Fastest motors ever

      If you have ever read into any aviation book or lesson, chances are that you have come across the mentioning of a legendary plane.  This plane is the SR-71 Blackbird and it's fame is well earned. It is one of the fastest manned airplanes to have ever flown, and it is also one of the most secretive ever. This plane was so good and so fast that when a SAM or surface to air missile locked onto it, the Blackbird simply outran the missiles at speeds up to and quite possibly past mach 3.5 or three and a half times the speed of sound.  The reason the true top speed is still unknown is that it is top secret information.  The Blackbird was capable of hitting such great speeds for many reasons like aerodynamics and high tech flight computers, but the largest part of this amazing place reaching the speeds that it did were due to it's engines.  They are called the Pratt and Whitney J-58 and they are behemoths and an amazing feat of engineering.

      If the declassified top speed isn't enough to amaze you, then maybe the fact that such a powerful engine was designed by hand and mind without computers, calculators, and just a slide rule, Oh yeah and this was back in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  There are many things that make the engines extremely unique, but for the sake of time we will just stick to the big things.  The engine itself actually operates in two stages.  The first being that of a turbojet engine, and the second being that of a ramjet.  Here is how it works, the engine operates as a normal after-burning turbojet engine up to mach 2.2, where the next element comes into play for a few reasons.  The first is a concern of fuel efficiency, and the next is of heat.  The afterburners at mach 2.2 are using an incredible amount of fuel, and there is so much heat at this point that any more would melt the nacelle or capsule holding the engine in the plane.  The engine has 6 air bypass tubes that draw cool, compressed air from the 4th stage of the fan in front of combustion, and bypasses it directly to the after-burner area, thus creating a cooler and even more oxygen rich environment for the fuel to burn in,  This creates massive efficiency and allows the blackbird to cruise at mach 3.2.

      What this plane contributed to the country in terms of vital information may never be fully known to the public, but there is already enough known to cement it's legacy in history as the fastest and highest flying manned airplane ever.