SR-71 disintegrates around pilot during flight test

Via a comment on my post about the SR-71.

It's the story of an SR-71 test pilot surviving the plane disintegrating around him. I vaguely remember a high school teacher telling me about this story -- he was a retired Air Force aviator, so he had a lot of such stories.

But from a first-person perspective... wow.

Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. I learned later the time from event onset to catastrophic departure from controlled flight was only 2-3 sec. Still trying to communicate with Jim, I blacked out, succumbing to extremely high g-forces. The SR-71 then literally disintegrated around us.

From that point, I was just along for the ride.

I highly recommend reading the entire thing. I read it twice.

Oh, and the test pilot, Bill Weaver, ended up landing in New Mexico.