TR-3 "Black Manta"

quellish said:
I believe that is an artist's impression based on an aircraft that Steve Douglass saw and videotaped at Roving Sands in 1993. Steve thought it may be the TR-3 at the time. IIRC, Steve's description of the shape was similar to the Northrop ATA.

Wired did an article that covered it a little in 1994:
https://www.wired.com/1994/02/stealth-watchers/
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Let's say there was no such thing as the TR-3, then what the heck did Steve Douglass record then? Also, is there other threads dedicated to unknown aircraft caught on camera? The threads im aware of are the 2013 Texas Triangular aircraft trio, and the Mackbolin aircraft.

Photo below is an enhanced image of what Steven Douglass saw.
 

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Ninja said:
Let's say there was no such thing as the TR-3, then what the heck did Steve Douglass record then? Also, is there other threads dedicated to unknown aircraft caught on camera? The threads im aware of are the 2013 Texas Triangular aircraft trio, and the Mackbolin aircraft.

Photo below is an enhanced image of what Steven Douglass saw.
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Not convinced that is a geniune non-altered photo, however I always found this story interesting.. particularly the picture in the article from Holloman AFB:
https://deepbluehorizon.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-plea-from-area-51.html
 

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The designation TR-3 as pointed out many times, doesnt fit and was a mishearing. If the Black Manta was real, what would be its designation? UR-3? The U letter being to hide the aircraft I'm guessing, just like the U-2.
 
Ninja said:
The designation TR-3 as pointed out many times, doesnt fit and was a mishearing. If the Black Manta was real, what would be its designation? UR-3? The U letter being to hide the aircraft I'm guessing, just like the U-2.
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Remember that for a while the U-2 was designated TR-1, when the plane was fitted out for tactical recon. So TR-3 does kinda make sense.

For the "Black Manta as buddy-laser for F-117s" concept, the likely designation is something like OA-11, or maybe something out of the STOL series, OV-11.
 
RavenOne said:
Begs the question which of the coalition bases could the TR-3A operated out of? The F-117A operated out of King Khalid AIr Base during the war ...but then it would be noticed by coalition saudi forces ...unless they did not open the hardened shelters in the daytime.
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One of my A&P classmates had been a weapons loader for the F117s before he got out. He said that the F117 squadron was used to operating only at night, with no lights but the occasional red flashlight if you had to check something. So operating the Black Mantas only at night wouldn't have been much trouble.

IIRC he hated King Khalid, hotter than hell plus absurd humidity for a place in the middle of the desert.

Thing is, the F117s had lasers built-in. They didn't need an aircraft to buddy-lase for them. So the idea of Black Manta as "an aircraft designed to buddy-lase for the F-117s" doesn't check out.
 
Scott Kenny said:
One of my A&P classmates had been a weapons loader for the F117s before he got out. He said that the F117 squadron was used to operating only at night, with no lights but the occasional red flashlight if you had to check something. So operating the Black Mantas only at night wouldn't have been much trouble.

IIRC he hated King Khalid, hotter than hell plus absurd humidity for a place in the middle of the desert.

Thing is, the F117s had lasers built-in. They didn't need an aircraft to buddy-lase for them. So the idea of Black Manta as "an aircraft designed to buddy-lase for the F-117s" doesn't check out.
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Thanks for that then again, one could argue why our RAF guys needed the Buccaneer S2B (their final act before retirement) to lase almost FAc as well as dropping GBU as our Tornado GR1 had TIALD during Desert Storm, as the Bucc's kinda flew in front of the Tornados.

cheers
 
I'll need to check but I think there was a pair of TIALDs in theatre towards the end of the air campaign, but not during the main event, hence the Buccaneers.

Chris
 
Yes only two pre-production TIALD pods were available to be sent.
 
sublight_ said:
Because the TR3 urban legend is pernicious, and having an open thread about it doesn't help shut it down. What method would you suggest for stopping deliberate misinformation?
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In *what* way is any examination of the TR3 "legend" "pernicious", instead of just professional discussion - please elaborate and present your factual and logical argumentation, if you don't mind?
 
What misinformation? There are four pages of posts saying "it's fake, it's bollocks", nobody reading this thread is going to assume it was a real thing.

Anyway, like Aurora the TR-3 is part of the aviation history of the 1980s and 90s, it is woven into the fabric of it. These rumours or misunderstandings came from real snippets of things, but just twisted out of recognition. The fact that journalists and others were willing to believe in these objects enough to spin yarns about them and toy manufacturers thought they were cool enough to market interpretations of them is illustrative. In the heady days of the late Reagan/early Bush era you could believe that the USA could churn out cool hypersonic and stealthy spy plane [sic] stuff. Whether that was a manufactured counter-intelligence ploy or wilful self delusion is up for grabs, but it is a window on the psyche of those times nevertheless.
 
Hood said:
What misinformation? There are four pages of posts saying "it's fake, it's bollocks", nobody reading this thread is going to assume it was a real thing.

Anyway, like Aurora the TR-3 is part of the aviation history of the 1980s and 90s, it is woven into the fabric of it. These rumours or misunderstandings came from real snippets of things, but just twisted out of recognition. The fact that journalists and others were willing to believe in these objects enough to spin yarns about them and toy manufacturers thought they were cool enough to market interpretations of them is illustrative. In the heady days of the late Reagan/early Bush era you could believe that the USA could churn out cool hypersonic and stealthy spy plane [sic] stuff. Whether that was a manufactured counter-intelligence ploy or wilful self delusion is up for grabs, but it is a window on the psyche of those times nevertheless.
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This is the real answer to this. I think thats why there was so much more info out there in the 80s and 90s vs today in regards to black projects. It was the perfect storm of gullible journalists and publications reporting what turned out to be counter-intelligence and a lot of it seemed to be all coming from a handful of online forums and sources.
 
This came up on my youtube feed, its an interview with a contractor - albeit working for Lockheed Martin at Eglin for Space Force who claims hes seen the mythical Black Manta

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cApHvTw1niE


Depending how many drinks I have had lol I would love to put 2 and 2 together get 3.785 lol , and think of the equally mythical Senior Citizen he saw. My reasoning is across the trees and the swamp is their neighboring base of Hulbert Field and thats AFSOC territory with en mass inventory of AC-130J/MC-130J/CV-22B/C146/MQ-9 just the basics and chuck in (or 2 decades ago) MI8 Hip, AN12 etc to train friendly foreign mil spec ops.

cheers
 
RavenOne said:
This came up on my youtube feed, its an interview with a contractor - albeit working for Lockheed Martin at Eglin for Space Force who claims hes seen the mythical Black Manta

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cApHvTw1niE


Depending how many drinks I have had lol I would love to put 2 and 2 together get 3.785 lol , and think of the equally mythical Senior Citizen he saw. My reasoning is across the trees and the swamp is their neighboring base of Hulbert Field and thats AFSOC territory with en mass inventory of AC-130J/MC-130J/CV-22B/C146/MQ-9 just the basics and chuck in (or 2 decades ago) MI8 Hip, AN12 etc to train friendly foreign mil spec ops.

cheers
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This seems to be about the mythical (and fabricated) “TR-3B”, which is supposed to be an antigravity craft.
 

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