‘I Am Certain That I Have Never Said That to Anyone’: The SR-71 Blackbird Pilot Who Set the Coast-to-Coast Record on Its Final Flight Says He Cruised at Mach 3.3, Past the Official Limit

Automatically curated summary from 19FortyFive.

Former SR-71 Blackbird pilot Raymond E. "Ed" Yielding disputed long-standing reports regarding his final coast-to-coast record flight, clarifying that he cruised at Mach 3.3 rather than remaining within the official Mach 3.2 design limit. According to Yielding, fuel and engine compressor temperature limits restricted top performance, though the aircraft's fuel economy actually improved at higher speeds. While Lockheed engineers cautioned that exceeding Mach 3.2 risked catastrophic inlet unstarts, other pilots reported reaching Mach 3.5 under extremely cold atmospheric conditions, such as near the Barents Sea.

Context and limitations

Relies primarily on personal recollections and claims by former pilots rather than official Air Force flight data or official performance logs.