#d-21b

[projecttestudo-anaskblog]

Don.

Donnie.

Explain 'soupalad' to me, quickly. Answer for your crimes.

[kramlabs]

D-21 in a chinese museum:

[projecthabu]

     When I was a child, my parents took me to.the Museum of Aviation. It was my first experience with a large air museum. That trip is probably one of the reasons why I am so dedicated to Project Habu today. On that trip, I distinctly remember seeing D-21 #0538. Later, I would learn that this was the final D-21 ever made. I saw it under the museum's SR-71 in hangar 2, where it used to reside, until recently. I was captivated by it's elegant look. The image burned into my mind, and decades later I learned everything I could about it. This D-21 now sits outside because of museum budget cuts. She's is up for disposal, so this may have been the last time I ever see her.

     The often untold story of the D-21 drone begins, as so many others, with catastrophe. In 1960, U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower signed an agreement with the USSR to permanently stop all manned overflight of the enemy superpower. But this agreement never said anything about unmanned overflight. 

     Kelly Johnson, of the Lockheed Skunk Works was well under way in developing the A-12 and SR-71 spy planes. The planes were designed to overfly the USSR, but now could not. In 1962, Johnson began development of the Q-12 unmanned reconnaissance drone for the CIA and USAF. This drone used much of A-12 and SR71's technology. The Air Force was briefly interested in using the drone as a cruise missile, but their idea never came to fruition.

     The drone would be hoisted into the air on the back of an MD-21 aircraft, which was built from the ground up based on the A-12, the predecessor to the SR-71 Blackbird. Once at proper altitude and speed, the drone was separated from the mother ship, and would overfly the USSR or China, taking high resolution film photography, following a pre-programmed path using an inertial navigation system. 

          In 1963, once initial tests were complete, the Q-12 was re-designated as the D-21, and the mother ship aircraft was designated the M-21. The M designation stood for “Mother”, and D stood for “Daughter”. The 12 number designation was reversed to 21 to avoid confusion. When the drone was attached to the mother ship, the two aircraft would be referred to as an M/D-21. 

     The D-21 used a Marcourt XRJ 43-MA20S-4 ramjet engine, which was a heavily modified Bomarc B Interceptor Missile engine. The engine was modified for faster speeds, hotter operating temp and lower pressure. The engine used TEB (triethylborane) as it's ignition system, just like the rest of the Blackbird family of aircraft. At the time, ramjet engines could only run for a few minutes. This engine was developed to continuously run for an hour and a half.

     Besides the F-117, this D-21 was probably most secret project that Skunk Works ever touched. It had the lowest radar cross section of anything the Skunk Works developed until up until they worked on the F-117. The drone would fly up to 95,000 feet, speeds of mach 3.5, with a range of 3,500 miles. 

     Before deployment, the D-21 would share it's fuel supply with the M-21 mother ship for cooling purposes. When the M/D-21 reached sufficient speed and altitude, the D-21's engine would light, creating 1,000 lbs additional thrust. This thrust would carry the M/D-21 do a speed of mach 3.5. The mother ship would pitch over slightly, creating a 0.9 g environment. The explosive bolts holding the two ships together would detonate, separating the D-21 from it's mother ship. Then, the M-21 would fall away from the drone in its slight 0.9 g dive. Kelly Johnson said that the separation of the M-21 and D-21 was the "This was the most dangerous maneuver we have ever been involved in, in any airplane I have ever worked on."

     Once the D-21 had collected it's reconnaissance photography, it would fly into neutral airspace, drop a pod containing the camera, film and the navigation system, which was a very expensive component of the system. The pod would parachute down and be recovered mid-air by a JC-130 aircraft. If the air recovery failed, the pod would splash down into the ocean and would be recovered by a Naval Destroyer. 

     On July 30, 1966, the fourth flight of the D-21 drone occurred. Up until then, they would put the mother ship in a 0.9 g dive to allow for an easier separation. This time, they tested it with out the dive. They figured that if the craft were under enemy fire, they may not be able to perform the dive during separation. Just after separation, the D-21 hit the M-21's sonic shock wave, suffered an unstart and collided with mother ship. Pilot Bill Park and LCO (Launch Control Officer) Ray Torick stayed with the tumbling wreckage until they reached a lower altitude, where they ejected successfully. Though, a breach in Mr. Torick's pressure suit caused him to drown when they landed in the ocean. 

     After this first fatality of the Blackbird program, Kelly Johnson abandoned M-21. From then on, all D-21s were converted to D-21Bs, which could be launched from a B-52H mothership, accelerated to speed and altitude by a solid rocket booster. The rocket burn would last 87 seconds. The B-52H mother ship would carry two D-21B aircraft in case one malfunctioned at the last minute.

     The testing underwent many failures. The USAF flew four operational missions over China to investigate Lop Nor nuclear test facility, starting in 1969. None of the operational missions were totally successful, and the program was cancelled in 1971 by President Nixon. 

     Kelly Johnson thought that the project's cancellation was premature, and the multiple failures were probably due to the USAF disassembling and reassembling the drone many times. One of the failures was caused by a botched Naval recovery. Given more testing time, the program probably would have operated successfully and consistently, just like most of Kelly Johnson's ideas.

     One operational drone crashed into the Soviet Union. The wreckage was inspected by Tupolev. Typolev reverse engineered the drone and made designs for their own version called the Varon, but it was never built. Another piece of wreckage is currently displayed in the China Aviation Museum in Beijing.

     In 1977, long after the project's cancellation, the remaining D-21B aircraft were moved to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, otherwise known as The Boneyard in Tucson, Arizona. The project was completely unknown to the public until then.