From atop the stratosphere to Hill's Heritage Museum, one of the Air Force's most recently mothballed aircraft is now part of Hill's permanent collection.
The fuselage of an SR-71 "Blackbird" photo reconnaissance aircraft arrived Aug. 17 inside the hold of a C-5 cargo jet after being dismantled at Beale Air Force Base in California and shipped to Utah in pieces.This copy of the spy plane has been in mothballs since 1975 when it was taken out of service after experimental modifications made it unstable in flight. It has been used to provide spare parts for other Blackbirds since then, according to the Air Force.
Curators at Hill began working to acquire the plane since it became known about one year ago that the entire fleet of Blackbirds was being decommissioned and their reconnaissance work performed instead by satellites.
The 67th Aerial Port Squadron at Hill and the 405th Combat Logistics Support Squadron at Beale clipped the plane's wings so that the fuselage could fit inside the C-5 for transport. The plane will not be on display until the wings are reattached.
SR-71s are capable of flying three times the speed of sound and were first put into service in 1964. They can fly at an altitude of 80,000 feet and took the nickname Blackbird because of the heat-absorbing black paint designed to retard temperatures of up to 800 degrees, according to Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation.
The SR-71 remains the world's fastest, highest-flying jet aircraft. Its spying apparatus can survey 100,000 square miles of ground in one hour.
As many as 31 of the spy planes were built, according to Jane's. The fleet was mothballed in the late 1980s and then reactivated during Operation Desert Storm. Hill was one of 29 museums that competed for custody of the remaining 14 Blackbirds.