SR-71

These are absolutely the most amazing aircraft I've ever seen take off, and are quite interesting up close. I was stationed at Beale AFB in the late 1980's, and spent a lot of hours watching these things take off and land... The cockpits are very tight, and I was amazed at how they where what I thought of as very low tech, lots of gages and such. They would roll them in and out of the hangers depending on what satellite was passing over, and they had movable awnings to obscure the cockpits if they had them out with the canopies up... These things would take off at an amazing speed and arch almost vertical before clearing the runway, and be gone in a minute or less.

They're doubly (triply?) amazing when you consider that Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works boys flew the first A-11 in 1962!

I had the privilege of hearing a former SR-71 pilot lecture. He spoke of a time flying over the former Soviet Union faster and higher than any MiG could ever hope to match; however, that didn't stop them from trying. He said he could see the MiGs circling far below, trying to gain altitude, and then they would "pop-up" and try to arc a missile up in the direction of the Blackbird. Always too little, too late, I'm happy to say.