Russians mistaking SR-71s for Aliens?

General Questions
#1

…I was just wondering if someone could help confirm or disprove an old story I remember hearing about the SR-71 spy plane. Or at least tell me that I’m not the only one who ever heard it.

Anyway, supposedly, when the SR-71 first went into service making overflights over the Soviet Union, the Russians had no idea such a plane existed, or even that it could exist, much less that it belonged to “us.”

According to the story, the Russians were so confounded by an aircraft traveling at Mach 3+ at 100,000+ feet…that they were starting to consider the possibility that they were tracking alien spacecraft. (!)

The story sounds a little “too good” (and too humorous) to be true, so I pretty much doubt it myself. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t just imagine it myself, in a fever dream or something. :wink:

#2

It sounds like a UL. It’s more probable that they’d track a real alien spacecraft thinking it was an American craft they’d somehow been totally unaware of. :wink:

#3

According to this page, the SR-71 program was announced to the public in 1964, and first operational plane delivered in 1966. Even if prototypes were used for secret missions, by 1961 NASA was flying the X-15 at Mach 4 above 200,000 ft. I don’t think the Soviets would have been very surprised at the SR-71.

#4

You know that a UFO is merely an unidentified flying object. If someone launched a rock across the field of view of a radar set, then it qualifies as a UFO. Hence if the Russians saw a blip on their radar screen flying the SR-71, for the first time, they would classify it as a UFO immediately. We probably ought to be a little more careful as to what defines a UFO, and what defines and alien spacecraft.

With all of the flying aircraft that americans have invented, I would be hard-pressed to distinguish between an actual aircraft constructed and driven by human beings, or an alien space-craft piloted by beings from another world and constructed many light years away.

Has anyone ever looked at the similarities between an F-5 training aircraft and an x-wing fighter from star wars? There are more similarities than you might think.

I have run off on a tangent for too long now. For all of the things that the Russians may have been, they are not that foolish. Anyone who saw the SR-71 on a radar screen knew it was an aircraft and not an alien spacecraft. If nothing else, a de-orbiting alien space-craft would be going alot faster than mach 3-4.