The View at Mach 3 with Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding
This week, Sandra and Sandy host Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding, a former SR-71 pilot who famously flew the plane on over 90 worldwide reconnaissance missions. Their discussion begins with a look at the development of the SR-71 and how it was a response to the need for better photographic reconnaissance during the Cold War. From there, Yeilding goes on to share his experience of growing up in Florence, Alabama, how he became an Air Force pilot, and the unique construction and design of the plane that allowed it to fly at such high speeds.
He then provides further insight into the experience of flying the SR-71 Blackbird, including the fact that, despite rigorous simulator training, the airplane was prone to malfunctions. He also discusses his final flight in the SR-71, shares his experiences with JT Vida - the test RSO assigned to fly with him to the Smithsonian - and explains the purpose of the speed record flight. Today’s fascinating episode provides an inside look into the SR-71 Blackbird including its enormous contribution to the country for over 25 years, and serves as a powerful testament to the skill and bravery required by Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding and his colleagues to pilot this incredible machine.
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Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain somehow trying to keep it all together. It's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone.
I'm retired astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm retired Navy fighter pilot Admiral Sandy Winnefeld. We're two adrenaline junkies who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: During the Cold War, the United States worked hard to try to understand what was going on inside the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Part of getting that done involved photographic reconnaissance.
Sandy Winnefeld: The U-2 was developed to overfly those countries, but when Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, high-slow flyers became much more restrictive. Satellites capable of taking photos were relatively new and fairly basic. They had low resolution, and recovering the photos by parachute took time.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: In response to this, Lockheed was selected to build a survivable spy plane. The eventual outcome of that effort, the SR-71, first flew in December of 1964.
Sandy Winnefeld: Our guest today is Ed Yeilding, who flew the faster-than-a-bullet SR-71 on more than 90 worldwide reconnaissance missions. He also set a speed record on the SR-71's final flight and military service flying from Los Angeles to Washington DC in under 65 minutes.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We caught up with Lieutenant Colonel Yeilding at his home in Florence, Alabama.
Ed Yeilding, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone, and thanks for being with us today.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your interest.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, I'm delighted that our mutual friend Kevin Chilton introduced us, and really appreciate you joining us today. And we like to start off with our guests, where are you from and how did you get into what you're doing? How did you get into the Air Force? How did it all start?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Well, I was raised in Florence, Alabama, up in the northwest corner of Alabama on the Tennessee River. Had nearly an ideal childhood, I would say. Went to Auburn University and I really wanted to fly the Blackbird. I had my eyes on it since I was 15 years old when it was announced by President Johnson in 1964. And so ROTC at Auburn. And ROTC was good to pay my books and tuition and promised to send me to pilot training afterward. And so that's how I entered the Air Force through ROTC at Auburn University.
Sandy Winnefeld: Three of us have something in common then because Sandra wanted to be an astronaut from the time she was a little girl. I wanted to fly the F-14 when I was in high school on. And I can't believe you wanted to fly the SR-71 from the time you were–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: From the get-go.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's cool.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But you didn't start that way. You started off as an RF-4 pilot. And so what was that mission like? And then how did you transition from that to the SR-71?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: To be selected for the SR-71, you have to have had about ten years of high-performance jet experience. And so out of pilot training, I graduated near the top of my class and I was able to choose an RF-4. I was interested in photography and also the jet. So our mission in the RF-4 was high-speed, low-altitude photography. So our mission was in combat to fly below enemy radar, and of course, that was before GPS, and we did have an INS, but we had to map read our way around the low-level course, 480 knots and 500 ft altitude, and in places, we were allowed to go down much lower than that. So it was exciting. I really enjoyed flying that RF-4, and we participated in Red Flag War game exercises out in Nevada.
After the RF-4, I did fly the F-4 fighter for three years. And so I had a total of nine years of Phantom experience before I was selected for the SR-71 and really loved flying the Phantom. It was dangerous though. You had to be really careful, especially all that low-altitude work and in those Red Flag War Game exercises. Over that nine years, I lost six friends in accidents, practicing for the defense of our freedom.
Sandy Winnefeld: So the SR-71 is a very special airplane, right? It was way ahead of its time and its design and the whole thing. So what can you tell us about, first of all, its principal designer, Kelly Johnson, and sort of the unclassified cool aspects of its unique construction and airframe?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Well, the airplane itself has been all declassified now, so nothing about it is classified now. Some of the sensor capabilities are still classified, but otherwise, the airplane is a fascinating machine. Really love flying, just an amazing machine. Kelly Johnson was the principal designer with Lockheed Skunk Works. He was born in 1910. I read his biography. He's one of my heroes. I know a lot about him. As a child, he wanted to design airplanes. He did not want to fly them particularly, but he wanted to design them and became one of America's premier airplane designers. And his stepson showed me a scrapbook that young Kelly had made when he was twelve years old. And I enjoyed flipping through that scrapbook on airplanes. And one article that really caught my attention was an article that would have been in 1923, how the French had just taken the world speed record from the United States. So he had that article cut out and at the top of the page he had four exclamation points and said, 'Notice!!!!' And you can practically hear young Kelly saying, “That is unacceptable, and I'm going to design an airplane that'll take the speed record.” And he sure did.
But what made Kelly so successful was not only was he a brilliant engineer, but he was also a brilliant manager. He didn't build the airplane by himself, engineering and management made him highly successful. He designed the P-38, World War II, America's first operational jet fighter. The F-80 Shooting Star, the F-104, the U-2 Spy Plane, which was shot down over Russia in 1960, Francis Gary Powers. And so he decided, 'Well, I'll build an airplane that's too high and too fast to be shot down.' So it was a crowning achievement. The beautiful and, at the time, mysterious SR-71 Blackbird.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, it's still, I think, one of the more beautiful planes ever, quite frankly.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Oh, it really is. It still looks futuristic even though it was built in the early 1960s. These engineers were using slide rules still to design the airplane. I can talk a long time just about the construction of the airplane and some of the features about it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, for one thing, it was a very high temperature, right?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: That's right. So friction with the air, cruising in the air that was minus 7°F, nearly 80,000 ft. friction with the air caused the skin temperature to average 550 degrees Fahrenheit. And so there were parts of the airplane that were much hotter than that due to the friction. So aluminum alloys, which most airplanes are built of, would be too soft at that high temperature, so he made it out of titanium. So they pioneered the use of titanium and the construction of the airplane.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Expensive and difficult.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Right. It was. It really was. So with the temperature, the airplane grew about four inches due to the high temperature. So it had to have these expansion joints and had to be able to expand. And I pulled out the coefficient of expansion for titanium to make sure that was correct. And four inches sounds pretty reasonable.
Sandy Winnefeld: And they had to anticipate that it wasn't something they discovered. They had to plan for that, which was exceptionally good engineering.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: That's right.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's an amazing airplane.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I've seen photographs of the cockpit. Every pilot wants to see what the cockpit looks like in an airplane. And I was shocked at how complicated that cockpit looked. More steam gauges than I think I've ever seen. Certainly, I would think more than the F-4 Phantom had. What was it like to sit in that cockpit in your pressure suit with all that complexity? Because it was quite a complex airplane to fly, right?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Before we ever had our first flight in the airplane, we had almost, let's say, 100 hours of academics and simulator time. It was highly stressed to keep a constant cross-scan across all of those instruments because, at that speed, you could get in trouble in a hurry if you didn't catch certain malfunctions in a timely way. So our mission was constantly scanning those gauges. Now, the airplane was updated through the years with digital computers. When I first got in the airplane in 1983, they were just transitioning from analog computers to digital computers. They updated the computers and the software, the sensors. Quite a few things about the airplane were updated through the years, but there was never really a need to update the pilot displays, and that was just fine with me. Those 60s gauges worked just fine.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's interesting because we train and fly in the shuttle. We wear pressure suits as well and we're going really fast as well. But we had a crew of four, and first, I have to tell you that the pilot and the commander hated wearing the gloves, even though there's not as many gauges and stuff in the shuttle. But it took us four brains to kind of keep up with the vehicle in order to be able to take over if we had to fly manually, which, of course, is what you were doing. So did you start with a two-seater to do this, or did you have to do all that with one single brain right from the get-go? Because that's a lot of workload to your point you just made.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: By the time we had our first flight, we were nearly experts in the airplane just due to all that simulator training, but we did have a trainer. They built two trainers, and one of the trainers was crashed in the 70s. So we had one trainer, and the back cockpit was built up a little higher so the instructor at the back could see forward. So our first five flights in the trainer were with an instructor. They had excellent instructors. DC Thomas was one of my main instructors, and he wound up with more flying time in the Blackbird than any other pilot in history at 1217.3 hours.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: And he really worked us over in the simulator. And it never occurred to me during those difficult simulator missions that he would someday be one of my best friends. And Bernie Smith also was one of my lead instructors.
