Paul F. Crickmore

An hour before midnight on December 27, 1972, Giant Scale (the prefix given to all SR-71 operational sorties in the Pacific theater of operations) mission GS663, got underway with the launch of SR-71 ’975. Flown by Col Darrell Cobb and his RSO Capt Reggie Blackwell in support of Linebacker II (an 11-day all-out assault on Hanoi using B-52s, calculated by the Nixon administration to bomb North Vietnamese politicians back to the Paris negotiating table), this proved to be the only Habu night sortie flown during the entire Vietnam War.

The boom operator’s first remarks as the A-12’s fuel tanks began to fill were, “You don’t want to go supersonic with this aircraft, Sir.” The puzzled A-12 pilot enquired why, there being no cockpit indications that supported such a remark and the aircraft seemed to be handling well. “I don’t think you’ll want to go fast, Sir,” the boom operator insisted, “because the left side of your aircraft is missing.”

Johnson recalled he was accused of “...trying to make a 1932 Ford Tri-motor go Mach 3,” but added that “...the concept worked fine.”