This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

And some of our favorite stories are about the men and women who serve our nation in uniform.

Throughout its nearly 24-year career, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane remained the

world's fastest and highest flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet, it could serve a 100,000

square miles of Earth's surface in a mere hour.

SR 71 pilot Brian Shul recalls in his book, Flood Driver, flying the world's fastest jet.

There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our

fellow aviators of this fact. Here's Major Shul with his legendary story known today as the LA

speed check. It's called the LA Speed Story. And it was just a story about one day it was really

cool being an SR-71 pilot. Walter and I were was just story about one day it was really cool being be an

SR 71 pilot. Walter and I were doing a training mission around the United States

where you just were building up hours in time and we take off at a Beal hit a

tanker in Idaho rip on up to Montana zip across Denver hang a right turn

Albuquerque out over Los Angeles up, up to Seattle, back into Sacramento,

two hours, 21 minutes.

And you just do that for, and you do it backwards and you hit a tank or two.

It was just to gain crew coordination, build your hours.

We're on our last training mission.

We're over Tucson.

I can see downtown LA from Tucson. We're at 89,000 feet. I can see the whole

western United States bathed in a warm October fall glow. I can see the chain of Rocky Mountains

from Canada to New Mexico. I could just see the most beautiful picture laid at my feet in the air

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