Valor Friday

It’s June 1987. An American Air Force SR-71 Blackbird is flying a routine Cold War surveillance mission near Soviet airspace in the Baltic. Just a few seconds away from their turnaround point, while flying at 75,000 feet and about Mach 3, the right engine suddenly explodes.

While the aircrew manages the emergency, they are now literally moments away from violating Soviet airspace and have lost their only defenses against Soviet intercept (speed and altitude), as they now have to slow down and descend to continue flying on their one good engine.

Solidly over Eastern Bloc territory, the airmen decided that if they were going to have to ditch or make an emergency landing, they’d rather do it over a somewhat friendly country than an openly hostile one (or into the Baltic Sea where the Soviets could recover the top secret airframe). They made for Sweden, who were fiercely neutral.

Coming into Swedish airspace, the radar warning systems went off for the Swedish air defense forces, and an emergency intercept order came out. Two Swedish Air Force pilots were already in the air in their Saab 37 Viggen fighters on a training mission, so they were immediately dispatched. Since they weren’t told what type of aircraft they were to meet and identify, the astute Swedish pilots surmised that it must have been an SR-71.

If you’re not up on your Swedish fighters, the Viggen is one cool bird. The Viggen was a very advanced fighter for the Swedes when it came into service in the 70s. It was the first combat aircraft to have digital computer controls. It was fast, capable of more than Mach 2, and was agile with its forward canard flight controls (the first mass produced aircraft so configured). It also had interlink capabilities with other Viggens, allowing them to network resources like radar tracks.

The Viggen is perhaps overshadowed by both the aircraft it replaced, the Draken (known for being the first aircraft to perform the supermaneuverable Pugachev’s Cobra as made famous in Top Gun: Maverick), and the one that replaced it, the Gripen. The Draken was a very cool looking tailless double delta wing fighter that spent 50 years in service with Sweden, Austria, Finland, and Denmark. The Gripen is the current frontline multi-role fighter for the Swedes and can hold its own against the best fourth-generation fighters of any country (including the F-16, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Rafale, and the MiG-29).

One of the coolest aspects of the Viggen is that it can operate from improvised airfields, namely the roads of Sweden. Swedish defense planning has relied on the ability for their aircraft to operate from austere environments. American combat aircraft occasionally practice landing on public roadways, but the Swedes do it regularly. As part of that plan, the odd little door you can sort of make out in the side of its rear fuselage (silver in the above painting) is a thrust reverser. Like commercial airliners and large cargo aircraft, the Viggen can reverse its engine’s thrust to drastically shorten its landing distance. It’s the only production fighter to have featured this.

The combination of the Viggen’s advanced systems and America’s choice of predictable routes for their SR-71 flights in the area meant that the Swedish Viggen jockeys routinely intercepted and got radar lock (which could then be used for air-to-air missile shots should things get froggy) on the faster and higher flying SR-71. The Viggen is the only documented aircraft to have taken on the Blackbird and “won” in this friendly game of tag.

The MiG-25 (capable of Mach 3+, though it could only do it once as the engines would melt) and later MiG-31 (a development of the 25) were designed to intercept the SR-71, and tried on many occasions, none of them reportedly got missile lock like the Viggen.

Responding to the SR-71 threat to their airspace, the Swedish Viggen pilots intercepted the aircraft. They would have been within their rights to force the American plane to land, but correctly assessed they were having an in-flight emergency. So they kept watch over the Americans, following them out of Swedish airspace, and ensuring they were recovered safely.

Meanwhile, the Soviet air defense systems were well aware of the SR-71. While it could sneak into places easier than most (due to its speed, altitude, and low radar cross-section), it made a massive sonic boom and had two monstrously large, hot jet engines that left an easy to follow heat signature behind them, so escape was much harder. Usually, the SR-71 flew so high and fast that it was able to just walk away from any enemy aircraft dispatched to intercept them. Today though, they were flying at a fraction of their normal speed and at a very easy to intercept 25,000 feet.

In response to the SR-71’s plight, the Soviets and their allies dispatched dozens of aircraft (from the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany) to force the Blackbird down. The only one of the interceptors the American’s saw was a MiG-25 that arrived and followed them for a few minutes before turning away at the continued presence of the Swedish Viggens.

The Viggens stayed with the Blackbird long enough for two more Viggens to take over the escort, with those two fighters coming from an alert base on the ground. Those two additional Viggens kept watch over the Americans until they were over Danish territory, when American F-15s from Mildenhall, England could meet them and take over.

The Swedes helped ward off all the Warsaw Pact fighters sent to take out the vaunted SR-71, defending the American aircraft and its crew from the communist threat. For this, the four Swedish officers were, 30 years later, awarded American Air Medals for their efforts on that summer day in 1987.

More reading; AF.mil,  Air and Space Forces Magazine, The Aviationist by way of thesr71blackbird.com.

Category: Air Force, Cold War, Historical, Valor, We Remember