The SR-71 Blackbird – Still the Baddest Fucking Jet, Ever

I’m going to take a step back from my mounting dismay at current events, and re-visit a happier time. Flipping through some old YouTube videos last night, I ran into a couple of good ones made by Major Brian Shul, USAF (Ret.) about his incredible personal story and love affair with this equally incredible aircraft. I was privileged to be associated with the SR-71 and its specialized ISR mission while stationed at EUCOM during my second tour, where I earned the distinction of being an honorary member of Det-4 of the Air Force’s 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (SRW) for my advocacy for their mission and ISR program that was at the time called GIANT REACH.

Following the conclusion of what I think was a fairly successful initial utilization tour (I love that phrase, it’s so clinical), I negotiated orders to EUCOM in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany. I’ll never forget the day that I arrived after the all-night flight to Frankfurt and the short hop down to the airport at Stuttgart-Echterdingen. There, I was met by my sponsor Frank, who whisked me from the terminal and headed up the A-8 to settle me into my BOQ room at Patch Barracks. It was March of 1984, and spring had not yet sprung – the cold, the landscape and combo of flight hangover and impending jet-lag made it surreal. During the drive, Frank asked me if I had heard about the Autobahn. I replied in the affirmative and then he said:
“Just wait – you’re going to get to see that everything you have heard about it is true.”
Sure enough, a Porsche and couple of big Benzes blew by us at over 100mph in the left lane leaving shockwaves in their wake– like sonic booms. Wilkommen nach Deutschland.

Patch Barracks had been Rommel’s main tank base and personal HQ prior to WWII, and it still bore the deep furrows of Panzer tracks in its cobblestone streets. The BOQ room I was assigned to was in the vintage Wehrmacht building, with 12ft ceilings, and large ornate two-room suites with parquet wood floors. Rommel’s former O’club was across the street. There was a collection of characters in that place, and my chief running mate for the first few weeks I was there was my next door neighbor in the BOQ, Lt Col Robert E. Lee, IV, USA, no shit.

Bobby Lee was a total wastrel on his way out of the Army, but was one entertaining, charming, and generous guy. He exuded the charisma inherited from his great, great grandfather, who despite all negative accounts of history was one hell of a good man, and a victim of tragic circumstances. Bobby Lee was an infantry commander and war hero in Vietnam – he had several Silver and Bronze Stars, and Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in combat. He was conscious of his heritage, and the fact that he was drinking it away. He had to live with the crushing weight of history, family legacy of guilt for the Civil War, and great expectations. A lesser man would have quailed at that prospect when joining the Army, much less even trying to follow in his legendary ancestor’s footsteps.
Bob was gifted with handsome movie-star good looks and a dazzling smile, sort of an Errol Flynn, swashbuckling character; his two weekend German girl friends were spectacular – and he even had the pencil-thin mustache to complete the picture. By all accounts Bob was a brilliant war planner in the J-5, but was not leaving the service on the best of terms. He never showed it during the day, but his demons came out at night. When he needed a friend to talk to, he didn’t shy away from walking next door to wake my ass up. We spent many a night for the next six weeks staying up way past midnight drinking, listening to honky-tonk music, and talking. It was a tragic thing to witness – seeing a grown man cry over his triumphs and mistakes, and it was my first up-front exposure to the Army culture.

Looking back on it now, he had a classic case of PTSD – we just hadn’t identified it at the time. He passed a few years later from alcoholism before he turned 50 – I still grieve for him.

View Outside of the old Patch BOQ, circa 1950s – the O’club is out of the picture to the right
Since I had reported aboard before the summer rush and rotation season, I got an extended stay until finding a place out on the economy, as we called it. I drew my ration cards, went through the mandatory German culture orientation training, and after my hold baggage was delivered. Besides having to deal with the Bobby Lee experience, I got down to work.

