SR-71 Blackbird Model

These Model Airplane are 18 inches in length and finely handcrafted, and hand painted by our artists – to scale and museum quality. The Lockheed SR-71 is an advanced, long range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A  Military Aircraft by the Lockheed Skunk Works as a Black Project. The SR-71 was unofficially named the Blackbird

Although its many contributions to national security will never be fully revealed to the public, the SR-71 holds many world aviation records for speed and altitude.

 

In January 1990 the Air Force officially retired its fleet of SR-71s from service. On March 6, 1990, aircraft number 17972, the same Military Aircraft that had set the 1974 records, was delivered to the Smithsonian Institution for permanent display at Dulles International Airport. Enroute, flying at "normal" operating speeds, this SR-71 set four more world records including a Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., flight time of 64 minutes, 2 seconds, averaging 2,144 mph (3,452 kph). That was the last SR-71 mission flown by an Air Force crew until the spring of 1995, when the crew retraining program began. Between 1990 and 1995, NASA crews at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards AFB flew two SR-71s for training and scientific flights, and kept a third in storage. Those Blackbirds had been loaned to NASA by the Air Force when the military flying ceased. The Skunk Works received funding to refurbish two Blackbirds to operational capability — they were delivered to the U.S. Air Force in 1995.