When A Pilot’s Spy Plane Disintegrated Around Him, He Started A Wild Free Fall From 78,000 Feet

A Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” is streaking across the sky above California, 14 miles high. One moment, the plane is rocketing through the thin air at enormous speed, and then disaster strikes. The aircraft is out of control, falling to pieces, and pilot Bill Weaver has no idea what’s happened; he’s unconscious and plummeting toward the ground.

"Has To Be A Dream"

Gradually, Weaver regains consciousness. “This has to be a bad dream,” he whimsically thinks. But 14 miles up and shooting towards Earth is not a great place for whimsy. He’s not going to wake up and figure out what’s going on. Because this hasn’t been a dream, as he slowly realizes.

Rude Awakening

The air is rushing by Weaver as he falls. But although he can hear the wind making pieces of his equipment flap, he can’t see anything. The glass window of his suit in front of his face is covered in ice, the freezing temperature of the thin air having left him effectively blind. There seems to be no way out for Weaver.

Speed Of Sound Flight

Weaver had not been afraid of danger; for his entire career as a test pilot, it had been a central part of his life. He’d been involved in testing super-fast planes for some time. The pilot had tested not only SR-71s, but also all the other planes that could top Mach 3 – that’s three times the speed of sound – including YF-12s and A-12s.

The Infamous Blackbird

The plane that had fallen apart around Weaver was a Lockheed SR-71, known as a Blackbird. Operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) as a spy plane, it was still a young airplane at the time of the 1966 accident. Lockheed had developed the aircraft from its A-12 in its Skunk Works department.