Don Campbell was the SR-71 Superintendent at both Kadena Air Base in Okinawa and later at Beale Air Force Base in California in the 1970s. He spoke with senior associate editor Diane Tedeschi in July.

The Lockheed SR-71 has been widely hyped for its abilities ... A detachment of six pilots and three A-12s based at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa flew 29 missions over East Asia.

On one, we were scheduled to pass a point off the coast of Petropavlovsk at the same time as another “Habu” [SR-71] was passing the same point in the opposite direction, heading from Kadena to ...

The SR-71 Blackbird’s high-speed missions were fraught with challenges, including catastrophic engine failures at Mach 3.