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Hello friends, I had my back surgery but picked up a nasty bacterial infection right after that and it has me really wiped out. I’m getting daily IV of antibiotics to fight it. Thanks for following and I hope to be posting as soon as I am able. Thanks!

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P-47 Thunderbolt, WWII aircraft in color

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Everything about the SR 71 was exciting and new including the windows. During its career, the SR-71 Blackbird gathered intelligence in some of the world’s most hostile environments. The SR-71 was conceived to operate at extreme velocities, altitudes and temperatures: actually, it was the first aircraft constructed with titanium, as the friction caused by air molecules passing over its surface at Mach 2.6 would melt a conventional aluminum frame.

Its engineering was so cutting edge that even the tools to build the SR-71 needed to be designed from scratch.

There are so many interesting facts about the legendary Blackbird.

For instance, the glass of the canopy of the SR-71 cockpit was made of 1.25-inch thick solid quartz. Let’s talk about the windows in the SR-71 and about the severe heat the windshield of the SR-71 would experience at top speeds. Skunk Works Designers ultimately decided that using solid quartz for the windshield was the best way to prevent any blur or window distortion under these conditions,

so they ultrasonically fused the solid quartz to the aircraft’s titanium hull to make the quietest cockpit possible; the estimated temperature of the outside of the cockpit of 600 degrees F.

As reported by The SR-71 Blackbird website, the integrity of the double solid quartz camera window demanded special attention because of the optical distortion caused by the effect of great heat (600 degrees F.) on the outside of the window and a much lower temperature (150 degrees F.) on the inside could keep the cameras from taking usable photographs. Three years and $2 million later, the Corning Glass Works came up with a solution: the window was fused to its metal frame by a novel process using high frequency sound waves. isn’t that amazing? Written by Linda Sheffield for aviationgeek club.

@Habubrats71 via X

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F-14 Tomcat at launch,

@Skypilots

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Medal of Honor Monday: James Howard

On this day in 1913, a hero is born. James H. Howard would go on to become an American fighter pilot during World War II. He is perhaps best known for the day on which he singlehandedly took on 30 German fighter planes.

“For sheer determination and guts, it was the greatest exhibition I’ve ever seen,” one witness concluded. “It was a case of one lone American against what seemed to be the entire Luftwaffe. He was all over the wing, across and around it. They can’t give that boy a big enough award.”

Maybe not, but then-Major Howard would receive the Medal of Honor for his daring feat anyway.

The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-james-howard-moh

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A Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter bomber on public display in London, after being shot down, October 1940.

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Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless scout bombers Fly in formation over the Caribbean, circa 1944-1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

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F/A-18 Hornets lined up

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January 20th, 1945, the first 4 units of RAF Gloster Meteor F3 jet fighters arrive in Melsbroek, Belgium to counter a possible threat by German Messerschmitt Me-262. They were all painted white for easy ID

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