How the SR-71 got its name

by philg

From Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (Ben Rich)…

President Johnson first announced in 1964 the existence of the RS-71, the Air Force two-seater Blackbird. That’s right, RS-71 was its official designation, but Johnson accidentally turned it around and called it the “SR-71.” Instead of putting out a brief correction, the Air Force decided not to call attention to a very minor mistake by the commander in chief and ordered us to change about twenty-nine thousand blueprints and drawings at a cost of thousands of dollars so that they would read “SR-71” and not “RS-71.”

(This happened at Disney when a cousin was working on the film that ultimately became Emperor’s New Groove. The working title, given the Inca theme, was Empire of the Sun. Michael Eisner, the CEO, referred to the movie as “Empire in the Sun” and the sycophants surrounding him were too afraid to correct him. The underlings simply ordered that the working title be changed to conform to the CEO’s misconception.)

More: Read the book.

Related:

2 thoughts on “How the SR-71 got its name”

  1. Wikipedia gives a different explanation: [quote]During the later period of its testing, the B-70 [Valkyrie] was proposed for a reconnaissance/strike role, with an RS-70 designation.[/quote]
    [quote]Johnson decided to counter criticism [Goldwater] by revealing the existence of the Lockheed YF-12A Air Force interceptor.[/quote]
    [quote]Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay preferred the SR (Strategic Reconnaissance) designation and wanted the RS-71 to be named SR-71. Before the July speech, LeMay lobbied to modify Johnson’s speech to read SR-71 instead of RS-71. The media transcript given to the press at the time still had the earlier RS-71 designation in places, creating the story that the president had misread the aircraft’s designation.[/quote]

    It seems the number of myths associated with this aircraft exceed the number ever in service (32 total).

  2. The B-70 was competing for funding with the SR-71, at least the B-70 proponents saw it that way, and sought to make sure there wouldn’t be any more than those 32 aircraft.

Comments are closed.