Texan Reacts to When the Swedish Air Force Viggen Saved the SR-71 Blackbird
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
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Reaction to the Off Track Places video on the incident where a SR-71 Blackbird of the US blows an engine midflight, and is then escorted through a hostile situation by Swedish Viggen's. Sweden, a non NATO country, was really under no real obligation to give this escort, and were responding to a distress call.
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Sorry for the mispronunciation, the vowels of Swedish words completely baffle me, and as soon as I think I’ve got them down I’ll completely mispronounce something. Apologies, I’m trying to learn. And while you’re here you should subscribe to the channel. Think about the children.
As long as we understand what you mean, it´s good enough!
Haha dont worry. it's half the fun 🤣
Don't worry, charming!😆
Hey i don't really mind! I mean our languages are quite different afterall.
C´mon dude, you´re doing great 👍If anything, it´s kind of funny to hear.
During the cold war era i.e. 1946-91 the Swedish air force lost more than 500 pilots in all kinds of accidents mostly due to the fact that they always trained in a war like scenario flying extremely low over land and sea to evade any radar. The different saab fighters they used at the time were at the cutting edge of what was technically possible but not always sorted out before put in active use. This horrendous figure was not acknowledged until much later and put to the general publics attention. We owe these brave men our gratitude and respect.
Yea, the swedish airforce were realy training hard, and because of how classified everything was the death toll was kept a closely guarded secret.
Another thing that was hadled pretty bad was the casualties of the "catalina affair", the surviving families never got to know exactly what happened to their loved ones. They essentialy were stonewalled for decades.
Well.. it was 500 crew, not all was pilots .. I would say most of then was not
@@matsv201 "Death toll during the Cold War
Edit
In the Cold War era, more than 600 Swedish fighter pilots were killed in crashes during peacetime exercises and training in the 1945-1991 period.[10] In the 1950s-60s era the flight training curriculum was deficient and the training regimes were too risky and some aircraft types had design flaws. In the 1950s, about 21 pilots were killed annually.[11]
In the 1960s the average number of killed were 13 per year, which meant Sweden had sixfold mortality rate per 100,000 flight hours compared to the United States. In the 1960s flight safety starts to become a consideration, not due to the death toll but because the aircraft were getting increasingly expensive.[11] In October 1960, a Lansen fighter crashed into a farmhouse and killed 7 people.[3] In the 1970s the death toll was reduced to 6-7 per year. In subsequent years, it continued to fall and from 1996 onwards, no fatal accident has been recorded.[11"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Air_Force
@@jizburg If you look at the source of that claim in the wiki article, its not quite what it says. On top of that, the source is a tabloid.
All the number i seen previously claimed that the death count was total crew, included ground crew. Actually a majority of it would have been ground crew.
If you think about it its not really possible that 600 pilots wold have died, That would imply that more than 600 planes was lossed, and that was not really the case.
There was a case with live ammo cockof during a fire during landing that killed 3 ground crew for example, to my understanding those would be included in the 600 number
@@matsv201 all right then. In any case lots of pilots died. And there are still places were traces can be found of the crashes.
Fun fact: The qr Viggens (fully loaded) came from F10 Ängelholm, i.e. the Ghost squadron. That airbase is closed and today it houses the Koenigsegg factory. The Koenigsegg cars are all marked with a Ghost sq logo today and their fanbase calls themselves "The Ghost Squadron".
Some other fun and interesting facts: Blackbird is the national bird of Sweden since 1962. Also the stealth Blackbird SR-71 was designed by Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson, son of the Swedish couple Peter Jönsson och Kristina Andersson who emigrated to the US from the Southern Swedish city Malmö.
Sweden had nearly 600 fighters at that time and did engage soviets during the Cold war with lethal outcomes on both sides in the air. The Viggens stayed so close that you couldnt hit the Blackbird without engaging the Swedish Aircraft/hitting them aswell,acting as human shields.
And with the flight alert on all QR likely having been lowered from 5 min to 0, that would not have ended well for the soviets who chose not to engage
Similar to the nuclear warhead armed whiskey class submarine that ran aground in Swedish territory near a large naval base.
