The SR-71 Blackbird Disaster at 78,000 Feet: How One Pilot Fell from Space and Survived
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, when an SR-71 Blackbird disintegrated midair at over 2,000 mph, pilot Bill Weaver was ejected at a speed and altitude few humans have ever survived. He thought he was dead, but what followed became one of the most remarkable survival stories in aviation history.
Our regular contributor, The History Guy, shares this incredible story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:17.3 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:20.2 | And our next story comes from a man whose YouTube videos are followed by hundreds of thousands of viewers of all ages, and he's simply known as the history guy. |
| 0:29.7 | In 1966, an SR-71 Blackbird disintegrated at 78,000 feet. |
| 0:36.5 | The pilot's first thought was, quote, no one could live through what just |
| 0:40.0 | happened, therefore, I must be dead. Here's the history guy with the story of the SR-71 |
| 0:47.2 | Blackbird disintegrating at altitudes unknown to most men. There's an old airplane story that's called the LA speed check. |
| 0:55.0 | Go something like this. |
| 0:57.0 | A pilot of a single-engine Cessna calls the Los Angeles Air Route Control Center and asks for a speed check. |
| 1:02.0 | Wants to know how fast he's going and the center tells him he's going about 90 knots. |
| 1:07.0 | Immediately thereafter, another pilot, someone didn't say a twin-engine beachcraft, trying to make |
| 1:11.7 | fun of how slow the Cessna goes, asked for a speed check, and the center tells him that |
| 1:15.9 | he's going around 121 knots, but almost immediately thereafter another voice chimes in. |
| 1:20.9 | And this is a Navy pilot who's flying in an F-18 fighter jet. |
| 1:25.0 | And he doesn't really need to know how fast he's going. |
| 1:27.3 | He's got an air speed indicator inside his cockpit. And he doesn't really need to know how fast he's going. He's got an airspeed |
| 1:28.2 | indicator inside his cockpit. He's just trying to prove to everybody out there on the frequency |
| 1:32.8 | that he's flying the biggest, baddest, fastest jet in the world and show all those |
| 1:36.8 | Cessna and beachcraft owners how fast our plane really flies. And the LA Center radios back that he's |
| 1:42.6 | going an impressive 620 knots. |
| 1:45.0 | And you think that would be enough to win this little contest. |
... |
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