Shipmate James Treadway, in his Hard Charger! The Story of the USS Biddle (DLG-34), recalls a remote encounter with a Blackbird during the 1969 deployment:
“One day (or was it night?), while checking one of the display consoles in CIC, I noticed a single radar ‘blip’ just north of the DMZ. On the next sweep, about 10 seconds later, the unknown and untagged target had move almost 10 miles north towards Hanoi. At first, I thought it was false echoes or multiple targets popping up in different places. It was quickly evident that this was not a normal target — it covered the distance from the DMZ to Hanoi at 3,000 miles an hour.
“We had heard there was a top-secret plane operating in the area, but we didn’t know what it was called. Even the super-fast RC-5A Vigilante was not that fast. Later we learned it was a SR-71 Blackbird operating out of Kadena air base in Okinawa. When the still unknown blip reached the border with China, it just kept on going, knowing nothing could touch it at 80,000 feet.
“SR-71s were tracked several times by Biddle‘s radar. Bob Gerity recalled a similar encounter with a Blackbird: ‘The SR-71 incident occurred on my watch and was first sighted by RD2 Mullen, I believe, coming down from China. We put an “unknown” symbol on him and AW (Alpha Whiskey was Task Force 77) quickly told us to drop that track.'”
The pre-deployment briefing that CAPT Olsen and I attended had informed us that the SR-71 (then less than five years in operation) would be operating in our area and might occasionally appear on our radar. One day (or night?) operating online, a radarman called me over to show me a contact.
When a radarman assigned a contact in NTDS, the system would determine course and speed and place a “lead” symbol showing relative speed. On almost all air contacts, the lead might be one-quarter inch to one-half inch long. This contact had a lead of maybe three inches. The question to me was, “Whiskey tango foxtrot?!,” but translated. I figured it was a SR-71 and told the radarman that it had to be a system malfunction or something. “No worries.”