Lockheed A-12

The Lockheed A-12 emerged from Project Oxcart, a secret military effort to create a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. First flown in 1962 and built by Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects office, now known as Skunk Works, it could carry out sensitive intelligence missions at speeds above Mach 3. The Central Intelligence Agency used A-12s for surveillance until 1968, and later versions called the SR-71 Blackbird served the U.S. Air Force and NASA in reconnaissance and test roles through the 1990s. Flown by CIA pilots, the A-12 conducted strategic reconnaissance over North Vietnam between May 1967 and March 1968, primarily searching for suspected surface-to-surface missile sites. Although it found no evidence of such facilities, it did identify many surface-to-air missile sites and other important targets. In all, A-12s flew 24 missions over Hanoi and Haiphong, and despite surface-to-air missiles being fired at them twice, they escaped with only minor shrapnel damage to one aircraft. The example code-named Article 122 served early in 1962 as a radar-test aircraft at Area 51 near Groom Lake, Nevada. Its mostly titanium airframe was coated with special paint to reduce radar signature and included radar-absorbing materials. It was powered by Pratt and Whitney J58 turbo-ramjet engines, used only in the A-12 and SR-71 Blackbird, and a yellow starter cart with two Buick 401 cubic-inch Wildcat V-8 engines spun the aircraft's engines up to 3,200 revolutions per minute to begin ignition. The A-12 measured 102 feet long with a wingspan of 55 feet 7 inches and a height of 18 feet 3 inches, had an empty weight of 54,600 pounds and a maximum weight of 120,000 pounds, reached 2,269 miles per hour, operated to a ceiling of 95,000 feet, carried one crew member, and bore 2,500 pounds of imaging sensors.

New York, New York · United States