On 20 May 2023, in a hotel ballroom in Reno, a 75-year-old man finished telling a story he had told several hundred times, stepped away from the lectern, and collapsed. There were doctors in the audience. He died at the hospital that night.

Brian Shul had spent thirty years telling audiences about being burned almost to death in a jungle in 1973 and coming back to fly the fastest aeroplane ever built. It is one of the best-loved stories in American aviation. It is also, in parts, contested by men who flew the same aircraft — publicly, in print, in the pages of the Air Force’s own magazine.

Both things are true, and a fair account has to carry both.

The crash, as the record has it

Shul was flying as a Foreign Air Advisor, on close air support missions run in conjunction with Air America, when ground fire brought his T-28 down near the Cambodian border in 1973. He could not eject. He crash-landed into the jungle, survived the impact, and was caught in the fireball that followed.

The rescue itself was not quick. Nobody knew exactly where he was, enemy troops were nearby, and the jungle canopy was dense. Once searchers confirmed there was no body at the crash site, Shul used his radio to confirm who and roughly where he was, and an aerial search began. Air Force pararescue went in. What was meant to be a quiet extraction turned into an openly hostile one, with patrols driven back by small arms while the team worked. The canopy was too thick to land, so the helicopter held a hover about four feet off the ground while he was loaded aboard. No Americans were lost doing it.

At the hospital in Okinawa the doctors did not expect him to live. He spent two months in intensive care, then went to the Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where over the following year he underwent 15 major operations. He was told he would not fly again.

Shul telling his own story — the talk he gave for three decades.

Back to the cockpit

Two days after his release from hospital he was flying again. He went on to the A-7D Corsair II, then was selected for the first operational A-10 Thunderbolt II squadron at Myrtle Beach, where he flew on the first A-10 air show demonstration team. A tour as an A-10 instructor at Davis-Monthan followed, then a posting instructing at the USAF Fighter Lead-In School as Chief of Air-to-Ground Academics.

For his final assignment he volunteered for the SR-71. The qualifying medical was an astronaut-type physical. He passed it with no waivers.

He also carried a camera. A great many of the best-known photographs of the Blackbird are his, and after retiring in 1990 he ran a photo studio in northern California and wrote seven books — two on the SR-71, two on the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds, one collection of his in-flight work. In his last years he mostly photographed birds.

The ground speed check — the anecdote that became, by his own account, the most repeated SR-71 story ever told.

The argument in the letters pages

In May 2012, the aviation writer Walter J. Boyne listed Shul among the “famous fliers” in an Magazin der US-Luftwaffe feature on the SR-71. Two months later the magazine printed a letter objecting, from a man with about as much standing in the programme as it is possible to have.

Halloran also wrote that Shul’s inclusion had “generated a landslide of negative comments from former crew members”, much of which came to him as the programme’s Godfather.

In September, the magazine printed the reply.

Tucker’s letter argued that it was inappropriate for a senior officer to impugn Shul’s reputation in a widely read professional journal; that negative comments about him from the head of the Blackbird Association had been going on for 25 years; and that Halloran had not spoken to either of the two men involved in an incident that happened 13 years after Halloran himself left the SR-71 programme. Shul’s backseater, Walter Watson Jr., continued a distinguished career and retired as a colonel.

Shul and Walter Watson Jr. on stage together — the crew at the centre of the dispute.

What he was actually doing at the end

None of the argument touches the burns, and none of it touches the last thirty years. After the Air Force, Shul made a living telling the story — more than thirty engagements a year, often in an American flag shirt. He opened at least one of those talks by asking the audience not to confuse him with anyone heroic or famous or who had done anything great.

Reno, on 20 May 2023, was one more of those evenings: a gala for veterans, the same talk, the same ending. He finished it and collapsed. He was 75.

The honest summary is that Brian Shul was a man who survived something almost nobody survives, flew the Blackbird afterwards, took some of the finest photographs ever made of it, told the story superbly for three decades, and was not universally admired by the small group of people who had flown the same jet. Aviation history is full of figures who are exactly one of those things. It is rarer, and more interesting, to be all of them at once.

Häufig gestellte Fragen

Who was Brian Shul?

Brian Shul (8 February 1948 – 20 May 2023) was a US Air Force pilot, author and photographer. He flew 212 close air support missions in Southeast Asia as a Foreign Air Advisor, was shot down in a T-28 near the Cambodian border in 1973 and severely burned, recovered, and went on to fly the A-7D, the A-10 and finally the SR-71 Blackbird. He retired as a major in 1990 with around 5,000 hours in fighters and wrote seven books, including Sled Driver.

How was Brian Shul injured?

In 1973 his T-28 Trojan was brought down by ground fire near the Cambodian border. Unable to eject, he crash-landed into the jungle, survived the impact and was severely burned in the fire that followed. Two fellow American soldiers pulled him from the burning wreckage. He then survived in hostile territory for more than a day before Air Force pararescue reached him, with the helicopter holding a hover about four feet off the ground because the canopy was too dense to land.

How long did his recovery take?

Doctors at the military hospital in Okinawa did not expect him to survive. After two months of intensive care he was moved to the Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he underwent 15 major operations over the following year, followed by months of physical therapy. He was told he would never fly again, but passed a flight physical and returned to active flying duty.

Was Brian Shul removed from the SR-71 programme?

Yes, and this is agreed by both sides of a public dispute conducted in Magazin der US-Luftwaffe in 2012. Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Halloran, one of the original SR-71 pilots and later wing commander, wrote that Shul “remains the only SR-71 pilot removed for ‘cause’ in the history of the program”. Lt. Col. Raymond B. Tucker replied that Shul was “removed from flying the SR-71 without a hearing”, that he flew the T-38 at Beale until retirement, and that no official punitive action was ever taken because there was nothing beyond poor judgment to charge him with. The two disagree about what the removal signifies, not about whether it happened.

Was Brian Shul a member of the Blackbird Association?

No. Maj. Gen. Halloran noted this in his 2012 letter. Lt. Col. Tucker’s reply argued that negative comments about Shul from the head of the Blackbird Association had continued for 25 years, and that the episode in question took place 13 years after Halloran left the SR-71 programme.

What is the SR-71 speed check story?

It is Shul’s account of a radio exchange in which a series of aircraft ask air traffic control for ground speed checks, each faster than the last, ending with the SR-71 crew requesting theirs. Shul said it became, according to Smithsonian magazine, the most repeated story about the SR-71 in history. It is told in his talks and writing rather than drawn from an official record.

How did Brian Shul die?

He collapsed on 20 May 2023 in Reno, Nevada, immediately after delivering his SR-71 presentation at a gala for veterans, and was pronounced dead at hospital that night of cardiac arrest. He was 75.

Quellen: Magazin der US-Luftwaffe letters pages, July and September 2012, including letters from Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Halloran, USAF (Ret.) and Lt. Col. Raymond B. Tucker, USAF (Ret.); Walter J. Boyne, “Airpower Classics: SR-71”, Magazin der US-Luftwaffe, May 2012; Die Washington Post obituary, 24 May 2023; New Atlas; AOPA. Where the widely shared social media version of Shul’s story conflicts with the documented account, we have followed the documented account and said so.