#13, SR-71 Blackbird: Never Been Shot Down
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird flew at Mach 3.3 and above 85,000 feet, so fast and so high that its primary defensive system was simply outrunning everything fired at it. Over its 24-year career, the Blackbird was targeted by more than 4,000 surface-to-air missiles. Not a single one ever hit. When North Vietnamese SA-2s launched at an SR-71, the pilot's standard evasive maneuver was to accelerate. The missiles couldn't keep up.
Designed by Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works in the early 1960s, the SR-71 pushed every boundary in aerospace engineering. Its titanium airframe expanded several inches during flight from friction heating. Fuel leaked on the ground because the panels were designed to seal only when heat-expanded at speed. It could photograph 100,000 square miles of Earth's surface per hour from the edge of space. Although satellites eventually took over its reconnaissance mission, no manned aircraft has ever flown faster or higher in sustained operation. The Blackbird remains the ultimate expression of speed as a military technology.
