Posted on 07/09/2019
Robert Jordan Gilliland, the first man to fly the world's fastest manned aircraft ever built, the SR-71 Blackbird, died on July 4, 2019 in Rancho Mirage, California at 93 years of age.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 1, 1926, he made aviation his life, culminating during the Cold War as the Chief Test Pilot for the SR-71 Blackbird at Lockheed's "SkunkWorks," the ultra-secret aviation inter-sanctum in Burbank, California. The government, conscious that the U-2 was vulnerable to being shot down, charged Lockheed with the development— on an urgent, 24/7 basis— of a manned aircraft that could fly faster and higher than anything ever created. The SR-71 was America's answer. It's performance, even now, over 50 years later, has never been equaled. Bob led its test program and flew it on its maiden flight on December 22, 1964.
Beginning his schooling in Memphis and graduating from Webb School at Bell Buckle, Tennessee the same week in 1944 as the D-Day Landing in Normandy, he enlisted for the Navy but was soon appointed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Upon graduation in 1949, he opted to take his commission in the newly separate United States Air Force, where he trained in America's early jets before being assigned to a veteran front line fighter squadron in a then very tense Germany.
While stationed there as only a Second Lieutenant, he won his Air Wing's Aerial Gunnery, or "Top Gun," competition, in Tripoli, which Second Lieutenants were not supposed to win. Then during the Korean War, he was reassigned to Taegu Air Base where he flew F-84's in nearly daily combat in the air war over North Korea.
After returning to America, he received a "plum assignment" to the USAF Research and Development group at Eglin Air Force base in Florida. Finding little excitement in the peacetime Air Force, he left the service to assist in his father's business. Upon his dad's death, he returned to his first love, aviation, as a part of Lockheed's F-104 Starfighter test flight group in Palmdale, California. In early 1962, while working as Lockheed's chief pilot for European production of the F-104 in Turin, Italy, he was recalled to Burbank by the chief of the Skunk Works, the legendary Kelly Johnson. Johnson asked him to lead the test flight program for the highly secret "article"— the future Blackbird.
Bob flight tested the "article" known as the A-12 Blackbird at Area 51, a secret facility in the Nevada desert, for later delivery and use by the CIA. Bob later flight tested the interceptor version of the Blackbird, the YF-12A. Subsequently, he was hand-picked by Kelly Johnson to fly the final and newest version of the Blackbird— the SR-71. Under the call sign "Dutch 51," Bob successfully piloted the SR-71 Blackbird on its maiden flight on December 22, 1962. His work there continued intensively through multiple modifications until the envelope of the plane was fully developed and a critical supply could be delivered to the USAF. During these development years, he accumulated more Mach 3 plus experimental flight test time than any other pilot in the world.
Even after President Johnson acknowledged that the Blackbird existed, little was released beyond what air controllers could see on their radar screens: that it was the fastest and highest flying aircraft ever created, rocketing at over three times the speed of sound on the edge of space at 80,000 feet. Long before Bob was allowed to comment on "what he did at work," his colleagues at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots recognized the magnitude of his achievements and honored him as the top test pilot/astronaut, the year after the Mercury 7 astronauts received the award.
The SR-71 changed the calculus of the Cold War. Although over the course of the development program several aircraft were lost, no Blackbird was ever shot down despite the thousands of surface-to-air missiles fired at it by hostile countries.
Since its declassification, Bob has been honored with virtually every significant aviation award in the western world, including the top award— enshrinement into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. His story as a test pilot was recently featured in an hour-long documentary on the Smithsonian Channel. Bob's life is the subject of a full-length book scheduled to release later next year with the with the foreword written by Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger ("Miracle on the Hudson").
He leaves two children, a daughter, Anne Gilliland Hayes, M.D. (spouse Richard Hayes, M.D.) of Reno, Nevada, and a son, Robert J. Gilliland, Jr., a lawyer (spouse Kim Gilliland) in Palm Desert, California, and five grandchildren: Laura Hayes, Nathaniel Hayes, Stuart Hayes, Scott Gilliland, and Heather Gilliland. He also leaves a brother, James S. Gilliland (spouse Lucia Gilliland), of Memphis.
A Celebration of Life will be held to honor Bob's extraordinary life with his family and friends in the future. Donations in Bob's name should be directed to either the Palm Springs Air Museum, March Field Air Museum, or to one of the U.S. military veteran organizations. Beyond that, Bob requested that his ashes be sprinkled in his favorite trout stream.
Published in The Desert Sun from July 9 to July 14, 2019