Get the latest tech news
‘It’s just black sky up there’: 50 years on, the transatlantic flight speed record remains unbroken | Air transport | The Guardian
Two men flew between New York and London at three times the speed of sound. No other aircraft has since been as fast as the Blackbird SR-71, explains crew member Noel Widdifield
America was undergoing something of an international public relations crisis – just three weeks earlier, the disgraced president Richard Nixon had resigned after the Watergate scandal and Gerald Ford had been sworn in to the White House. The plane crossed over the London “gate” without further incident and the Blackbird came into Farnborough, where there was a huge crowd waiting and a press conference was held, during which Widdifield and Sullivan were connected by phone to the new president. Widdifield, who has been married to his wife, Ann, for 63 years and has two children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, mourns the loss of both his co-pilot Jim Sullivan, who died in 2021, and the Blackbird SR-71 itself, which was officially retired from service in 1998.
Or read this on r/technology
