Remembering the first man to fly the world’s fastest aircraft
Legendary test pilot Robert J. “Bob” Gilliland passed away Thursday in Rancho Mirage, the March Air Museum announced. He was 93 years old.
On December 22, 1964, at the Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale, CA, Gilliland became the first man in history to fly the iconic SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. According to NASA, “the Blackbirds remain the world’s fastest and highest-flying production aircraft ever built.”
“When you consider that the cruising altitude of the SR-71 Blackbird was 85,000 feet, which is equivalent to about 2,200 miles per hour, it’s so fast and goes so high, that when any hostile country would shoot a surface to air missile, they would have to have a direct hit, it would like be like trying to hit a bullet out of the sky with a bullet,” explained Robert Gilliland, Jr., Gilliland’s son, a Palm Desert attorney.
“Few were present for its top secret first flight, but all who were knew the importance of its success in maintaining America’s supremacy in manned aviation amid the tensions of the Cold War world,” reads a post on the flight on Gilliland’s website.
According to the National Aviation Hall of Fame, Gilliland test flew every Blackbird off the production line before it was turned over to the Air Force. He is credited for his vital role “developing the world’s most advanced aircraft to win the battle for secrets that was so important in winning the Cold War.”
The Blackbird was used in more than 3,500 missions all over the world until it was retired in 1999.
Gilliland, Jr. recalled stories of watching the first time his father flew a Blackbird. He was two at the time, and his sister was four. “It was so loud that we both started crying,” he laughed.
Gilliland would end up accumulating more experimental hours above Mach 2 and Mach 3 than any other test pilot in history.
Gilliland, a Naval Academy gra
duate and Korean War veteran, moved to Rancho Mirage after his retirement.
In 2011, he was invited to join four others as part of a Legends of Aerospace tour.
“It was Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, Cernan, last man on the moon, Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 fame with Tom Hanks and the movie, and also General Steve Ritchie, who shot down five MiGs in Vietnam and he’s our last ace, and then my father,” said Gilliland, Jr. proudly.
On October 2017, Gilliland was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Forth Worth, Texas.
He has also been inducted into the California Aviation Hall of Fame and the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame.
His memoir is expected to be released in April, and has an introduction written by Chesley “Sullen” Sullenberger. The former Air Force pilot successfully landed a commercial airplane full of passengers on the Hudson River after the aircraft lost both engines to a bird strike.
A documentary about Gilliland’s experience flying the Blackbird is detailed in a documentary narrated by Gary Since also expected to be released in 2020.
Gilliland is survived by his son and daughter.
Those who met Gilliland described him as “the smartest, nicest man I have ever known; a classy guy and true friend.”
