nice

Thanks, @Nuclearbomber36.

Neat build!

Thanks, @Smoothray. I thought it was pretty nifty too :)

Neat submerging technique!

Thanks, @SpiritusRaptor

Nice and simple! Love it

Yes @SledDriver

@Stingray Well, if the MiG-25 couldn't do it, the F-4 didn't stand a chance. I think the US should have kept the Blackbirds operational, for national pride if nothing else. With modern tech, who knows how much faster it could have gone. Unless I'm misinformed, the limiting factor was inlet temperature, so with some advanced cooling systems like those in the Skylon SABRE engines, it should've been possible to push beyond mach 3.3.

IMHO, stealth is subjective to the guy being surveilled. Commercial and military radars of that time could track the SR-71. When a mission was performed over Israel, their F-4 Phantom interceptors could not even come close to a missile launch. I've said enough about the cold war, tonight. @SledDriver

@Stingray Yeah, even the F-117 is only slightly bigger. Ben Rich mentioned in his book that they used off-the-shelf parts wherever they could, to keep costs down:

I remember this Air Force colonel came down to the test site and asked me how much we spent on this program. I told him $34 million. He said, “No, I don’t mean one airplane. I mean both airplanes—the entire program.” I repeated the figure. He couldn’t believe it.

@SledDriver "Blueprints" forget it for Have Blue. There are a few images in the public domain I've come across for the Nighthawk prototype. You realize the prototype empty weight was 8,851 lbs? It was a small unarmed prototype, the first of it's kind.

@Stingray I've seen that one, love the bit where he calls the SR-71 "the family model." Hard to be stealthy with that distinctive sonic boom, though.

Kelly rold the AFB flight tower to be alert, be on time. They were on time at dawn to witness zero radar alarms and a strange new plane fly past the runway. No other stealth contenders were present that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdxpqqsHl8

@SledDriver

@Stingray Have Blue photos and blueprints seem hard to find.

For about 2 years my office, and that of teammates were in a hanger, and when an unusual USAF Sigint aircraft pulled into the hanger, and I did not ask why. Boring stuff. Interesting stuff cannot be discussed. Yet, some interesting events took place when I was not a Lockheed CALAC employee. Check out the design and testing of HB1002 Have Blue online, in public domain. Also checkout the Lockheed EP-3 Hainan incident circa 2001. Facts not included on Wiki are that the J-8 disintegrated upon hitting the EP-3 radome. I could probably build an SP HB1002, now but the challenge is for you to build one that’s better. @SledDriver

@Stingray Any other interesting stories about your time at Lockheed you could share without revealing classified info?

@Chancey21 You mean something like a Skylon or HOTOL with big engines? That's easy.

I would love to see something based off an SSTO Concept from you! That would be cool

@Stingray And he certainly lived by it. The U-2 took eight months from first sketch to final product, if I remember correctly. One hell of a man. I wonder what he could have achieved if he were starting out today.

Clarence “Kelly” Johnson passed away shortly after my one encounter. Ben Rich ran APD Skunk Works after that time. I prefer Kelly Johnson’s directive “ Be Quick, Be Quiet, and be On Time”.

@Stingray Another of my favourite Kelly Johnson stories:

Nothing got by the boss. Nothing. And that was my sharpest impression of him, one that never changed over the years: I had never known anyone so expert at every aspect of airplane design and building. He was a great structures man, a great designer, a great aerodynamicist, a great weights man. He was so sharp and instinctive that he often took my breath away. I’d say to him, “Kelly, the shock wave coming off this spike will hit the tail.” He would nod. “Yeah, the temperature there will be six hundred degrees.” I’d go back to my desk and spend two hours with a calculator and come up with a figure of 614 degrees. Truly amazing. Or, I’d remark, “Kelly, the structure load here will be…” And he would interrupt and say, “About six point two p.s.i.” And I’d go back and do some complicated drudge work and half an hour later reach a figure of 6.3.

@Stingray Wow, you've certainly lived an interesting life -- I envy you. I bet any meeting with Kelly in it would be memorable. I remember reading about Kelly's reaction to the F-117 in Ben Rich's Skunk Works:

He took one look at Dick Scherrer’s sketch of the Hopeless Diamond and charged into my office. Unfortunately, he caught me leaning over a work table studying a blueprint, and I never heard him coming. Kelly kicked me in the butt—hard too. Then he crumpled up the stealth proposal and threw it at my feet. “Ben Rich, you dumb ----,” he stormed, “have you lost your goddam mind? This ---- will never get off the ground.”

Also that he could beat all the Skunk Works engineers at arm-wrestling, well into his old age, because he'd been a hod-carrier as a youth and "had arms like ship’s cables."

Yes, I helped him push his Porche onto a parking lot, when his engine died, in 1989. Other than a thank you, to me, he proceeded to grill the YF-22 Progam Manager about program status, indoors, in a very private meeting I wished I could have listened to. The PM (Program Manager) did provide me a debrief, however. Kelly had white hair at that time. @SledDriver

@Stingray The F-117 and the F-22... I wish my resumé was half as interesting. Having seen an SR-71 low pass is also pretty nifty... I envy you. Did you ever meet Kelly Johnson, or was he retired by the time you were there?