I was assigned to be an all-source collection manager in the J-2, with a specialty in SIGINT requirements, even though I wasn’t a cryppie – maybe a harbinger of things to come later on. Frank was the liaison to the EUCOM Joint Recce Center (JRC), which was in the enviable position of being between the J-2 and J-3. I aspired to that job, and ultimately won it when he left without relief a year later. During that incubation time, I made myself familiar with the myriad ISR missions we coordinated throughout the EUCOM Theater. Since the SR-71 was the sexiest of programs and something like a space plane, I was drawn into its orbit. I remember sitting outside of the Vaihinger Hof one fine sunny day that first summer, having a lunch-time lager and waiting for our schnitzel to be served when we heard and felt the “wump, wump” of that signature double sonic boom.[1]I knew we had a scheduled mission vs. East Germany, then known as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), that very afternoon. I checked my watch and it was the right time – the physical impact was awesome, and it shook me down to my soul, so I was hooked. I always went after the best-looking girl at the dance, and the Blackbird was the one for me.
Despite the Cold War, EUCOM in the mid-1980s was a sleepy hollow of a Joint Command, so the JRC was the place to be since we were operational. I quickly discovered that the best part of that job was the bi-monthly conferences where we gathered the devoted. It was something out of Hemingway’s Moveable Feast – but covered the entire European continent, not just Paris. It was the best of good deals that a bachelor JO could wish for. We held our meetings in all of the right places at the right festival times – Germany, England, France, Greece, and Spain – anywhere where we staged ISR operations from. I found love and fun in some of those right, and sometimes wrong places – what a fucking good deal that was. Small wonder that I managed to wangle my way into turning a two-year tour into four. Last week marked the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, and Berlin was the coolest place to be. From there, we used to stage a whole variety of recce shenanigans, and had some memorial conferences and side excursions through and beyond Checkpoint Charlie. A little known secret was that members of the Berlin Brigade could go anywhere in the city, anytime, to demo to our Commie friends that we considered their occupation illegitimate, as risky as that could get.

The best story I ever heard was when one of our staff sergeants, who was set to PCS back to the states, snuck over to the east side after 0100 the morning of the day he was supposed to leave, and dumped several industrial-sized containers of laundry detergent into the famous fountains at Karl Marx Platz. He had bought them from a department store near the square the day before, and stashed them away someplace nearby. The fountains at KMP were shut down at midnight, and were started back up around 0630. Legend has it that there was a 10 ft tall wall of soap suds washing over the Kufuerstendamm that next morning, and he was already in Rhein Main waiting for his MAC flight back to the states. It was pure genius. The Soviets were supremely embarrassed and pissed off about getting pantsed; they whined about it at the next weekly Four Power Plenum meeting, and even sent a demarche to the US Embassy in Bonn. I had gotten to know our ambassador, Richard Burt, a Reagan-era appointee who later negotiated the START Treaty with the Soviets, and his drop-dead gorgeous hottie fashion model wife, since there was a lot of comings and goings between Bonn and EUCOM during that time. Burt was an all-around good guy, and took great pleasure in telling them to go fuck themselves in the best diplomatic parlance he could conjure up; it was like we had handed him a gift.

We had maybe too much fun over there in EUCOM, but there was a serious side to it, as well.
The Air Force in the mid-1980s was trying to divest itself of boutique aircraft programs for a variety of reasons – tactical and operational, but not strategic. You can see this pattern repeating itself right before our eyes with their love-hate relationship with the Space Force – so it was with strat-recon. As the J-2 rep to the JRC, I fought them at every turn when it came to getting rid of the SR-71, and won every battle. The Det-4, 9th SRW guys were amazed that a Navy guy was their champion, and adopted me as one of their own. The in-fighting over the Blackbird’s fate got to be so intense, the guys at the other J-Codes (mainly J-3 and J-5) at the headquarters started to call it Pt. Loma’s SR-71. The Air Staff in the Pentagon at the time were relentless, and used to spring all kinds of program termination surprises on us, normally with a COB Friday afternoon suspense date. I even received some veiled threats from otherwise worthless staff no-loads that my career was in danger, somehow. I had to laugh at that nonsense since at that point, I had no career to speak of, and so I knew that was so much BS. Looking back, this might have been the turning point, however.

After getting churned in their washing machine a couple of times, I figured out how to get ahead of the power curve, and started to anticipate the latest outrage that they were going to perpetrate upon us along with their witting and unwitting aiders and abettors on the Joint Staff. It all came down to having the facts to justify continuing the program. We went to work on it.

