The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was the fastest manned service aircraft in history. Its role was strategic reconnaissance (hence the "SR" designation). Technically, it was a conventional aircraft, taking off and landing and having air-breathing engines with conventional controls. There are machines faster than the Blackbird (a nickname also used as the callsign), but they were either "dash" types like the mid-air launched X-15, or spacecraft like the Space Shuttle Orbiter (see Aircrew May and September 2013). The SR-71 was able not only to travel faster than a speeding bullet, as the cliché has it, but was able to fly at Mach 3+ for significant times, transiting huge swathes of the Earth's surface, either to get to a photographic target or to pass over a large target and (not least) to egress from danger zones, usually simply outrunning any missile attacks. The official top speed was Mach 3.2, but Blackbirds could be flown to Mach 3.3 as long as the engine compressor inlet temperature did not exceed 801°F (427°C). SR-71s hold the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, a record previously held by the YF-12, the type's predecessor.
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