U-137 "whiskey on the rocks"
Their entire fleet mobilized and when Swedish coastal artillery went from locking their targets to going into fire mode,the Russian/Soviet fleet registered and simply stopped. Their bluff called because at the time,Sweden had the military power to not bluff. At the time we had one of if not the the largest/most powerful coastal Defense in the world.
Thanks for the video :) i wonder and look forward to watching what nation or topic you deep dive sometime in the future!
If you were watching conflicts at the time of the Cold War, they just screamed that air power could be a more than viable defense for a nation, even against an enemy that had sufficient ground forces. I think air power and guerrilla style fighting sort of defined the era, and Sweden took and implemented both of them.
And I’m sure the soviet submarine was just lost right? They would never pass into someone else’s waters.🤣 I appreciate the info and support.
Yeah at that time we had worlds 4th biggest air force. Such brave men!
@@Mouseend We still have one of the biggest and most advanced arforce in the world. Over 100 gripens.
@@kristianjonsson1316 Nah we only have around 90 gripens, might be one of the biggest. Thou under the cold war be had over 10x that.
@@Mouseend we have 96 of them in the Swedish army stationed in Sweden and rent out another 30 so in total we have about120-130 and there is an order in for a more planes.
I know Col. Eldh and Col. Bladh quite well. They both graduated from the Air Force Academy a year ahead of me. Col. Eldh was one of the pilots who were involved in the successful intercepts of the SR-71 with the JA 37 Viggen fighters. They managed to aquire a radar lock on the SR-71, despite its crew using ECM attempting to break the lock. Post mission evaluation of the recorded onboard data from the Viggen showed that the intercept was within the parameters for a successful Sky Flash missile shot. There is a video on CZcams with Capt. (Ret.) Engback where he tells about his experiences as a fighter pilot during the seventies and eighties. He is one of the pilots who did the SR-71 intercepts. It's in Swedish, but it has quite good English subtitles. czcams.com/video/pQgQj-E2Hcs/video.html
Very nice gesture of the US Airforce to give the Swedish pilots these medals. All respect.
(Ofcourse we help a friend in trouble. And as an appendix to this: Sweden has never been neutral, but free of official alliancies. We did for decades some very advanced surveillance in the Baltic region for the benefit of NATO. Radar and such is perhaps the strength of Swedish ingenuity.)
What I find interesting is that the Soviets have no issues gunning down a US aircraft, a military superpower. But they hesitate to engage 2 or 4 planes from neutral Sweden.
With 20 fighters, the Soviets would have won the fight, no question about it. But... I think this story shows the level of respect the Soviets had for the Swedish airforce. They knew that the Viggen was a very capable fighter and they knew that the swedish pilots meant business. So they hesitated.
Like I mentioned on Discord, in 1985 a recon-Viggen ended up being chased by a Soviet fighter and after a couple of maneuvers, the Viggen made a high G turn at 100m above the ocean which forced the Soviet pilot to lose control and crash and die. The Swedish Air commanders were upset, not because a Soviet pilot had died, but that they now knew of the Viggens and Swedish pilots capabilities.
And that was an older recon version designed in the 70s. These interceptors were JA37s, Jakt Attack, Fighter/Hunter and Striker/CAS Viggens, designed in 1980 with a larger engine and a built in autocannon (other versions used pods for their guns). I'm pretty sure the Soviets had a healthy respect for these aircraft.
If you have tech above and beyond your enemy, the last thing you want is for them to know the capabilities. Apparently there are still protocols on how the F-22’s can be flown in international war games or training sessions, and the reason isn’t because the US is worried britain or Sweden or whoever is in the game is going to find out the F-22 full capabilities, it’s because they don’t want it to become public and a China or Russia then know. So yeah, I can imagine there was a bit of frustration on the Swedish side if they’re trying to keep Viggen capabilities under wraps until an actual conflict breaks out.
