Page 8 August 7, 2014 TORRANCE TRIBUNE A Fly-Boy – Part II By TerriAnn Ferren Last week I introduced Lieutenant Colonel, Maury Rosenberg, pilot of the SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest air breathing jet in the world. We left off with Maury being accepted into the elite SR-71 program after serving 11 months in Vietnam flying the F-4 C, D, and E Phantom planes. In his over 38 year career as a military and commercial aviator, Maury Rosenberg accumulated over 1,090 hours in the SR-71, (the most operational hours) from April, 1973 to June, 1978 and then again from December 1980 to August 1984. (Maury left the Air Force in 1978 and was hired by United Airlines and flew with them as a commercial pilot for two years until he was furloughed. He returned to active duty and because of his unique background, was reassigned to the SR-71.) Maury said, “There were only 85 -95 pilots who flew the SR-71 during its history that flew operational - and there were approximately 150 RSO (Reconnaissance Systems Officers), Ed [McKim] being one of those.” In 1981 an experienced navigator, Lt. Col. Ed McKim and Lt. Col. Maury Rosenberg met and ‘crewed together’ for two-and-a-half years. At that time, Maury flew over Southeast Asia, North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, and Europe. It was Ed who flew with Maury in August of 1981 when the North Koreans fired a SAM-2 missile at them. Ed responded by turning on the jammer and Maury, seeing the missile, accelerated and turned. Maury evaded the missile, thanks to his training and the speed of the aircraft. They landed in Okinawa, Japan. Due to the ‘international incident’ the pilots were debriefed, and the Pentagon and the White House were notified. Articles about this incident, of a missile firing on the SR-71, ran in the New York Times and Newsweek Magazine. Another hair-raising event occurred in September 1974 during a FCF (Functional Check Flight) when Rosenberg experienced catastrophic right engine disintegration when his engine came apart at 77,000 feet going faster than Mach 3. During the supersonic descent and losing communication with Don, his back seat man on the flight, his pressure suit began to inflate, they were losing cabin pressure and realized the left engine flamed – (generator with battery power only). The throttle was in idle and Maury jammed the throttle into afterburner, and the EGT started coming up and the pressure suit began to deflate, he saw the cabin pressure rise, he reset the generator, and somewhere in the back seat, Don, who realized he had cut communication by hitting the controls inadvertently during the rough ride, turned the intercom back on. Don said, “Are you still there?” Maury said, “Yeah.” Don asked, “What happened?” Maury replied, “I’ll tell you later.” Maury was basically flying looking outside at the horizon and the ocean. He said, “I was basically flying on a whisky compass – it tilts and turns opposite when you’re turning or you’re fixing up and down.” They landed safely and appeared in Air Force Magazine for a ‘Well Done Award’. Some roller coaster ride, I would say! Listening to Maury Rosenberg talk about his experiences was like watching a movie unfold before my eyes with the true hero standing right in front of me. The SR-71 was designed to fly up to 3.3 Mach, which is approximately 22 hundred miles per hour, 36 miles per minute, or 3200 feet a second, depending upon outside air temperature. The aircraft would go faster than 3.3. “I think I’ve seen about 3.35 or some cruised up to 3.4. Normally, we cruised at Mock 3.0. They actually had our missions at Mock 2.8 but most of them were at 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 and we always flew an afterburner. We would travel approximately 2,000 miles before we were looking for a tanker to come down to refuel, which would take 15 to 20 minutes,” explained Maury. All this technical aircraft jargon was beginning to hit me. I know that Mach 3 means three times the speed of sound, which means the SR-71 was the fastest jet in the world. It looks like a stealth bomber but it never carried weapons. It was designed strictly for reconnaissance. Also, a ‘sortie’ is a combat mission. Maury told me to think of the 1986 movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise and how he (Cruise) would call flights a ‘hop’ – well, a sortie is a hop. I am beginning to ‘feel the need, the need for speed’. The structure of the SR-71 is 93 percent titanium and I found it interesting that the CIA purchased the titanium from the Russians, who we were planning to spy on! The leading edge that goes around the entire airplane and the wing foil, the fuselage (the first six to eight inches), was honeycombed with a composite material which absorbed and did not reflect radar returns. One of the reasons the rudders are slanted ‘in’ is because it’s an oblique angle and also wouldn’t reflect as much radar return as it would if it were a 90 degree angle. All this was to keep the aircraft ‘stealth like’. Just one note on the titanium frame – its life was said to be ‘indeterminable’. The cockpit was huge and the aircraft was a two person, single pilot operation, with the back seat in charge of sensor, radar, and film. Maury told us, “We wore full pressure suits, much like the astronauts, made by the David Clark Company. It was required because of the altitude we were at - if we lost cabin pressurization and also the pressure suit was our capsule. If we had to eject out of the aircraft, the suit would inflate and protect our body. Also the seat back you were sitting on would come out with you and it had enough oxygen to last