{"id":101,"date":"2006-11-24T06:56:13","date_gmt":"2006-11-23T22:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2006-11-24T07:28:35","modified_gmt":"2006-11-23T23:28:35","slug":"i-saw-the-blackbird-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"I Saw the Blackbird Fly"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/sr71_1.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Well, what the heck.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s make it a Blackbird week!<\/p>\n<p>It was 1997, more than nine years ago.\u00a0 To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the USAF, the annual EAA Fly-in in Oshkosh, WI, invited all four &#8220;black jets&#8221;, U-2, SR-71, F-117, and B-2 (in the order of seniority) to the show.\u00a0 So I went to the Fly-in twice that year, the first time to see the U-2 arrive and the second to see the other three do fly-by.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/sr71_2.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>At the time, the USAF no longer flew the SR-71 but NASA still did.\u00a0 It dispatched the SR-71B trainer.\u00a0 According to the original plan, the Blackbird was to do a super-sonic pass over the crowd.\u00a0 Although I had heard sonic booms many times in Taiwan, it was a rarity in the US.\u00a0 After seeing the SR-71 do fly-by and a simulated midair refueling with the NKC-135, everybody was waiting patiently for the super-sonic shock.\u00a0 We waited and waited.\u00a0 But the Blackbird never returned.\u00a0 Nobody told us why&#8230;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/sr71_3.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>A few days later, I learned that the SR-71 had to be diverted to the Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee due to a fuel leak.\u00a0 That is why it did not return for the super-sonic pass.\u00a0 About a month later, when visited the 128th ARW based at Mitchell International Airport, LtCol. Bart told me that the leak was pretty bad and fuel splashed along the runway.\u00a0 The SR-71\u00a0was forced\u00a0to stay there for several days.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/sr71_4.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>So I never experienced any sonic boom in the US.\u00a0 But it does not matter.\u00a0 After all, I saw the Blackbird fly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, what the heck.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s make it a Blackbird week! It was 1997, more than nine years ago.\u00a0 To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the USAF, the annual EAA Fly-in in Oshkosh,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blackbird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}