This is why the argument of the US sighted “UAP’s” being Russian or Chinese tech seems so bizarre to me. US pilots are marveling at the movements of these things, and they’re Chinese or Russian aircraft that they’re just trying out around Us aircraft? No way. If they had those capabilities I feel like the last thing they would want is to fly anywhere near a US aircraft. Now I don’t particularly buy into the UFO argument, but I definitely don’t think it’s China or Russia showing off their stuff.
@@rayceofhistory I think the main reason the Soviets didn't attack the Viggens (aka Sweden) was the absolute political mayhem it would've created for them.
It could potentially have turned the cold war into a hot one on a large scale.
Simply not worth it for some _possible_ technical intel.
Actually the JA 37 was designed in the late 70's and was in production in 80-81. I know that since I was doing practice at SAAB in 1981 and was working in the productionline of the JA37's.
And the incident you mentions happened quite often. My uncle, who was a fighterpilot in the Swedish Air Force in the late 60's and early 70's, have told me that it was called "dipp the russian". And it happened several times a year. Sometimes (often) the russian fighters became submarines.
That's really interesting
With 2 viggens against 20 the Soviets would probably win, but after heavy losses.
4 Viggen JA37 against 20 mig fighters, it had probably been losses on both sides but I am reluctant to clearly state a winner.
The Saab JA37 was the most advanced fighter jet in the of its time.
Actually, if the russians had entered our airspace we would retaliate quickly and without mercy. Sweden always have planes that are armed and ready in all our bases including ground to air defence. When I did my military service, just a couple of years after this incident (1993-1994), it was in the airforce as a radaroperator and the russians (and other nations) tested our readiness on a weekly basis.
The Viggen is also the only fighter that has got missilelock on the sr-71. And no one really knows the real top speed of the Viggen.
I read somewhere back in the days that with lit afterburner it accelerates till the fuel is gone.
@@magnuslundstedt2659 if the engine wasn't electricaly limited it would brake the mounts and go straight through the aircraft.
Chief of the Skunk Work was Kelly Johnson designer of the SR-71. A Swedish-American #7 of 9 siblings with Swedish born parents.
By the way, there's a video (Ukrainaveteranen − "Man viker inte ner sig för tyranner") with a perspective from a Swedish military guy that also been helping out in the war with extensive experience telling his story and showing some highlights from the war itself. Sweden was a big contributor of training of the Ukrainian military so when the war did break out many Swedish military experianced people went there to help out as volentares...
This might sound strange. Sweden is a country that has not been to war in 208 years. But Swedes is not to be trifled with. We might look and sound dosal and calm, but we are not. We have a great understanding of right and wrong, but if you fuck with us, you do it at your own peril. We have a calm demeanor, but under our skin is anger. I don´t say this for the right wing here in Sweden, this is the average Swede, if you try to take away our Meatballs and Ikea, hell is to pay 😜
@@ispbrotherwolf Yeah, I hate that sometimes. When I'm proud of Sweden, my country, it's sometimes seen as racism or hostility towards imigrants or something, pride of a nation has nothing to do with etnicity or groups of peaple...
About this time th U.S, was routinely running the 'Baltic Express' run, which probably this SR-71 was actually doing perhaps once a week, not sure about the interval.
Since it was a regular occurrance several times the Response Viggens was 'observing' the SR-71.
They even as training went as far as obtaining missile lock on the SR-71, but never squeezed the trigger.
There was so much shit going on/under/over the Baltic Sea during the cold war.
Some payed the ultimate price.
My deepest respect to those who served and defended the free world 👍🏻
Completely agree.
It's funny when you say served. The USA always supplies the money, hardware and the troops. We trained NATO troops, so you will always, and I mean always do what we say.
@@johnzubil2875 what does this have to do with anything he said? Chill out man.
@@johnzubil2875 Actually no , 1982 Falklands war proves your argument false , had both sides done what you said there wouldnt have been a conflict.
To pronounce "Per Olof Eldh," my guess is that it would be pronounced like "pair ole-off eld." Mind you, I don't speak a word of Swedish, but when I lived in Ireland, I had a girlfriend from the former East Germany, and she taught me lots of German.
