Titanium skin fragment relic display from SR-71 'Super Skater' (serial number 17970). This aircraft was lost on 17 June 1970 following a re-fueling collision with a KC-135Q (59-1474) tanker. Lt. Col. Buddy L. Brown and his RSO Maj. Mortimer J. Jarvis both ejected and survived the crash. The KC-135 made it back to Beale AFB, California with a damaged refueling boom and aft fuselage. Super Skater crashed into the desert. These pieces were recovered from the crash site in June 2013 by Zane Harwell, from whom these parts were directly obtained. The vast majority of the aircraft was removed from the site by the government in 1970, but these few pieces of wreckage remained. This wall hanging display is framed under glass and is 8.5x11 inches in size and the titanium fragment is 1.5x1.5 inches. Each piece has 95% black paint intact. Each display is signed and numbered by the artist, and includes the history of this aircraft. These pieces of titanium were cut from a larger section of this aircraft (see below), which was what remained of one of the aft engine nacelle 'turkey feathers': //
