Captain "Buck" Adams (left) and Major William Machorek before their September 13, 1974, flight.

The SR-71 was so fast, on a record run from London to Los Angeles the super-plane arrived almost four hours before it left

At the height of the Cold War, Lockheed's Skunk Works designed an airplane that would prove to be the greatest photoreconnaissance aircraft ever built. The SR-71 Blackbird could fly through any airspace in the world with near impunity. It flew so high and fast that even surface-to-air missiles were largely ineffective against it. This Mach 3-plus jet was designed and built by Lockheed's genius Kelly Johnson and his staff (story, P. 24).

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On December 22, 1964, Lockheed test pilot Robert J. Gilliland took the Black­bird up for its first flight. During the 56-minute test, he clocked speeds of Mach 1.5 at 46,000 feet, which at the time was unheard of for any new aircraft's initial flight. This was an indicator of the po­tential the Blackbird would realize with the U.S. Air Force.

It took close to a year to iron out all the kinks, but in January 1966 the first SR-71 entered USAF service. The first mission-capable Blackbird was delivered to Beale Air Force Base in northern California in early April of that year. These high-flying supersonic aircraft would carry out their worldwide mission for the next 25 years before being forced into retirement by budget cuts.

As the Vietnam War heated up, so did the SR-71's workload. In 1968 it began operations over North Vietnam and Laos, averaging about one sortie per week until 1970, when the schedule was bumped up to two sorties per week, then maxed out at a sortie every day in 1972. The intel gathered during these flights was invaluable, and no Blackbirds were lost to enemy action. Speed, altitude and stealth were major factors in keeping the SR-71 safe because Hanoi was ringed with the latest SAMs provided by the Soviets.

The 1970s proved to be the most noteworthy period for the high-Mach Blackbird. On September 1, 1974, Major James Sullivan and his backseater, Major Noel F. Widdifield, set a speed record in SR-71A serial no. 64-17972, flying from New York to London in 1 hour 54 minutes and 56 seconds, for an average speed of 1,806.96 mph. Less than two weeks later, the same airplane made a long-distance sprint from London to Los Angeles in record time. The pilot on that flight, 31-year-old Captain Harold B. "Buck" Adams, had at age 28 become the youngest airman to fly the SR-71. His reconnaissance systems officer was Major William C. Machorek. Their historic September 13 flight would stretch across seven time zones and take almost twice as long as the New York–to–London dash.

Captain Adams flew in the SR-71 program for four years and accumulated about 350 to 400 hours in the Black­bird. He also piloted B-52 bombers during the Vietnam War, logging 137 combat missions over Southeast Asia between the two aircraft. After he was deployed to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina following the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, he flew one of his most memorable SR-71 missions—a 10-hour 20-minute round trip to the Middle East requiring five aerial refuelings—for which he and his backseater were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The story of the record-breaking London–Los Angeles flight began after the September 1 New York–London run, when no. 972 was put on display at the Farnborough International Airshow. This is one of the biggest annual airshows in the world, with all the major air forces participating in some way, usually with their newest and most sophisticated aircraft.

Adams, who retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1992, recalled the events that led up to the record flight: "Senator Barry Goldwater, a two-star general in the reserves, had previously flown in an SR-71, and he convinced President [Gerald R.] Ford to send the aircraft to England to put it on display to demonstrate American technology. That's when we got the go-ahead for the mission. Our wing commander picked two flight crews, and I was lucky enough to be the pilot on the return flight.

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