Now Frank Murray is the type of man I could sit and listen to for hours talking about his career .. What a great guy !!

@beagle7622

3 жыл бұрын

Most of the pilots that flew these incredible aircraft are really fascinating. Everyone who flew these beasts has many stories too tell . One of Brian Shul’s amazing stories was his encounter with a weather balloon at 80,000 feet, I think he may have just missed it, but it gave him a scare, from the time he first saw it to it disappeared in his mirror measured in seconds.

I met Frank somewhere around 1985, went to his home to buy a radio. Hung around a few hours and chatted. I had no knowledge of his history, and he didn't say anything. I sure wish I had known.

These guys are sharp as hell! He doesn't hesitate one bit on his answers, and the stuff he's talking about happened almost 50 years ago.

@jeffjoseph

6 жыл бұрын

Old does not mean senile. And dont you ever forget it.

@AltonRowell-gb1lb

6 жыл бұрын

Mikko Kukkonen I noticed that.

@martymclochlin4836

5 жыл бұрын

look up his live presentations. He is a great and funny speaker.

@jmm-gc2rd

4 жыл бұрын

Thats when you are passionate about what you do. Your love and zest for your contribution to mankind is without doubt in your mind thats how you react.....sharp and clear. Love what you do and you will be proud to tell your stories.

Such a sharp memory, I have trouble remembering the names of people in high school about 30 yrs ago, much less any details like that. Loved the interview. Great stuff.

My dad was a personnel officer for the outfit and he hired many U-2 pilots and OX Cart pilots back in the 60's. He worked for the outfit for 37 years. He passed last year.

@scottcunius8181

5 жыл бұрын

My Uncle Jim Caldwell got to fly the U-2 many moons ago. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery. He flew in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam wars. Later in his career he was a test pilot.

This is a fascinating bit of history about an aircraft that went higher, faster, further. What a man! What an airplane! Thank you for this!

I can see why he would have been chosen to be part of such a program. Great brain.

This guy is not only sharp as a tack, but an absolute hoot to listen to as well ! This particular video doesn't show his funny side, like this one does :The Oxcart Story - Frank Murray I hope to be this sharp and interesting at his age.

@O-cDxA

6 жыл бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/f3uY2tKqodaunJs.html is the link

@conorlauren

6 жыл бұрын

He's absolutely hilarious. A serious job and cool thing he did but he talks about it with such levity.

@jimwednt1229

3 жыл бұрын

@@O-cDxA , yes this is a great interview 👏

Imagine being an enlisted Airman one day, sweeping the floor, and doing whatever it is you do. Air Force says they have a pilot shortage, try out for flight school. 13 years later, after flying every fighter in the inventory practically, you’re telling your wife you’re off to work at Nellis, but really going up to Groom Lake to fly a Mach 2.8 - 3.2 capable black spy plane for 5 years, including overseas deployments with Vietnam and North Korean overflights. This man’s life is just unbelievable.

What a great interview...that man really lived through an exciting career...outstanding information.

@scottcunius8181

5 жыл бұрын

My dad hired some of the U-2 pilots and OX Cart pilots back in the 60's. He was a personnel officer for the outfit for 37 years. He passed last year.

@LRRPFco52

3 жыл бұрын

@@scottcunius8181 When did you find out that's what he did?

Damn...lighting one engine in AB just to stay on the tanker boom...great pilot.

What a great guy! All these top pilots of his generation, just exceptional people!

A true hero! The right stuff. He's sharp as a knife because his life was full of challenges. Keep it up.

30:34 - What an event!! 38:44 … what an interesting fellow. His recall is impeccable (:

great video, it was nice hearing the A-12 pilot confirm the notes I have acquired about the aircraft and clear up some knowledge gaps I had, thanks for posting.

pilot is still very sharp. remembers all the #'s amazing memory

Sharp as a razor. Elite pilot. What a man. Respect, to all the brave, and illustrious men of his kind. In those days, 'giants' flew over our planet.

One of the best and most informative interviews ever. Great job everyone. Thank you for your service to our country and a great big thank you to the families who were involved but not involved!

America needs a generation of MEN like this one...Now!!

American Legend. Never gets old listening to him and the other A-12 and SR pilots. RIP sir. 🇺🇸

We have one at the Museum of Flight here in Seattle. Beautiful. Businesslike. Special purpose. It is really great to here it from the pilot himself. Frank Murrey has a good memory of all those little details of flight. I like his description of the afterburner plume, the periscope, sealant seeping out of the windshield at speed when everything is hot. Operational procedures about engine start, the sound of the big v8 start cart engines.

Awesome, total legend.

Yes, I love these guys...I can watch & listen to these interviews all day!

