Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

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.