{"id":80902,"date":"2018-08-03T13:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T17:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=80902"},"modified":"2018-08-01T12:31:44","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T16:31:44","slug":"weekend-open-thread-231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=80902","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Open Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"

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No, that\u2019s not a photo of an SR-71 nursing its child after giving birth, nor is it creative work with Photoshop. (smile) It\u2019s a photo of one of the two Lockheed M-21s<\/i><\/a> ever built. <\/p>\n

The M-21 was a 2-seat derivative of Lockheed’s A-12 (the SR-71 was also a 2-seat A-12 derivative) that resulted from the downing of Gary Powers’ U-2 over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960. It was intended to launch Mach 3+ drones over denied territory having an air defense threat deemed too high to allow manned reconnaissance flights. In the photo above, it\u2019s carrying one such drone.<\/p>\n

The drone it\u2019s carrying is the Lockheed D-21<\/i><\/a>. The D-21 had a range of 3,000 nautical miles, a maximum speed of Mach 3.3+, and an operational altitude of 90,000+ feet. It carried a high-resolution camera, which went active at a specified point or points along its pre-programmed course. The camera, film, and accompanying control unit were contained in a module called a “hatch” (don’t ask me why) which would be ejected post-mission at a predetermined point. The “hatch” was to be recovered; the rest of the drone was designed to self-destruct after ejecting it.<\/p>\n

The launch aircraft and drone were designed under Project Tagboard<\/i><\/a>. Multiple test flights – including four drone launches – were executed as part of the project. The last test flight was a disaster, causing the loss of one M-21 and the death of the aircraft’s “back-seater” Launch Control Officer (the aircraft’s pilot survived). The photo above appears to have been made during one of the early captive test flights.<\/p>\n

After the disastrous final test flight of the M-21\/D-21, the project’s operational concept was changed to underwing launch of the drone from a B-52 “mothership” using a rocket booster. (The D-21 was ramjet powered and required acceleration to high speed before its engine would function. Even at top speed, a B-52 simply wasn’t fast enough to do that.) The photo below shows a B-52 “mothership” ship carrying 2 modified drones mounted on their booster rockets.<\/p>\n

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The drones modified for underwing launch from a B-52 were designated the D-21B. (There was no D-21A; the original drones were designated D-21 without letter suffix.) A number of these survive today and are on display to the public in various locations \u2013 including one on display in the Chinese Museum of Flight in Peking, PRC (more about this below). <\/p>\n

The surviving M-21 “mothership” aircraft is similarly on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Though not 100% historically accurate, for display it has a D-21B drone mounted in carry position.<\/p>\n

The B-52 launched version of the drone, the D-21B, was used to overfly China\u2019s nuclear test site at Lop Nor multiple times in the late 1960s and early 1970s under a project codenamed Senior Bowl<\/i>. Due to various technical problems those overflights were unsuccessful, and the program was terminated. The last of those unsuccessful overflights is believed to have provided the D-21B currently on display in Peking. (smile)<\/p>\n

OK, that\u2019s enough aviation history. Enjoy this week\u2019s open thread, everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, that\u2019s not a photo of an SR-71 nursing its child after giving birth, nor is … Weekend Open Thread<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-open-thread"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}