Throwback Thursday; March Field Air Museum and the SR-71A Blackbird

Back in 2012 I was working in the Riverside Area when I stopped at the March Field Air Museum to view the Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird on display.

The March Field Air Museum is located off I-215 on Van Buren Boulevard in the March Air Reserve Base. The March Field Museum first opened in 1979 and was quickly moved to the former commissary building by 1983. Since 1993 the Museum has been located just off I-215 on Van Buren Boulevard.

The main attraction on display at the March Field Air Museum as stated above is 1 of 32 SR-71 Blackbirds ever built. The SR-71 Blackbird was in production from 1964 to 1998 and was the fastest plane that ever existed. In 1976 SR-71 61-7962 set a speed record of 2,193.2/Mach 3.3 and an altitude record of 85,069 feet.

The SR-71 was designed to be a stealth reconnaissance aircraft that was capable of evading surface-to-air-missiles. The SR-71 was powered by Pratt & Whitney J58 turbo jet engines capable of producing 32,500 pound feet of thrust. Interestingly SR-71 Blackbirds had to started by a pair of Buick Wildcat engines (I'm uncertain if it was the 401 or 425 nailheads) before being switched the Chevy Big Block engines (again I'm not certain of the displacement).

Of the 32 SR-71 Blackbirds produced 12 were lost in crashes. The SR-71A was the most common model with 29 being produced, 2 SR-71Bs being produced, and 1 SR-71C was produced. The SR-71A on this display on at the March Field Air Museum carries serial number 61-7975.

The March Air Field has various different military aircraft on display. Rather than attempting to describe all the notable ones they can be found here on my Flickr album:

March Field Air Museum

Comments

Chowchilla Mountain Road to Yosemite National Park

Chowchilla Mountain Road of Mariposa County is one of the oldest roadways servicing Yosemite National Park. As presently configured this fourteen-mile highway begins at California State Route 49 near Elliot Corner and terminates at the Wawona Road in Yosemite National Park. Chowchilla Mountain Road was constructed as a franchise toll road over Battalion Pass circa 1869-1870. The highway was built at behest of Galen Clark to connect the town of Mariposa to his property near the South Fork Merced River at what is now Wawona. In late 1874 the highway along with Clark’s Station would be purchased by the Washburn Brothers. The Washburn Brothers would continue to toll Chowchilla Mountain Road as part of their Yosemite Stage Route lines. The highway would ultimately become a Mariposa County public highway in 1917. Mariposa would later be more directly linked with Yosemite Valley in 1926 following the completion of the Yosemite All-Year Highwa...

Angus L. Macdonald Bridge

At 1.3 kilometers (or about 0.84 miles) in length, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is one of two bridges crossing over the Halifax Harbour between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the other bridge being the A. Murray Mackay Bridge . Opened in 1955 and named after former Nova Scotia Premier and Canadian Minister of Defense for Naval Services Angus L. Macdonald, the Macdonald Bridge was the first bridge that crossed Halifax Harbour that was opened to traffic. The Macdonald Bridge was also the subject of the Big Lift, which was only the second time in history that the span of a suspension bridge were replaced while the bridge was open to traffic. Planning began in 2010 for the Big Lift, while construction took place between 2015 and 2017. Similar work occurred on the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia before the project took place on the Macdonald Bridge. At this time, much of the bridge infrastructure is new, leaving only the towers, main cables and...

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...

Gribblenation

Search This Blog