Granted, German and Swedish aren't exactly the same, but they both share many common Nordic roots. The weirdest thing about German is that instead of being a purely Nordic language, it's a mix of Nordic and (believe it or not) Slavic roots.
Even the name of their capital, Berlin, comes from a Slavic word for "swamp," and yes, much of the downtown core of Berlin *is* built over swamp.😉
Something else interesting from the cold war, unfortunately I do not think there are yet any English sources for this.
In 1958 a few pilot flying the S29C (the Saab 29 was informally known as the flying barrel.) Were unexpecdedly ordered to move from the F11 base to the F17 base. There in a locked room they were instructed to practice low flying as well as photography of foreign land. (A slight problem is that Sweden had in 1957 agreed to not fly over soviet territory.) They were instructed to pack the essentials for one week of survival as well as their weapon and a revolver that could be kept in the cockpit. Lastly they were given the order "I want fucking good pictures, use your imagination and your peofessionalism, but make sure to come back in one piece."
Getting to the 8 planes in the hangar they noticed that the big bright blue/yellow markings had been painted over with black. And flying over the Baltic at nearly 1000km/h was different than what they were used to. The instructions for the flying barrel said that (you can go down to 20 meters over land or 10 meters over water, if the water is calm choose a safer altitude since that makes altitude hard to judge.) Either way the water was not exactly calm, one pilot said, It was a full storm and we flew so low that I gor foam from the top of the waves on my windscreen, it felt different." Arriving over one of the targets during one of these flights the pilot executed the manuvers perfectly and fired a burst of photos thinking "now they are getting their "fucking good pictures.""
Another interesting thing about this is that nothing was kept about this, when the pilots decided it was time to reveal it in 2019 or 2020 (sorry I don't remember exactly). There was basically no trace of it anywere, and not even any classified documents to de-classify. This is what we know at least but reading the books "Över gränsen med S 29 tunnan på spaning över Sovjetunionen 1958" really does make me think it is real.
i think that's one of the best pronounciations of "Viggen" i've heard from an American :) Good one!
Lots of things we don't know about, happened during that time
We as in “we”, I feel you know things “we” don’t.🥺
So proud of our swedish fighter pilots.
In 1987 I did my military service. My task was to guard two Viggen that were on standby on Gotland.
It may actually be that me and my dog Remo were guarding the planes when this incident happened.
The accent can be as different as Scottish is to Australian depending on what part of Sweden
one of the guys slurs his words, so not an accent as such. probably suffered a stroke, you also notice part of the jaw with limited mobility
@@bubach85 yes. But when he pronunsiate something in Swedish you can clearly hear that he is from one of the southernmost regions, where the dialect is very inarticulated.
Ooooh yeah. This is one of the best Swedish stories from the cold war. Woho :)
Viggen- aka Thunderbolt (in English) ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Perfect pronounciation for the "Viggen". Keep up the great videos, nice to see such a interest for my country...
Swedish fighter control was very aware of the Russian fighters being scrambled. They were being tracked from take off.
What are are talking about dude? You're Sweeeeeeden.
Fun/super cool fact is that is an Swedish descendant who built the black bird 😎
Yes, Kelly Johnson, he was awesome with Skunk Works. I’m not sure where exactly in Sweden but his parents were both from there I think.
@@rayceofhistory from Malmö if I remember correctly
I'm happy they were able to assist the blackbird, we have a lot to thank the US for the security of the free Europe after WW2 and the expansion of the soviet union.
Swedish Viggen pilots regularly achieved radar lock on the Blackbird. They developed a method to intercept the spy plane head on.
One of the main reason the Swedish air force used the Blackbird as target practice was actually to learn how to intercept another fast flying bird.. or in this case... bat. The Mig 25 Foxbat.
It's funny when the Blackbird / Viggen story pops up in the feed, a lot of people usually comments about that no plane or missile never could catch the Blackbird because of it's speed. For some reason they always miss the fact that the Viggens usually intercepted it head on and not from behind. That's a mach 5.2 passing between both of the planes...
