A veteran U.S. Air Force pilot and now volunteer at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. gives us all a small glimpse of what it was like to fly the SR-71 Blackbird.

Adelbert “Buzz” Carpenter accumulated 4,400 flight hours in various airplanes during his military career, from the T-38 Talon trainer to the C-141 Starlifter. Carpenter also has more than 300 hours in strategic reconnaissance aircraft, including the U-2 and SR-71, and flew missions from Beale Air Force Base in California, Kadena Air Base in Japan, and Mildenhall Air Base in the United Kingdom.

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Now retired, Carpenter volunteers as a docent at the Air & Space Museum, explaining to kids who were born after the SR-71 was retired what it was like to fly the fastest jet ever built. Carpenter is a fountain of knowledge about the “Blackbird” on everything from the cameras to navigation.

The SR-71 was the result of a requirement for a high speed, high altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft. The military, anticipating a time when the high-flying U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane could be shot down by the Soviet Union, requested an aircraft that not only flew at high altitudes but could also outrun enemy interceptors and surface to air missiles.

In this video, Carpenter is standing in front of 61-7972, the last SR-71 to ever fly. On March 6, 1990, 61-7972 flew from Palmdale, California to Washington, D.C., covering the distance in 64 minutes and 20 second, with a top speed of 2,242 miles an hour.

One of the things that you begin to understand listening to Carpenter is how much heat was factored into the aircraft. The SR-71 got hot at Mach 3, to the point where the average skin temperature was over 600 degrees. As a result 93 percent of the aircraft is made from titanium, which has better heat-resisting qualities than aluminum and was sourced, ironically, from the Soviet Union itself.

NASA SR-71 flying in 1997. NASA Getty Images

Carpenter says the pilot’s glass canopy regularly reached 620 degrees and was made from 1.5-inch thick “oven glass.” Thermal expansion was also a problem with the SR-71, as the titanium expanded when heated. To solve the problem, the aircraft was built with joints designed to fill in as the aircraft grew up to four inches in length during flight.

Anyone can give a lecture on a sophisticated piece of engineering like the SR-71, but a pilot who has actually flown the aircraft and placed his faith in it can explain the intricacies like no one else.

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