What an absolute chariot of the gods. Theroreticly this bird could live forever since the airframe upon cooling after each flight was retempered thereby restoring it's original strength.

very knowledgeable pilot just noted the planes he flew before the A-12, F-80 Shooting Star, Republic F-84 Thunderjet, North American F-86 Sabre - Republic F-84F Thunderstreak - McDonnell F-101 Voodoo - Lockheed F-94 Starfire

@henryhepburn7899

4 жыл бұрын

Awesome guy for sure,, and so humble, so knowledgeable, just waiting for another question. So willing to share. No ego! A real pleasure to see. Thanks to who ever published it.

@LRRPFco52

3 жыл бұрын

Enlisted man gone officer with no college his whole career, remembers detailed aspects of engineering and operator-level specifics better than guys half his age who flew less complex aircraft. It's just a crazy story.

Mr. Murray is a fascinating interview- this is wonderful stuff...

Back around 1973/74 I can not remember the exact year I was a Coast Guard pilot stationed at CGAS San Francisco flying the venerable replacement for the PBY, the Grumman HU-16E Albatross seaplane. Our C130 crews were required to renew their pressurization credentials in the altitude chamber and the nearest one for us was located at Beale AFB. One day I flew a number of our guys to Beale for their recurrent chamber training. We used one of our stations’s HU-16s for this mission thus leaving our C130s back in San Fran for more important duties. While hanging around Base OPs waiting for my pax to return an SR71 pilot arrived to pick up some needed paperwork. I was impressed by his HABU and Mach 3+ patches. I asked the guy if he could show me one of his airplanes. He said sure but then he would have to kill me. I accused him of being a spoil sport then invited him out to see some of my equipment that he definitely did not carry on his SR71. We walked out onto the ramp to my waiting Grumman HU-16E Albatross airplane. We had a good laugh when I climbed up forward into the bow and brought back my anchor and boat hook for his inspection.

One of my favorite personalities and one helluva pilot. Dude is like everyone said on point. Best of the best

Learned a lot from this. And I have 25 years in Avionics Maint. Thank you Col.

While many know the SR-71 the A-12 was different then the SR-71 it's refreshing to hear more about the A-12 program. I saw one at the Pima Air and Space Museum back in the early 90's haven't been back there since.

@grendelum

6 жыл бұрын

blastman8888 - it’s funny, in his new video he calls the SR-71 the “family model” while the A-12 was the high-performance version (“the one that goes like hell”).

@bendeleted9155

Жыл бұрын

And then there's the YF-12 and the M-21 still left to cover.

awesome interview!

Great explanation of how things work on the A-12. Kudos to Frank Murray.

EXCELLENT interview, Great job, enjoyed very much.

Look at the change in his appearance at the beginning of the interview compared to the end. Towards the end he looked more youthful, more vibrant, the difference is striking.

@bendeleted9155

Жыл бұрын

I've seen that look before amongst guys who feel like their craft was forgotten. Then some 40-year old "kid" starts asking questions that wouldn't have been publicly answerable back in the day. Takes 15 or 20 years off, just like that. 👍

I stumbled across this interview and was riveted to the very end. Exceptionally interesting to hear the account of one of a very few aviators to have been exposed to such incredible technology.

Man's got a lot of great memories.

An absolutely outstanding man , what a real hero 👍❤️🇺🇸🚁

He knows his stuff. Great stories.

My uncle flew F-4s and F-111s and told stories about catching A-12s and SR-71s in refueling tracks. They would attempt to lock the recon birds and he said the same thing... these planes simply accelerated and disappeared.

Great interview. Very sharp.

I can’t remember what I did last week, but this guy can recall every event, and every year, of his life. I can only hope to be this sharp, when I’m his age. What a career, too! Sometimes, I look back on my life and wish that I had given the military a chance. Then again, I did follow my passion and I’ve had a good life. Not nearly this exciting, though. 😃

What a legend..!!!... Exceptionally sharp too..

Very Sharp Pilot!! Great Post!

Frank exudes intelligence. What a life !

Thanks for sharing. Great stories.

Frank Murray is one of the coolest characters! I have the oxcart story, which is hilarious!

Truly an amazing man!

finally understand how the start cart did it's thing

Fascinating interview! I was on Wake Island in '71 when an SR-71 made an emergency landing. The base security had it park at the far end of the runway, and erected a "curtain" of sorts around it. Surprised to hear the A-12 landing in Hawaii in '68 didn't go through similar security contortions. :-o

@Biyoung

8 жыл бұрын

I think i becues the a12 was not ment to be a spyplane but a intercepter mayby thats way ???

God speed Frank, fly high, fly fast, fly far. Thank you.