I have even heard that it was a J 35 Draken from F 21 in Luleå that had the first ever missilelock on a SR 71. Somewhere over the northern Sweden. And sometimes in the late 60's or in the 70's. I was told this in the 80's by an officer in the Swedish Air Force that was on the base when it happened. So I have forgot what year it was. 🤪
@@tr6431 Well... the reason why the Viggens could do this is quite simple... The SR-71 had to turn in order to get back to Germany, and when doing so, they had to go down in speed and for a slight moment they were, essentially, intruding on Swedish territory. The Swedish Air Force then used this as a tactical training to try and intercept the SR-71 when their speed was, temprarily, not much more than Mach-1 because of the turn. It is a small window though, but the Viggen pilots got quite good at intercepting the SR-71 because of this.
@@tr6431as an american its prestige. We like to think that were always untouchable. Now i think we are in military tech for the most part. We have to achnowledge just how intelligent and talented swedish military engineers are.
@@michaelpelzek8882 consider how much material both countries buys from each other that is common knowledge for many in the armed forces, but not on the internet.
I worked with Christer Sjöberg, one of the Swedish JA37-pilots, in the 90:s. A very sweet and fatherly person.
Sweden put a shield of fighters around the sr71
The guy with the more distinct accent has a tint of finnish in it. I think he is a part och the finnishtalking minority here in Sweden.
Did you just call it 37 VEGAN....!? :P hahahahahah. I know iths not easy to pronounc swedish but I was laughing for several minuts. Lets feed it some carrots ;) Love you chanel :)
Viggen == Lightning. The top fighter jet SAAB could produce at the time.
Viggen translates to lightning bolt rather than lightning.
it was declassified mush earlier in Sweden, because it has been common knowledge for years.
From Submarines spionage to dolphins with necklaces and some kind of receiver. Painting sellers who only visited homeguard and military leaders, anyway, sweden seems to be very interesting to some during the cold war.
It was in the book, Skunk Works
When US leased the sub for 2 years, they did not got access to the whole sub. Just want to clear that out. Our secrets in the sub is still just ours. Cheers m8
Per-Olof Eldh
Pronounsed like: "Pair Oh-lof Eh-ld"
Damned the cold war went close to "hot" a few too many times...
peace for all
It was decades Viggen flew.
One did they made to a playground
for kids. The machine guns still on
But they took away sharp corners.
Swedes used to train against the sr71 and try to ”catch” it with radar lock. And did so a few times. In a friendy manner.
F-13 Bråvalla, a now semi closed airbase in Sweden on the east coast.
At that time not all swedes spoke realy good english and in some cases the lokal dialect even made it worse. If you ever heard Bjorn Borg speak english you understand, hes got a real swedish accent
You shuld react to the two part documentery, the swedish bomb, about the swedish nuklear program.
The relationship behind sweden and the U S has always been friendly. Even though Sweden claims "we are nutreal". There has always been very clear that we have an common enemy. Russia. Our history with Russia as an enemy goes way back in our history. All te way back to the 30 year war in the 1700. And forwards every time we been in conflict with them.
SWEDEN just pulled their "special" forces from Mali.... we are comming home
A viggen was able to simulate climbing as steep as it could till it would stall, there it had about a 2 sec time pereod where it could lauch a missile and bring down the blackbird, this shows how hard it was to bring down, lucky that it never actually happend. (it could do this due to its MASSIVE engine)
Another thing the J37 Viggen engine is a modified Pratt & Whitney JT8D with an afterburner installed. It's the same engine that powered the Boeing 727. Granted the Viggen engine went under the name RM8A
They never mentioned if all those Soviet aircrafts made it close or if they were spotted on the Swedish radar but there intent was pretty clear. They pretty mutch tried to scare the Swedish planes out of the area. Its worth noting that Soviet and Sweden was not in a major conflict at the time so even if multiple planes would have gathered close by its very unlikly that they would have shot down the SR-71 with Swedish planes so close to it. If they were willing to do that then the single Soviet aircraft that got close could have done that on its own. Its been confirmed that Soviet aircrafts tended to push the limit as far as the airspace border to the point that 1 Soviet aircraft that was caught actually got shot down over Swedish airspace when trying to get out. This is ofc very unconfirmed information but Soviets definatly went over the border and that is confirmed so it wouldent be out of the question that 1 eventually got caught and becouse it happened in Swedish airspace the Soviets buried it to save face.
