I jammed the control stick as far left and
| forward as it would go. No response. I instantly knew we were
| in for a wild ride."
| sbehere wrote:
| Here's another awesome copy-pasta about the SR-71: The speed
| check story
|
| https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think that's an excerpt from Brian Shul's 1994 book _Sled
| Driver: Flying the World 's Fastest Jet_.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Brian Shul is such an inspiring speaker and photographer
| about both the SR-71 and other things "Over the Rainbow" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigZsFypdyI
| mckirk wrote:
| That's what I immediately thought of as well; for some reason
| the people telling SR-71 stories seem to be great story
| tellers, and despite having read the Speed Check Story probably
| a dozen times by now, it's hard to resist when it pops up
| again.
| fmajid wrote:
| My favorite SR-71 story is how the CIA set up shell companies
| to buy Soviet titanium for it because US production was
| insufficient.
|
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crazy-story-how-
| russi...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| More specifically, we could mine it and refine it, but
| Russian titanium metallurgy was far superior.
| shagie wrote:
| Another story - Buzzing the tower at Sacramento as told by
| Pilot Maury Rosenberg - https://youtu.be/xTJYNq4GQAE
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Yes here is the original LA Speed Check Story, told by Brian
| Shul:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigZsFypdyI&t=3350s
| abraae wrote:
| That guy sure can tell a story.
| loeg wrote:
| This particular copy-pasta of the story is dated to 2022, but the
| story is much older (I mean, obviously it happened in the 60s,
| but I think the word-for-word copy is more recent). The story was
| published online at least as early as 2007:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20071201072335/http://www.916-st...
|
| Previously discussed:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133282 (2008)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=519337 (2009)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4652643 (2012)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21500153 (2019)
| epc wrote:
| The Aviation Week article is dated 8 August 2005:
| https://aviationweek.com/sr-71-disintegrates-around-pilot-du...
| (subscription req'd).
| jacobsievers wrote:
| In 2009, 3 Quarks Daily credited this excerpt to an article in
| Aviation Week & Space Technology. What date exactly, I couldn't
| determine. See
| https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/03/sr71-disintegr...
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Also recommended: an interview with a former SR-71 pilot on the
| Omega Tau podcast:
|
| https://omegataupodcast.net/91-flying-the-sr-71/
| pupppet wrote:
| Having already read this account I chortled to myself after
| watching Tom Gun's Maverick...
|
| Deleted after people crying spoiler but an event within the first
| 10 mins seems like a bit of a stretch.
| enlightens wrote:
| Or! https://www.vulture.com/2022/05/theory-top-gun-maverick-
| is-m...
| geocrasher wrote:
| I watched this movie just a couple of nights ago, and I have
| to admit that this looks very plausible. At the same time,
| this very SR-71 breakup story may be the inspiration for the
| Darkstar breakup, considering that Lockheed Martin was
| involved in the production.
| racnid wrote:
| I hate the "it was all a dream" take. You see it for
| literally every movie and it's a completely lazy way to
| analyze a film. I like this idea better; that maybe, just
| maybe, they took inspiration from a real life event where
| the pilot did survive. There's numerous stories from the
| 50's and 60's of pilots landing in farmers fields having
| ejected from their disintegrated aircraft.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Hey, some of us haven't watched it yet!
| JackFr wrote:
| Spoiler alert!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's not _entirely_ impossible.
|
| We've used escape capsules instead of ejection seats at times;
| the B-58 had a nifty one.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule
| jquery wrote:
| Spoiler alert...
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(page generated 2022-06-06 23:00 UTC)