The Blackbirds Inhabited Okinawa for 22 Very Fast and Loud Years
Lockheed’s SR-71A Blackbird flew missions all over the world between its introduction in 1966 and its retirement in 1998. One of the primary locations from which Blackbirds operated was Kadena Air Base (AB) on Okinawa. 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (SRW) SR-71As began arriving at Kadena, AKA The Rock, on 8 March 1968. The movement of the jets from Beale Air Force Base (AFB) in California to Kadena was code-named Glowing Heat, while actual SR-71A operations out of Kadena were code-named Senior Crown. Watch one of the 9th SRW Blackbirds preparing for blastoff, and then doing just that, from runway 23R in this video uploaded to YouTube by Maximus Aviation.
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Turning Japanese
By 15 March 1968 the Blackbirds were declared operational at Kadena. Six days later pilot Major Jerome F. O’Malley and reconnaissance systems officer Major Edward D. Payne flew SR-71A serial number 61-7976 on the first operational mission from Kadena. At first the operational SR-71A missions were code-named Black Shield, and later Giant Scale. The Blackbirds averaged about one sortie a week for nearly two years. But the SR-71As were averaging two sorties per week by 1970. Incredibly these maintenance-intensive machines were averaging nearly one sortie flown every day by 1972.
The Definition of Futility: Shooting SAMs at the SR-71A
The North Vietnamese fired off more than 800 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at the Blackbirds overflying their territory and taking their pictures. While deployed at Okinawa, the SR-71As (and their aircrews as well) were nicknamed Habu by the Okinawans, after a particularly deadly and bad-tempered pit viper indigenous to Japan. 2,410 SR-71A missions were flown out of Kadena over North and South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, North Korea, the airspace contiguous to the USSR and China, and later four missions (11 hours each!) over the Persian Gulf states during the late 1980s. The last SR-71A left Kadena AB on 21 January 1990.