By virtue of my unique responsibilities, I had gotten the attention and earned the grudging respect of our DCINC, then Air Force General Richard L. “Dick” Lawson. He was a great guy, possessed with a deep, gravelly, even menacing voice, and even sharper intellect. Anecdotally speaking, he was the heavy-weight boxing champion of the Air Force during his JO days back during the Vietnam War when he was stationed in the PI. He was one scary dude, and you never ever wanted to be on his bad side. For example, we had a couple of ass-clowns from the Joint Staff come over to try to pitch us on some ridiculous, only-in-DC dreamed up brain-dead collection operation. It was a Friday afternoon, and they thought they were going to get a quick rubber stamp from us before heading up to Mons to brief SACEUR. We were EUCOM, of course, and treated like just another speedbump on their road– au contraire.
The DCINC listened patiently to their BS, and then asked in his quiet, but now venomous voice:
“Has the Chairman seen and approved this?”

If you’ve ever thought about the notion of what a public castration looks like, that was it.
“No sir.”
Squeaked the Colonel, in a quavering voice two octaves higher than it was a couple of seconds ago – his balls were gone, or at least in the back of his throat.
“Then take the JCS logo off your slides, now.”

He got up and walked out in disgust. They hurriedly packed up their shit, and couldn’t leave fast enough. Normally, staffs refer to their leadership as General this, or Admiral that. There, in that day and time, we used just one word – Lawson.

General Richard L. Lawson, USAF, DCINC EUCOM

Lawson loved fighting a great fight, even against those with almost impossible odds. Hell, here I was a fucking junior Navy LT getting it on with a butt-load of more senior assholes on both the Air and Joint Staffs. They were convinced that the SR-71 wasn’t worth any continued investment, and therefore had no further mission value. Since I briefed him at least once a month on ISR program highlights and other things, we had developed a certain rapport for reasons I can’t talk about here. He had an over-aweing eminence – some people at EUCOM were scared shitless of him for reasons of their own, but I managed to make him laugh. Early on in this particular budget-cutting nut-roll involving the attempted murder of the SR-71, I got an audience with him accompanied by my great boss Charlie, and told him what was in the offing. He gave me some encouragement and sage advice:
“Do what you’ve got to do Lieutenant, and then let me know when I need to weigh in on your side; but make damn sure you have the facts to back up our argument.”

I had already established the moral high ground – we were all about the mission, they were all about the money. Fuck, now that I could wear his four stars, the bad guys were toast. Predictably, they played their supposed final trump card early on a Friday afternoon just prior to the next fiscal year’s budget hard decision cycle point. We were ready, and I think I still hold the time record for routing a pre-prepared Staff Summary Routing Sheet (aka SSRS) and accompanying DD-298 message through the J-2/3/5 heads, EUCOM CoS, and then the DCINC for final signature at the four-star level. I had set up all of the key players, and hand-walked the package through the different J-Staff buildings over to Lawson’s office just prior to 1700 – it took something like 15 minutes – most of that spent walking between Buildings 2301, 2302, 2303 – all converted enlisted tanker barracks, and then over to his office which was contained in what had been a former Wehrmacht officers’ mess hall. It was a very fateful journey for a junior staff action officer that afternoon.

I was on my own this time around, and he favored me with a wry smile when I walked into his office – since he was expecting me. I stood at attention next to his desk while he signed the SSRS and message release; he didn’t even take the time to read either after checking the initials of the other GO/FOs (we had sent over a read-ahead, of course – so take notes).

“God damn son, you called this one right. You ever think about being an aide? I could have used a guy like you, but unfortunately I’m retiring soon.”

That was the last thing I was thinking about – I was just an average guy doing an average job, so I was a little tongue-tied. He handed the package back to me, got up and put on his blue blouse, and started to head out to his waiting armored Mercedes staff car. On his way to the door and instead of shaking my hand, he reached out with his left hand, grabbed my right arm, looked me in the eye for a couple of heartbeats, grinned, and then tattooed me with a sharp boxer’s right cross to my shoulder – it only hurt a little bit – and then he was gone. I never saw him again.

He retired about a month later with no ceremony or fanfare – he didn’t need or want it; and cut all ties with the military to concentrate on other things. Lawson was a true force of nature – a giant of a man and leader.
That was in late-1986 after Goldwater-Nichol’s had started to make its impact felt on the services, and the mandate to re-examine their spending and personnel assignment priorities. I can understand their motivations at the time, but that singular act of ours kept the Blackbird zorching aloft doing the strat-recon voodoo that it did for four more years until its final retirement in 1990. Reflecting on that day I now realize that, for a fleeting moment, I had achieved a giant’s reach.
I remain your faithful servant.

Copyright 2019 Point Loma
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[1]The double sonic boom was caused by the trailing shock waves generated by the nose and engine nacelles’ piercing of the sound barrier at altitude.