"Though I fly through the Valley of Death... I shall fear no evil. For I am at 80,000 feet and climbing."
- At the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base Kadena, Okinawa

The fifties and sixties was a fantastic period in aerospace history! I was fortunate to be an engineer and statistician involved with the engines for the U2, The Boeing 707 and DC8, the Blackbirds, the Lunar Excursion Module, the Saturn, and the Centaur space vehicles, the US Supersonic Transport, the F15 and F16 fighters. The best part were the wonderful people involved like Charlie Lindberg, Juan Tripp, Kelly Johnson, Dick Mulready, Dick Coar, Bill Brown, and people we met like Eddie Rickenbacker and Jimmie Doolittle, and Werner Von Braun. Within Pratt & Whitney Aircraft we would do anything for the company and vice versa. By the eighties I was working on the engines for the F-22 and the era was over. Never again will so few engineers be given so much responsibility to make such huge advances in technology. It was an all out total effort, it was fun, it was exciting and I am lucky to have been involved. One of my contributions was to invent the engines that power the Blackbirds, so herein you find some good pictures of the SR-71 and my recollections of never told tales of the period.

The CIA's "Center for the Study of Intelligence" has just published "Archangel: CIA's Supersonic A-12 Reconnaissance Aircraft" by David Robarge. This is the best summary book of the CIA program that I have seen. You can see it online, via the CIA's website.