The SR-71 Blackbird

1765 Words4 Pages

The year was 1946. World War 2 had ended only months before, and already the stage was set for another global conflict. The United States and the Soviet Union, formerly allies in the war against Hitler's Third Reich, were now engaged in a standoff over what system of beliefs would prevail over the slowly recovering nations of Europe. The Soviet Union wasted no time in forming an Eastern Bloc, a group of satellite nations controlled by puppet governments, whose primary purpose was to provide a buffer of sorts between Russian soil and the other nations of Europe, sealing their new territory behind tightly controlled borders that came to be called “The Iron Curtain”. The USSR had no intention of stopping their expansions, making no secret of their desire to conquer all of the remaining territory to be had. The United States responded with the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, in an attempt to contain the spread of Communism.

Within a few years the world had suddenly polarized into two distinct groups. When the USSR detonated it's first nuclear weapon in 1949, the confrontation between East and West reached new heights. It suddenly became a matter of survival for the entire world. What had been thought of as a war that would center over the divided state of Germany suddenly fractured into many smaller conflicts all over the world, each just as important as the next.

The United States needed to see what was behind the Iron Curtain,as well as in all of the other hot spots that had suddenly erupted, so the strengths of the enemy could be estimated, their progress in nuclear weapons observed, their culture examined, and literally hundreds of other questions that could be answered only by one method: Aerial...

... middle of paper ...

...y any jet aircraft today. The Blackbird remains a true American symbol, a testament to the power of imagination. And in the imaginations of many people, the Habu flies on.

“Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing.” - At the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base (Kadena, Japan)

Works Cited

Johnson, Clarence L. Kelly: More Than My Share Of It All. 1 ed. Washington D.C., Washington D.C., United States: Smithsonian Institution, 1985. Print.

Rich, Ben R. Skunk Works. 1 ed. New York City, New York, United States: Little, Brown and Company, 1994. Print.

Kucher, Paul R. "Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird." SR-71 Online. 1998. Web. 11 Sept. 2011. .

Roadrunners Internationale. Thornton D. Barnes. Web. 11 Sept. 2011. .

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