From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V3 #81 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 21 July 1993 Volume 03 : Number 081 In this issue: Crickmore's new SR-71 book Real low? Re: Crickmore's new SR-71 book See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1993 10:49:17 -0700 Subject: Crickmore's new SR-71 book I want to echo Albert Dobyns post of last week to say I just got my copy yesterday evening from Zenith. I also haven't completely read it but I did read sections of it last night (of course). Looks GOOD! Lots of new names. Lots of new pictures (how many pictures of M-12s and D-21A's are there anyway? - we've gone from famine to feast - No! - Don't stop Lockheed! Keep em comin!) Lots of new code names as well. There are some pictures of A-12's that are going to blow your minds (OK maybe it's easy to blow my mind). Any some nice Groom shots of A-12's I've never seen before. There are two that come to mind. There is an AWESOME one of an A-12 landing at Groom (you can see the tank farm in the distance) and the A-12 is in a completely unpainted form. That's right. No black leading edges or anything! Just natural titanium. There's also a from below shot of an A-12 right after takeoff as the gear is being retracted. This looks like it might be the same airplane. No black leading edges at all. Some of my favorite M-12/D-21A shots that I saw at SMOF have also been published as well in both black and white AND color. I can say from my reading of sections of the foundations of OXCART section (which is the period of OXCART history most interesting to me) that Paul didn't just copy the OXCART History word for word, as some other writers have done. Some of the information you can tell did come from OXCART History (perhaps even the breakthrough was the declassification of OXCART History). But Paul took the information in OXCART History and ran with it. He contacted each of the BLACK SHIELD pilots (or perhaps their surviving family members) and got some personal photos and their personal story. There are also some new SR-71 shots as well. You can tell that this book was written with lots of new first hand information. It's not hard to recommend it even though I haven't read it thoroughly. As people get farther through it, I'm looking forward to the discussions about it. Larry Smith ------------------------------ From: urf@ki.icl.se (Urban Fredriksson) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 8:52:09 MET DST Subject: Real low? larry@ichips.intel.com (Larry Smith) writes: >You haven't experienced 'ROCK and ROLL' until you've stood UNDER an ^^^^^ >F-14D pulling real hard in a 90 deg. bank and a REAL LOW altitude ^^^^^^^^ >with full burners and a nice double shock train coming out the back!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry, but this seems to be impossible. Either you are _much_ shorter over there, or "REAL LOW" starts much higher up than here :-) To me, real low is for example when the fighter performs a 360 deg roll so soon after take off that one wingtip comes within 0.5 m of the ground. I've seen it, but for some reason our Viggen pilots haven't been allowed to do it at Farnborough or Le Bourget... - -- Urban Fredriksson urf@icl.se ------------------------------ From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 93 00:58:19 MDT Subject: Re: Crickmore's new SR-71 book Larry says... >Lots of new names. Lots of new pictures (how many pictures >of M-12s and D-21A's are there anyway? - we've gone from >famine to feast - No! - Don't stop Lockheed! Keep em comin!) Don't worry... they have! :-) Just recently Lockheed was nice enough to finally release the first *VIDEO* of the M-12/D-21. There are scenes of the D-21s under construction, having the engine installed, being mounted on the M-12, and some separation tests in the factory. Then comes the real stuff: the M-12/D-21 taxiing, in flight, refueling, and finally... two shots of the D-21 being released, including a view of the LSO cockpit. BTW, I forget if this is new info or not, but the M-12/D-21 first flight is given as December 22, 1964.... >There are some pictures of A-12's that are going to blow your >minds (OK maybe it's easy to blow my mind). Any some nice Groom >shots of A-12's I've never seen before. There are two that >come to mind. There is an AWESOME one of an A-12 landing at >Groom (you can see the tank farm in the distance) and the A-12 >is in a completely unpainted form. That's right. No black leading >edges or anything! Just natural titanium. There's also a from >below shot of an A-12 right after takeoff as the gear is being >retracted. This looks like it might be the same airplane. No >black leading edges at all. They also released some new footage of the A-12, including the very first A-12 test flight from Groom... definitely more "mind blowing" stuff, since it shows the nasty oscillation problem it had when they tried to take off the first time. - -dean ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V3 #81 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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