Author Brian Shul on piloting the SR-71
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters link it as the full version of Shul's SR-71 stories, including the Speed Check anecdote, and as an inspiring talk by someone who flew the plane and photographed it himself.
Recommended by 3 people across 2 different months, 2017 to 2026.
What it is
Brian Shul, retired Air Force major and author of "Sled Driver," gives a talk at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about flying the SR-71 Blackbird. He uses his own aviation photos and stories, and also tells how he recovered from severe burns after being shot down in Vietnam.
What people said
Strong rec manigandham · 2017-11 · Hacker News · on “What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)”
Might as well link to the full talk: [this video] It's a great speech about overcoming his war injuries and getting to fly on of the most special planes in history, along with actually documenting most of it himself.
Recommends gbrown_ · 2017-11 · Hacker News · on “What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)”
> Its out of print now, and I've seen copies on eBay for > $1000. For the rest of us there's this great talk from Brain Schul which covers this story and a few others. [this video]
Recommends stevenjgarner · 2022-06 · Hacker News · on “Pilot explains how he Survived Blackbird Disintegration at Mach 3.2”
Brian Shul is such an inspiring speaker and photographer about both the SR-71 and other things "Over the Rainbow" - [this video]
Cites rrr_oh_man · 2026-09 · Hacker News · on “NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart”
The Speed Check story (for today's lucky ten thousand [0] who don't know): Video [this video] (around 6min, starting from around 56min) or Text [1] There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment. It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed