I was working the flightline one day in the late 80's at Nellis AFB. We got call on the mx net saying an IFE was inbound...no big deal happens almost every day. The type acft was an SR-71...not an every day occurrence. As the time for the ife acft to land pretty all maintenance on the flightline ground to a halt. Folks lined up on the red line by the taxiway to watch this guy land. Prior to landing we had to tow every jet out of the phase inspection hangar to make room for it. The landing was uneventful, as the jet taxied up to the hangar the pilot chopped the throttles as it entered the hangar, doors quickly closed and SP's quickly surround the hangar. A few hours later the aircrew were there allowing us to walk around the airplane(behind a red rope of course). They answered what questions they could and the most common were how high and how fast. The how high was "above 70,000 feet and how fast was "we cruise effortlessly mach 3". Turns out the had a hyd failure shortly after T/O and air refueling over California/AZ border. Declared emergency over NM, descend and slow and turn over TX and land at Nellis AFB in NV. Several days later the jet was fixed and even though it was a weekend, everyone went to the flightline to watch the launch. They started up and taxied to the end of the runway to do the engine runups one at a time. The takeoff was awesome, loud smokey, just awesome. The acft did a closed pattern around the base so we could see it in flight. The next pass was quite possibly one of the most amazing things Ive see a jet do. They lit the burners prior to passing over the runway, at about mid field they pulled into a climb that could only be rivaled by a rocket. This thing went almost straight up, accelerating until it was a tiny black speck in the sky. We would talk about it in the expediter truck for the following week, was just crazy.