Thank you Col Murray.

42:00 Like the differentiation between the A-12 and the SR71

Nice work. The interviewer did well, plus he’s done a lot of these interviews that would have all been lost without his efforts. For those hypercritical of his style, the alternative would’ve been no information shared…unless you’d have made the effort.

I seen this man at are local Walmart wearing that shirt ... I knew I should of talked to him

Is there a part two? Kind of a clumsy ending, but fascinating story.

I think this plane went way faster than they say. The thing is way over engineered for 3.2- 3.5...afterall... planes of lesser construction were made of traditional materials...and went 2.8-3

@kiwidiesel5071

4 жыл бұрын

Quite correct on your statement, They only ever state the operational speed of 3.2 but remember seeing a doc while back stating that around 3.5 3.6 was it's max speed. That bird was so powerful she would continue acelerateing until she melted her engines. The absolute max speed was determined by the the thermal barrier she lived in. The engine inlet air temperature is the limiting factor as the air entering the engines would continue to increase in temperature as she went ever faster until the point that the inlet stages of the engine compressor sections reached their melting point at which time it would be game over. Just mind blowing the performance of this air breathing black dragon.

@maximilliancunningham6091

Жыл бұрын

@@kiwidiesel5071 Frank stated that the inlet temp was the limiting factor. I expect the airframe was designed for stability out to mach 4.

Look up a new youtube of Frank Murray speaking recently.

Where's the rest of this video?

What was the acceleration like going from 3.2 to 3.5 when avoiding missiles?

The A-12 with both engines at maximum burns roughly 12,500 gallons per hour. For comparison, the Rocketdyne F-1 engine on the Saturn V burns 15,000 gallons per minute!! So what the A-12 uses in an hour, the F-1 uses in about a minute.

Listening to men like this tell their stories about military service should be required learning in our public schools.

Wow!

Is frank a ham radio guy.. Bad ass.

@richardclark4610

5 жыл бұрын

Frank is KE7LK

Crazy I can’t even tune a carburetor properly smh.

Sharp as .

How many of the a12 pilots went on to fly the sr71?

1:25:49 North American Aviation X-15 Robert "Bob" White photo ?

Great American. What did Frank do after the Air Force ?

Are some of the "stock shots" ie: 17:28 computer generated? And did the A-12 have chimes?

@zipz8423

8 жыл бұрын

+Na Ardri yes, the A-12 had chines.

FRANK MURRAY, quite a guy. Hi frank....

_A-12 Cygnus?!_ Whoa, I been watching various interviews looking for inconsistencies in dates and 'flight envelope' lol and now it seems i don't even know the basic program information lol . I was certain till now, it was called *Archangel-12* simplified to *A-12* ....Then after being unclassified; in an effort to reduce public confusion. They went with *A-12 Oxcart* , to align to the name the public had mistakenly assumed.....thanks to lazy and over-zealous reporters.

@grendelum

6 жыл бұрын

Harri v'Jah - *Archangel* was the name of the project *Lockheed* used for the A-12/SR-71 program... *Angel* was the project name for the U2...

30:55 love it

Hero

So impressive. Wish he was my neighbor 😀

I get the impression that some of this he didn't feel comfortable talking about

Dear interviewer, great job but let the guy speak without cutting him off with another question before he finishes... But I’ve truly enjoyed listening to Mr. Murray

At last some more information on the very secret A12

@benschmidt3967

8 жыл бұрын

+Roland Lawrence CIA only not Air Force. Could open up possibilities for Senior Citizen and Aurora...

427 C - just to clarify

One of the most interesting talks about the a12. Love his talk about the a12 comparing it to the sr71 and his comments about the blue book over story! turns out the a12 DID best the sr71... with a max recorded top dash of mach 3.58!!! even the CIA official website gives the a12 a bigger performance than the "family model" sr71 ;)

@CableGula

2 жыл бұрын

Great video!!

so at 0630 that is a B1B not a B-52 and good dad coaching to the old man i was almost fooled till the look of the B-52

Is there any side by side comparisons, size, of A12 vs SR71?

@iang333

5 жыл бұрын

Hi. Check this page out. It has info on all the different variants www.aviamagazine.com/factsheets/aircraft/sr71/index.aspx

@Jarek_73

4 жыл бұрын

@@iang333 THANK YOU!!

Blackbird family

Interesting interview. It's a pity the interviewer was not more knowledgeable about the subject.

@naardri

10 жыл бұрын

San Diego Air and Space Museum should get students of military history to do these interviews. While the interviewer may be an earnest person the product is imperfect. The interviewer should ( I was in doc for 20 odd years) become proficient in the subject matter of the individual interview. While the effort is good the result leaves much to be desired. Hopefully future interviews by this interviewer will have the attempted intimacies established before the camera rolls. Great annoyance.."really, I didn't know that..."( 5:42) AaaaaaaaaHHHHH!

