ohOn September 1, 1974, two men made the fastest trip ever between New York and London. Traveling three times the speed of sound and taking less than two hours, this incredible journey set a record that still stands 50 years later.

Even the mighty Concorde, which set the record for the fastest commercial transatlantic flight in 1996, was almost an hour late.

The US Air Force Lockheed Blackbird SR-71 jet, with a crew of two – pilot James Sullivan and reconnaissance systems operator Noel Widdifield – completed the flight between the two cities in one hour, 54 minutes and 56 seconds, before landing in triumph to a great welcome at the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire.

Widdifield, now 83, divides his time between Virginia and Florida in the US. “In some ways it was a normal flight for us,” he said, reflecting on that momentous day. “There was nothing unusual about the flight or the way we flew the plane, but in July 1974 we were told we were going to attempt the world record for flying from New York to London, which had previously been held by a Royal Navy pilot. There was a lot of media interest.”

It wasn’t just the Air Force’s prestige that was at stake. America was facing an international public relations crisis. Just three weeks earlier, disgraced President Richard Nixon had resigned after the Watergate scandal and Gerald Ford had taken over the White House. The country was still reeling from its disastrous involvement in the Vietnam War. The country needed something to cheer about.

There were other schemes as well. Widdifield observer“Although I didn’t know anything about it at the time, behind the scenes, negotiations were taking place between the US and the UK to deploy Blackbird SR-71s on British soil.

“There were fears in the UK that this move might cause a lot of backlash, especially in the Middle East. But after we broke the record and flew into the Farnborough Air Show, that seemed to be the clincher and the UK allowed the SR-71 to be parked.”

Widdifield was 33 when he made this historic flight. He originally wanted to be a train driver, but after seeing U.S. Air Force jets flying low over his house at age 12, he decided to become a pilot.

After training and flying B-52 bombers, Widdifield served in the Blackbird SR-71 program at Beale Air Force Base in California from 1971 to 1975, after which he retired from flying to serve in the U.S. space program until 1982.

Piloting a Blackbird was akin to being an astronaut: The crew wore space suits and flew at an altitude of 80,000 feet (most commercial airliners top out at 42,000 feet). “It was pitch black up there,” Widdifield said. “You could see the stars and, depending on the time of day, the moon or the sun.”

Their plane took off from Beale and had to fly along the coast to New York to avoid creating a sonic boom over populated areas and causing significant damage to buildings. High above the city was an invisible “gate” where the journey would begin. Reaching a speed of Mach 3.2 (three times the speed of sound, about 2,455 miles per hour), the Blackbird crashed through the gate and the record attempt began.

The plane had to refuel twice: once upon takeoff, once when it docked with a tanker over California to top off, and once en route to near Greenland.

In one incident that looked terrifying from the outside but was handled with cool by the crew, the Blackbird suddenly began to “yaw,” or move quickly from side to side, after losing thrust.

Because the Blackbird took in air from the front to provide thrust for the engines, the air intake mechanisms would often become misaligned, causing a momentary, significant loss of power in one engine.

“The automatic restart system was activated, the misaligned cones were corrected and the engine was restarted,” Widdifield said. “We had no real concerns other than what this would do to our record speed run.”

The plane then flew through the London “gates” without incident, and the Blackbird landed at Farnborough, where a large crowd waited and a press conference was held, during which Widdifield and Sullivan were on the phone with the new president. “It got huge international coverage for the next year,” says Widdifield, who has six scrapbooks of the clippings. “But what Jim and I always tried to emphasize was that although it was just the two of us who got the glory, there was a huge team behind every flight.

“When you take into account the support staff, the administrative staff and all the people who work to get us flying, that’s 1,000 people. They deserve as much credit as Jim and I do.”

Widdifield, who has been married to his wife Ann for 63 years and has two children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, is mourning the loss of his co-pilot, Jim Sullivan, who died in 2021, and the Blackbird SR-71 itself, which was officially retired in 1998.

He said: “Jim and I kept in touch but then lived far apart so we only saw each other a few times at SR-71 reunions.

“Obviously I was sad when the SR-71 program ended. So am I surprised that no one has beaten our record in 50 years? No, because no aircraft has been built since then that could break that record.”