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This is an urban legend. Landing it when it was almost empty was gentler on the landing gear, so they took off with relatively little fuel in case the mission w
by avar 8y ago
This is an urban legend. Landing it when it was almost empty was gentler on the landing gear, so they took off with relatively little fuel in case the mission was scrubbed.
They could have taken off and accelerated to record-breaking speeds if that's all they wanted to do, but the typical mission profile was to fly to far away locations to conduct surveillance, so in-air refueling was always part of the mission profile.
- sandworm101 8y agoThat's not the information I've seen. From what I've read a fully-loaded takeoff and climb would burn so much fuel, far more than a typical profile, that it would still not have been able to break records set by the migs.
- avar 8y agoThese two claims aren't mutually exclusive.
- jandrese 8y agoThat sounds dubious to me. The SR-71 had some massive tanks and the idea that it couldn't accelerate to full speed on one tank seems unlikely. Even if you account for the burn in climbing to 50k feet ASL it seems like it has to be underselling the Blackbird quite a lot.