Sandy Winnefeld: So they'd throw the kitchen sink at you in the simulator?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: They did, yeah. And it really paid off later on because malfunctions were pretty common in the airplane, although we had a really good record for being able to accomplish our mission. But it wasn't unusual for something serious enough to happen that we would have to land away at a friendly base.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I mean, what was the most common set of malfunctions? Or was it just kind of all over the place? Because having to land from a malfunction is sort of a critical thing.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah, quite a number of malfunctions could happen, I suppose. Engine-related malfunctions would be what would most of the time cause land away missions, land away at a friendly base.
Sandy Winnefeld: So you had five flights in the trainer before you could fly in the airplane that had a mission specialist in the backseat. How many flights did you have to have total before you could actually do an operational flight, an operational reconnaissance flight?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: We had to have 100 hours of flying in the airplane, and those training missions were around the western United States. And so, probably, average probably 4-hour flights, so four under 100 hours. I guess we had probably about 25 flights.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: 25 flights.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: The pressure suit was really pretty comfortable to fly in. I guess it was very similar. Matter of fact, the first shuttle missions borrowed our pressure suit so you know how it felt. But we had air conditioning tubes through the pressure suit, and it was pretty comfortable. And the switches in the airplane were made large enough that we could operate the switches with our pressure suit gloves, and that really wasn't a problem. And our missions were short enough, short enough that we weren't in that suit all of that long. Our longest routine missions were five and a half hours. We had some missions as short as two hours over in Okinawa up to the boundaries of North Korea. A lot of those were only two hours.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We were in those suits for seven, eight, nine, could be. Fun.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah, we had a few missions that were 11 hours. I had a couple that were eight hours.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow. Amazing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I mean, this plane is amazing, but it was, and still is, quite frankly, at the forefront of technology. So there's all kinds of risks with flying a plane like that. You're going really fast. The engines are offset. You've got low pressure at high altitude, you've got temperature issues. You're in a pressure suit. I'm assuming you had a harness and a parachute and some kind of ejection system. Could you get out of the plane if you had a problem way up there? What does that kind of a scenario look like?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: We did have an ejection seat similar to most any air fighter, and we had a parachute. So if you ejected at 80,000 ft, you would fall with the seat till you got to 15,000 ft, and then the big parachute would automatically open.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And you had oxygen, clearly.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Had oxygen in the survival kit. And it had a small drug shoot so you could sit upright and enjoy the view on the way down.
Sandy Winnefeld: I can't imagine, though, ejecting at Mach 3, even though– I don't know what the indicated airspeed is at 80,000 ft in Mach 3, it's probably not that high. But still, your body's not going to survive a supersonic ejection up there, is it?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah, you could. The air was thin enough.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. There's no air.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah. So we were cruising near 85,000 ft and it was our max altitude, and we always tried to operate with the best altitude for the weight of the airplane for fuel economy. So, normally we didn't get all the way to 85,000 ft, but somewhere in the 80,000 range. And so at that altitude, we're above 97% of the air molecules. And so you had a really nice view of the Earth. You can see the curvature of the Earth. And more noticeable than the curvature was how dark it was overhead. Wasn't as black as what Sandra saw, but it was very dark blue, almost black. So that was even more noticeable than the curvature of the Earth.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I think it's really cool that you can say the sentence, “Yeah, we were cruising at 85,000 ft.” Awesome.
Sandy Winnefeld: Just a matter of– Ed, you flew a lot of operational missions during your career as a Blackbird pilot. We already talked about how long they were, but how often did you have to refuel? You didn't stay at high altitude at high-speed the whole time. But what kinds of missions were you out there flying operationally?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: We were flying primarily border reconnaissance around North Korea, around the Soviet Union, along the northern borders of the Soviet Union, around the Arctic Circle area, the Eastern Bloc countries of Europe. We had some missions in the Middle East and a few down in Central America, Nicaragua, when Ortega was causing problems back in 1984. So those were our primary missions.
Sandy Winnefeld: And just sort of as a follow-on, you hear or read stories about the SR-71 got shot at a lot, but never hit. Do you have any reflections on that? Is that all folklore or were you ever really engaged by threat missile systems or fighters?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah, as far as I know, I was never fired at. Sometimes we did see Soviet fighters try to intercept us, but we were very difficult to intercept because of our speed and altitude. Only once you could see the fighter contrails way down below. And only once did one get close enough that I could actually see metal. And I'm guessing it was probably seven miles away. I was told later it was a MiG-31.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, I was going to say it must have been a Foxbat or something like that.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Now I've heard stories of they were fired at some during Vietnam. The airplane was used during Vietnam. I'm skeptical about thousands of missiles that are being fired at, which is a number I've heard sometimes, but I don't know that for sure. None of our airplanes were fired upon with a missile that we know of during my era, which was 1983 to 1990. Shortly before I started in 1983, there was one missile fired at an SR-71 near North Korea, I think it was in 1982.
Sandy Winnefeld: It'd have to be a pretty lucky shot to hit it, right?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Right. That's right.
Sandy Winnefeld: So when you started flying this airplane in 1983, I don't think GPS existed then. If it did, it was rudimentary. And you're going at Mach 3, you're going really fast over the ground. How did you navigate? Countryside is going by pretty fast. What kind of systems did you use to know where you were?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah, we of course did not have GPS. When the airplane was retired in 1990, there were plans to get GPS capability for the airplane, but it was canceled before we got that. But the airplane used an inertia navigation system, it was called an ANS Astro navigation system. So for navigation, the planners planned the exact route of the flight, and the route of the flight was put on a magnetic tape and that magnetic tape was loaded into the airplane, so the airplane knew what the route was. And with our INS system, Inertial Navigation System, the INS system will drift with time, so INS systems have to be updated by radio signals from the ground. We couldn't depend on the Russians to give us good radio signals for our navigation.
Sandy Winnefeld: Don't just dial up their TACAN station
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah. So we had a star tracker. There was a little telescope mounted behind the navigator and that little telescope would fly around and find stars. And so for that to work, the backseater had to dial in what day of the year you're flying, and they would plug in a very accurate clock into the airplane. So the airplane knew exactly where the Earth was in its rotation as well as its revolution. So it knew where to look for the stars and it would look in the direction of a star and then do a search until it found the star, measure that angle, and keep our position updated. I always thought that was really cool for an early 1960s navigation.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's amazing.
Sandy Winnefeld: It really resonates with me because in the early days, me flying the F-14, we didn't have GPS either. And we would maintain our combat air patrol station off of Iran using an Iranian navigation aid. They conveniently kept their TACAN on for us so that we could keep station there. And the other thing, though, celestially, I would always turn my cockpit lights way, way down at night and I would construct my turns based on looking at the stars. Not quite as accurate as your system, but it was pretty cool to be able to do that back in the day, right?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: That's right, pretty cool.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.
Sandy Winnefeld: So you were the last person ever to fly this magical aircraft, called the SR-71. Can you tell our listeners about that final flight?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Okay. But let me preface that with it turned out that I was not the last, at the time they thought that I was going to be the last supersonic. My flight would be the last supersonic flight. And then there were going to be subsonic flights to museums after that. And then in 1995, '96, Senator Byrd thought we might be having a war with North Korea. So they reactivated three Blackbirds and there were crews that were selected to fly those three airplanes’ training missions around 1996-97. And then after the Air Force canceled it again, NASA was given permission to fly training flights, research flights in the Blackbird. And I believe that the last NASA mission in the Blackbird was in 1999.
Sandy Winnefeld: So were you sitting by the phone, Ed, waiting for somebody to call you and say, “We need you back?”
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Well, I'm still waiting for that. I keep thinking–
Sandy Winnefeld: you can probably still fly it, right?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Some of these really modern airplanes, I would love to fly them. So I was very fortunate to be chosen to fly an airplane to the Smithsonian Museum. Since the airplane was being retired in 1990, museums all over the country wanted one, including the Smithsonian. So the decision was made to send Blackbird tail number 972, which was our test airplane at Palmdale. I had been in the airplane for about six years by this time and the last two years as a test pilot down at Palmdale flying the Blackbird. So JT Vida was the test RSO that was assigned to fly that with me. And I had flown a lot of test missions with JT. Anyway, we felt it both extremely fortunate to fly that flight to the Smithsonian. And JT, by the way, he had more time in the Blackbird than any other crew member in history, pilot or navigator. He wound up with 1392 hours in the airplane. And I'll just mention after our speed record flight, he got cancer and passed away two years after our flight. And I just want to say what a pleasure it was to fly with JT. Just a wonderful friend and an outstanding RSO, Recon Systems Officer.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, that's unfortunate.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: So the two of us felt so fortunate to be selected because we knew that any of the crews had the skill to fly that flight. And so we wanted to do our very best to represent all the Blackbird community in that speed record flight across the country to the Smithsonian. And the reason it was a speed record flight is the Smithsonian wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Air Force, Donald Rice, and said, “When your pilot brings the airplane to the Smithsonian, please have them set an official coast-to-coast airplane speed record.” And that would call the public's attention to what a great airplane it has been for our country for 25 years. So that was the purpose of the speed record, called the public's attention to it.
So our plan was to take off from Palmdale. We would fly 200 miles out over the Pacific and air refuel, get a full load of fuel, light the afterburners, and get a 200-mile running start. The NAA, the National Aeronautic Association, is the agency that monitors and verifies official speed records. So they had representatives on each coast, and they also wanted three city-to-city records along the way. And you would think a city-to-city record would be from take off the landing, but that's not how they do the city-to-city records. You pass by a city at speed, get the time, and then as you pass the destination at speed to get the time. So that's how we were able to do three city-to-city records as we did the coast-to-coast record.
So fuel was going to be really tight to fly all the way across the country at top speed. Ordinarily, we weren't allowed to fly faster than 3.2. But my commander gave us permission to fly Mach 3.3 for our cruise. We didn't have the fuel across West Coast at Mach 3.3 and the East Coast at 3.3 turn around and landed at Dulles. So we had to plan it so that we were accelerating past the West Coast through Mach 2.5 and then a few minutes later, we would be at our top speed, Mach 3.3.
So we took off for Palmdale at 4:30 in the morning, Pacific time, which is 4:30 in the morning Washington time. We joined with those tankers out over the Pacific. It was pitch dark, no moon, no horizon, but we had refueled at night many times. We got our fuel and lit the burners, accelerated toward the West Coast, crossed it. Mach 2.5 is planned, climbing and accelerating, but we're flying toward the sun. So the sun's coming up really rapidly, so we could see the sunrise as we're crossing the West Coast. Then a few minutes later, we can see the sun is up and we can see the entire city of Las Vegas down there and Lake Mead. A few minutes later, see the Grand Canyon. And it was a special flight, so I was having some special thoughts and remembering one of my favorite hymns, America The Beautiful. We're cruising right over the heart of America at Mach 3.3.
