How Skunk Works Traced The SR-71’s Cracking Titanium To Burbank’s Summer Tap Water

The SR-71 Blackbird was designed to survive an environment that would destroy most conventional aircraft. Its titanium structure had to withstand the aerodynamic heating generated by sustained Mach 3 flight, but one of the most perplexing structural problems encountered during the Blackbird program originated not in the Soviet Union, nor was it an engine failure or an exotic new weapon that hit the aircraft: it was in a simple tap water supply serving Lockheed‘s factory in Burbank, California. Kelly Johnson’s own historical account and later CIA material document the unusual episode.