@49metal

10 жыл бұрын

***** In the contrary, he did okay on those topics and the result was interesting and easily accessible even to "non-aviators." Elsewhere he comes off very badly.

@joselabuni9349

7 жыл бұрын

5metal 4

@itsumonihon

7 жыл бұрын

you are severely mistaken. the interviewer is a former military pilot (he says he flew f4's in the interview) and he clearly knows what he's doing and he's talked to a number of other blackbird and a12 pilots in other interviews. i don't like his style of cutting off the speaker in his interviews but his pilot background results in him asking questions that elicit a lot of technical detail that only pilots would understand and appreciate. i am glad that he did this.

@Make-Asylums-Great-Again

5 жыл бұрын

Pilot told interviewer multiple times about being a dayfighter role but the interviewer kept asking.

Joined Oxcart to ditch orders to Alaska 😆 Absolutely nuts he did all this without college education.

what a strtatraight guy

Stud.

when he talked about the problem with it at 16, he's referring to that cone shaped device at the front of the engines. They had to be developed to control the flow of air to the engine, and control the supersonic shock wave at the front. The air flow, at speed, was often interrupted, they called it a "unstart" and they never really solved it. The basic problem is getting an air-fed engine to operate at that speed. See the books by Kelly Johnson, Ben Rich, and others. They all mention it. The reason the A12 couldn't exceed mach 3.2 was not that they lacked engine power, but the aircraft would heat up too much. To this day, no one, no country or aircraft mfr on earth, has duplicated the A12. You can hand them the blueprints and they couldn't build it. You may as well hand iPhone blueprints to a neanderthal!

@zipz8423

8 жыл бұрын

+micflor531313 The problem was the engine was rated to Mach 3.2 and above that high inlet temps would have been apparent, so it was the inlet temp which was the limiting factor.

@mikemac2888

6 жыл бұрын

As mentioned in the video. Watch the whole thing.

I know where the name Oxcart came from. Frank Murray might like to know. I am on Facebook as Alec Pridgeon. If he or his relatives send a friend request, I can send him a text message or call him on the phone.

We should fly those planes now. Learn something.

Frank Murray is amazing, I wish I could talk to this guy. The interviewer and editor are terrible.

@sirsidfosse1313

7 жыл бұрын

I knew him, we both had Vincents. Circa 1982. And we both solo'd with 1948 Aeronca Champs. Synchronicity.

@groomlake51

7 жыл бұрын

Phllip Mclennan I live in gardnerville I have a hot rod shop called groom lake performance I would love to meet this guy if possible !!

@charlesrose4457

6 жыл бұрын

Graeme Cooke the

@adamludwick9931

5 жыл бұрын

I went to “Saints” in San Diego and went to UPT in Columbus. Sadly the similarities end right there. Frank is truly an inspiration.

53

Yeager became Brigadier! Who needs friggin college! This guy remembers everything....Could probably fly the bird again! I assume that all these guys are talking about is declassified?

@dks13827

4 жыл бұрын

College is for turds, now. Maybe not back then, of course. But Frank proves it is not necessary.

Frank i see your still telling stories, KF7NN to KE7LK

Good interview but the interviewer need to do a better job

You never know who sit shoulder to shoulder with... I flew for a State/Fed Agency 99.9% at night mainly interdiction, support. Back then it was some state of the art sensors, goggles, something called GPS.. A new hire flew with me and I had to show him the procedure for signing out $25000 latest Gen NV, thermal gear... I knew he was Airforce but 3/4 were. Then piece by piece over the year I learned he flew F-111s when Reagan was POTUS. Hmmm.. Put 2x2 and figured out what he did. Then came the revelation he carried nuclear weapons on that beast. I recall thinking this man had 20+ years on me and signed out for nukes!! Here I was showing him how to use goggles and telling him if he loses or breaks em, he pays for them....

Frank Murray is a national treasure. However, the interviewer is terrible!

V

Back when the CIA was honorable

The interviewer knows nothing about interviews. Felt more like an interrogation to me. 😐

Great story. KZread " The Global Lie" horizon looks Flat. What adjustments made to accommodate the 8"/mile square curvature of the earth? Please interview with Mark Sargent💜

@kiwidiesel5071

4 жыл бұрын

It's no different at ground level than at 85000ft as the plane is traveling around a greater circumference. This equation o ly works out to be 1 inch of height adjustment for every 111 feet foward distance so it is negligible in the big picture. The plant is a very big piece of real-estate