The World's Fastest Plane

The Ultimate Spy Plane - Smithsonian Magazine

Inspired by it's appearance the Transformers 2 movie, Smithsonian writes about the fastest airplane, Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird.

I asked Shul, a former Air Force fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran who has written two books about the Blackbird—one recounting his reconnaissance for a dramatic raid on Libya in 1986—what it was like to fly such a phenomenal craft. "It wasn't like any other airplane," he told me. "It was terrifying, exciting, intense and humbling every time you flew. Each mission was designed to fly at a certain speed; you always knew the airplane had more. It was like driving to work in a double-A fuel dragster."