Q. Please describe a particularly memorable flight in the Blackbird.
“As the Blackbird was being retired in December 1989, Lockheed asked if a Blackbird could make some passes at Burbank for the employees who had spent so much time designing and improving the aeroplane through the years. Test RSO Tom Fuhrman and I were tasked to make a few passes for the crowd at Burbank, which was a special honour to do so for those who worked on the Blackbird and other projects. On each pass we lit the afterburner and could see thousands of Lockheed employees lined along the runway to our left as we flew by.
Another very special aspect of this for me involved Blackbird designer Kelly Johnson, who was the premier designer and manager of the Skunk Works and one of my heroes. I never got a chance to meet him because when I started flying in 1983 he had had some light strokes and so was only taking visitors from his closest friends.
The flybys took place on December 20, 1989, and I heard later that Ben Rich, who took over the Skunk Works from Kelly Johnson, brought him out to the airport in his wheelchair. Ben Rich told me that Kelly Johnson had tears in his eyes as we made those passes and on our last pass as we departed we rocked our wings g…