We passed by those majestic mountains of southwest Colorado as sung about in that song America The Beautiful. We passed about 60 miles south of Pike's Peak for the top of Pike's Peak is where Catherine Bates was inspired to write that wonderful song America The Beautiful. A few minutes later, we're right over that fruited plain that she sang about in her song. Hundreds of miles of prime American farmland. I thought about all those thousands of farmers down there starting their day, getting ready to raise food that feeds most of our country and even enough to export overseas. Thought about our brave pioneers that I read about as a boy and explorers taking months to cross country that JT and I were covering in just a matter of minutes. Thought about what a great, great country we have, made great by the hard work and sacrifices and courage and prayers of our forefathers.
The eastern part of the country was undercast, so we didn't see many features in the eastern part of the country. But JT and I just made sure we enjoyed those last few minutes, a view of God's earth from 80,000ft. We wound up at 83,000 ft on that flight. And just thinking how very, very fortunate we were to serve alongside hundreds of other highly dedicated men and women who designed and maintained, supported, and flew the Blackbird through 25 years of service and just made sure we enjoyed our last few minutes of flying that marvelous, marvelous airplane.
Sandy Winnefeld: What a great story.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's a lovely story. I do have a practical question I've been wanting to ask, though, because we're not supposed to have sonic booms over land, but yet you were flying supersonic over land. So did you get special dispensation or what happened with the sonic boom you were creating the whole way across the country as you were flying so fast?
Sandy Winnefeld: All those farmers you were talking about?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What was that? What happened with that? Did you get stories from people, surprised people?
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Yeah. I was worried about adverse publicity. I was afraid that there would be people making false claims against the government as a chance to get cracked windows and cracked walls repaired. But Public Affairs at the Pentagon told me later that there were no claims. And as soon as people found out that it was the Blackbird on this historic mission that they heard, they were just happy to have heard something historic. But, you know, the Blackbird flew regularly during our training missions, supersonic over the western United States. And so we were allowed to be supersonic as long as we were above 30,000 ft. So when we were transitioning from subsonic to supersonic, we would have to be above 30,000 ft as we went supersonic. We did try to, on those training missions, we would avoid major cities.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Once we got to altitude, though, the sonic booms were noticeable, but not dramatic. Not nearly enough to break anything.
Sandy Winnefeld: I guess when you're that high, it doesn't matter as much as if you're down low doing it. So, Ed, I see that beautiful model over your shoulder on your mantelpiece of the SR. I know you must miss the flying, you must miss the airplane, but you're doing something else right now, doing some pretty cool volunteer work. Tell us about that.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: I always liked math a lot. And during COVID when we're all locked in, I thought, well, for entertainment, I decided to do a really good review of my calculus primarily through those great courses, videos. And Dr. Bruce Edwards just has a marvelous series on calculus and precalculus. So I watched carefully those and bought me an updated handheld computer, a graphing computer. So just for fun, I watched all of those and worked out some of the problems with my calculator. And I thought, after all of that study, just for entertainment, I thought, well, I'll try to put it to use, ask our local community college if they had any need for somebody like me. And so they invited me to tutor. I told them I'd do it for free, tutor for free. And so they let me tutor for free for a couple of weeks. And then they said, “Well, we're paying our other tutors, and we insist on paying you, too.” So I said, “Well, okay.” So that was really nice, and I've really been enjoying tutoring calculus at the community college.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I just wanted Sandra to hear that because now she knows that not all fighter pilots are dumb.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Sandy Winnefeld: Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, we're pretty much out of time. But I just wanted to say I know you probably don't like being described as a hero because, to you, I'm sure you were just doing your job. But there's something to me heroic about flying that magnificent airplane for so many years, doing it in hazardous conditions, doing it flawlessly, and then being able to set those records on your last flight. So hats off to you and really proud to know you and to have the opportunity to talk to you about this magnificent airplane. Thanks for sharing your time with us.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Amazing stories. Thank you.
Lt. Col. Ed Yeilding: Well, thanks so much. I've read both of your biographies and I truly admire both of you and your service to our country. Thank you.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, thank you very much.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was former SR-71 Blackbird Pilot Ed Yeilding. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Ed on TikTok. Our handle is very simple: @theadrenalinezone.