for 15 minutes. We would free fall from whatever altitude we ejected to about 15,000 feet and I believe that we were told from about 8,000 feet to free fall in the seat took 10 to 12 minutes.” In one test flight with the pressure suit, when the pilot ejected, they found out that the difference between the inside and outside facemask temperature was such that the glass froze over and the pilot couldn’t see out – so the faceplates were modified with a gold strand running through them to a heating element so it wouldn’t frost over. The first shuttle astronauts wore SR-71 suits and sat in SR-71 ejection seats. Wow! At Mach 3 cruise, the aircraft would heat up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit and in certain places, the aircraft would expand. The side windows would get so hot even in a pressure suit with fire retardant gloves you couldn’t put a hand on a window for more than 30 seconds. Amazing! Secret missions? Everyone was motionless as Maury began, “We were briefed at midnight and took off at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning [for the sun angles] flying over Cuba. At our briefings, we had two ‘gentlemen in black suits’ and they would brief us on recovery if we had to eject - and they would give us a classified packet to carry. Inside the packet was a chit you had to snap open and it had numbers and letters on it and they said if you have to eject over Cuba, and you turn on your radio - somebody is going to ask you for those letters and numbers – and that’s what’s gonna to be your rescue. We also flew in the 1973 Egyptian/Israeli War, or skirmish - seven sorties in September 1973 – January 1974. It was a 15,000 mile round trip – a nine-hour sortie. The first airplane took off at midnight and the spare took off at one in the morning. When the spare was about a little over an hour in the flight they would get a call from the primary airplane that he crossed a certain line and that was the point where, if he had a problem, the spare couldn’t continue if the sun angle wouldn’t be good - it was a go-no-go point. Every one of those missions, we were told, I don’t know how true it is, were reviewed and executed by Henry Kissinger. There is a lot of high exposure in this program.” At this point, I want to insert that Maury participated in test flights in ‘that area that doesn’t exist’ in the desert. To show how fast this plane is, once Maury flew from England to San Francisco in four hours. Oh, secret code while flying the SR-71? Yes, it was ‘Senior Crown’. Rosenberg told of the time he met the legendary Chuck Yeager (Brigadier General USAF and Test Pilot), “Chuck had never flown over Mach 3 and wanted the opportunity,” said Maury. When they were flying together, Chuck asked Maury to take the controls. Maury asked if everything was okay and Chuck said in his West Virginia drawl with a laugh, “Golly, you can see forever. When you are flying flight tests, it’s like a one-armed paperhanger - you don’t have time to look outside. Everything is going on. This is amazing, I can see forever.” Rosenberg was Operation Officer for the SR-71 1st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron and also Director of Reconnaissance 15th Air Force in July 1984. Maury said the program was ‘first class’ with everyone who worked in the program. Everyone. It was a unique, one of a kind program that gathered the best of the best for an aircraft that sadly, no longer exists except in museums. “I felt it could’ve served a useful purpose. I always felt they never gave it the opportunity to prove that it could still be a viable instrument with regard to air power so I felt it was retired too early with regard to what it could do. It is the only aircraft we ever had that could be manned and flown to a specific area at a moment’s notice. Satellites have to be positioned, so if something flares up you can’t necessarily switch a satellite to get coverage real quick. I felt it was a viable asset to the military,” said Maury. My question is why was this amazing plane grounded? How does it feel to have flown the SR-71 Blackbird? Maury told me, “It is so hard to describe the actual flavor of it. My wife asked me what I don’t like about flying and I told her that the only thing I don’t like about my job is that I can’t bring you up in the cockpit and you can’t experience what I experience. I can tell you things and share, but you don’t really get to taste it, so to speak.” As I left the hanger that day, I felt as if I had watched a movie with a real-life American hero, Maury Rosenberg. This humble man shared so much about his experiences flying the fastest jet in the world, the SR-71 Blackbird. July 20, 1969 marked the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong first stepping on the moon and I can’t help but think how far we have come and how far we could yet climb with the dreams and imagination of people with vision. Maury Rosenberg, like the SR-71, is in a class of one.• TerriAnn in Torrance “In his over 38 year career as a military and commercial aviator, Maury Rosenberg accumulated over 1,090 hours in the SR-71, (the most operational hours) from April, 1973 to June, 1978 and then again from December 1980 to August 1984.” Ed McKim, Lt. Col. (retired) flew the SR-71 as the Reconnaissance Systems Officer with Lt. Col. Maury Rosenberg. He said – “The airplane knew when you were looking out the window - ‘cuz it was gonna misbehave.” Lt. Col., retired, Maury Rosenberg. Photos by TerriAnn Ferren. Lt. Col Maury Rosenberg (Photo taken by Lockheed Tech Rep. at RAF Mildenhall AFB, England Circa 1983-4)
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