They would've been spotted on our radar long before they went out over water.
at that time .. the viggen was a lot or among the best,. fighter jets ..
Lars-Erik Bladh is probably from Northern Sweden
The great thing about both viggen and Jas, is that it is made to be superior to Russian fighters, so Russians will never win over Swedish jets.
14:26 that's not a distinct swedish accent different from the others - I think he's just lisping slightly. Most or all of them speak in a middle-swedish dialect (around Stockholm region)
to pronounce the colonels first name name you would say "Pear oh loaf" 7:00
Thank you. I was actually really wanting to know how it was said, so I’m glad somebody gave me the pronunciation.
The one you thought had a different accent I think might have had a stroke that have effected his speach.
Dang, I wish I wouldn’t have pointed it out if that’s the case.
@@rayceofhistory Well he can speak a foreign language pretty well so if he had a stroke he has recovered pretty well. You don't need to bring up the subect in case you meet him.
Check out the Swedish airforce!
Viggen means thunderbolt
saved or flying next to SR71 with engien problem...
Im seen this video befor and its nice.
But I think its a bit exaggerated?
An SR71 lose one engin above the Baltic see outside of Sovjet Union, they turn to nearest friendly country, that is Sweden and they made distress calls to Sweden.
Swedish airforce responds by sending fighter jets to escort the wonded airplane to swedish airspace.. probably mostly for an emergency landing, if it was necesery?
Soo, two fighterjets fends of 20 fighterjets.. I dont think so, its probably more like, they (Sovjets) would love to fly circels around a SR71, for collecting radar and electronic signatures of that airplane.. and USA dont wont any hostile nation even come near!
And it could happen that some triggerhappy sovjet pilot wanted to have a SR71 on his scorelist.. but this is a low probability.
However the SR71 landed safely on a airbase in Germany.
And the medals is a commemoration of this, and about thanks frome US to sweden for friendship.
It comes handy when US want to tighten friendship whit us.
Remember, the two fighter was unarmed as they were on a training mission. The russians were spotted on our radar long before the went out over the water and we had at that point scrambled several armed fighters aswell as our ground to air defence. The russians knew they wouldn't stand a chance and turned back home.
@@FreddeSkywalker Exactly, they were being tracked as soon as they took of from their Airbase. While there were only four Viggens offically, there were as you said plenty more ready to rumble.
Yes the Soviets… what else could it be? 🤗
the 3rd sweidsh guy sounds diffrent for 2 reasons. teeth issues and just being worse at english than the others, he just have a more pronounced swedish accent.
Pronounce Viggen in the same way as you pronounce big.
What's there to react to dude? You looking for subs?
@rayceofHistory We love the US, and we owe them a great debt for helping rebuild my home country of Norway after the second world war. These days we are very concerned that forces inside of our most loved big brother will turn the country into a Russian-style Oligarchy run by hypocrites that claim moral superiority through religion, lies, and terror. Please restore our faith :)
He pronance in swedish
Sweden don’t need US support. We make our own planes, ships, subs. We even export things like that to some NATO countries (UK for exemple). SAAB makes the planes, Volvo makes the engines, Ericsson makes the radars and avionics. Everything (almost) in a SAAB JAS 39 is Swedish made. Sweden has everything ”in house”. Get your facts straight!
🇺🇸🇸🇪
The sr-71 leaked fuel when on the ground it needed to fly to close of the the gaps and got refueled in air , as the heat of the aircraft would close all the gaps and stopped the leaking .
hello from sweden! yes i live near f10 base ängelholm and have good friend working there with the sport cars..
The retrackted the landing gear lobg after positive rate of climb. How come?
And they flew at FL 80, thats 80.000 feet @ mach 3..
A boeing 747 for example has a max altitude of about 45.000 feet.
The black vird was flying high..