From Newsgroup: rec.aviation.piloting
He was near death after his plane was shot down in the Vietnam War but survived to fly the worldAs fastest and highest-altitude jet.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/06/03/multimedia/30Shul2- lhwc/30Shul2-lhwc-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
Brian Shul in the mid-1980s in front of an SR-71, which could fly at more
than three times the speed of sound and survey 100,000 square miles of the EarthAs surface in a single hour.Credit...via Maureen Shul
Brian Shul, a retired Air Force major who modestly described himself as oa survivoro rather than a hero, after he was downed in a Vietnamese jungle, where he nearly died before rebounding to pilot the worldAs fastest spy
plane, died on May 20 in Reno, Nev. He was 75.
The cause of his death, in a hospital, was cardiac arrest, said his sister
and sole survivor, Maureen Shul, a former mayor of Castle Pines, Colo. He
had earlier collapsed as he finished regaling the annual gala of the
Nevada Military Support Alliance with his aerial adventures.
Major Shul flew 212 combat missions during the Vietnam War before his T-28 Trojan ground attack plane was struck by small-arms fire and crash-landed
near the Cambodian border in 1974, as the war was nearing its end.
He underwent 15 operations and spent well over a year as o119 pounds of
blood and gauze,o as he once put, recuperating from burns that covered
half his body and that left his hands and face disfigured. But two days
after being released from the hospital, despite doctors telling him that
he would never walk again, Major Shul was back in an Air Force cockpit.
His final assignment, before he retired in 1990 after a two-decade
military career, was piloting the SR-71, the worldAs highest-flying jet.
The aircraft, nicknamed the Blackbird and deployed to monitor Soviet
nuclear submarines and missile sites, as well as to undertake
reconnaissance missions over Libya, could soar to 85,000 feet, fly at more than three times the speed of sound and survey 100,000 square miles of the EarthAs surface in a single hour.
oTo fly this jet, and fly it well, meant establishing a personal
relationship with a fusion of titanium, fuel, stick and throttles,o Major
Shul wrote in his book oSled Driver: Flying the WorldAs Fastest Jeto
(1991), invoking the detractive nickname that U-2 pilots had pinned on
their faster Blackbird counterparts. oIt meant feeling the airplane came
alive and had a personality all her own.o
Major Shul piloted the Blackbird for 2,000 hours over four years. He was
armed with a personal camera that he used to capture the photographs that illustrate oSled Drivero and another book.
The Lockheed Martin SR-71 soared so high into the mid-stratosphere that
its crew was outfitted in spacesuits, and it flew so swiftly that it could outpace missiles.
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oWe were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow
aviators of this fact,o Major Shul wrote.
He often recalled a radio exchange with air traffic controllers monitoring
the ground speed of planes within their jurisdiction as his aircraft
screamed 13 miles above Southern California: oI heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its ground speed. a90 knots,A Center replied. Moments later, a
Twin Beech required the same. a120 knots,A Center answered.
oWe werenAt the only ones proud of our ground speed that day,o Major Shul recalled, oas almost instantly an F-18 transmitted, aAh, Center, Dusty 52 requests ground speed readout.A There was a slight pause, then the
response, a620 knots on the ground, Dusty.Ao
Major Shul and his crew member couldnAt resist asking, too: oaCenter,
Aspen 20, you got a ground speed readout for us?A There was a longer than normal pause aAspen, I show 1,942 knotsAo u or 2,234 m.p.h.
oNo further inquiries were heard on that frequency,o Major Shul wrote.
In addition to oSled Driver,o he wrote oThe Untouchableso (1994), about
flying the SR-71; oSummer Thundero (1994), about the Air Force
Thunderbirds; and oBlue Angels: A Portrait of Goldo (1995), about the
NavyAs precision flying squadron.
After he was released from the hospital, he flew in air shows with the
first A-10 Thunderbolt demonstration team, became the chief of air-to-
ground academics for the Air Force and volunteered for a training program
to fly the SR-71.
He was an avid photographer of aviation and nature, and ran a photo studio
in Marysville, in Northern California.
Brian Robert Shul was born on Feb. 8, 1948, in Quantico, Va. His father, Victor, was the director of the Marine Corps band. His mother, Blanche
(St. George) Shul, was a homemaker.
He was 9 when he saw the NavyAs Blue Angels perform in an air show. oIAm
like, aWhoa,Ao he told the Museum of Flight in Seattle in 2017. oIt
reached in, grabbed my soul, never let go.o
He graduated from East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., with a bachelorAs degree in history in 1970 and joined the Air Force later that
year.
In Vietnam, he was a foreign air adviser during the war, piloting support missions in conjunction with the Central Intelligence AgencyAs Air
America, which flew reconnaissance, rescue and logistical support missions
for the military.
When his aircraft was attacked, he crash-landed in the jungle, where he
was rescued by a Special Forces team and evacuated to Okinawa, Japan.
Doctors there predicted that his burns would prove fatal. He underwent two months of intensive care before he was transferred to the Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where surgeons performed
15 operations over a year.
oI kept saying, aGod, just please let me die. I canAt do this. You picked
the wrong guy. IAm not strong enough. IAd have nothing to fight with now.
It hurts too bad. I donAt even want to wake up each morning,Ao he told the Museum of Flight.
But one day, while lying in bed, he heard children playing soccer and, as
he remembered being their age, the radio began to play Judy GarlandAs
oOver the Rainbow.o
oYou listen to the words to that song u itAs all about daring to dream,o
Major Shul said in a speech at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in California in 2016.
oI heard the words of that song for the first time that day,o he
continued. oThey penetrated my brain sharper than any scalpel they were
using, and I could look out the window and see the other side of the
rainbow and those kids, and I made a choice. I made a decision right then.
I am going to try to eat the food tomorrow. I want to live. IAm going to
try to survive.o
But, he said, oI donAt want you to confuse me with anyone thatAs heroic or famous or did anything great.o He added: oLeaving your jet in the jungle
does not qualify as heroic. I am a survivor.o
Corrections were made on May 31, 2023: An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the T-28 Trojan ground attack airplane. It is a propeller plane, not a jet plane.
A caption with an earlier version of this obituary misstated the time
frame of a photo showing Major Shul standing on an airstrip in front of an SR71 plane. It was taken in the mid-1980s, not the mid-1990s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/us/brian-shul-dead.html
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