Lockheed A-12 | Speed matters

26 kilometers of altitude 3,300 kilometers per hour of

speed

a surface heated to hundreds of degrees and an exterior of a spaceship in the place of these shapes everyone will say that we are talking about the sr-71 but the story is so big that it is divided into several complementary parts telling about him and his brothers yes the great and terrible blackbird not only was not the only plane it was one of the models and the fourth in which the heroes of our history can be considered one of the symbols of progress monuments to the era of

speed

and shining example of what the human mind is capable of welcome to the age of archangels like many groundbreaking stories this story began with a problem in the mid 1950s luck had run skyward its highs - altitude reconnaissance aircraft the u-2 the dragon lady was a unique machine that combined simplicity and capabilities, mainly high altitude flights of approximately 21 kilometers or 70 thousand feet, the air force and the cia quickly found a use for it and They sent on many intelligence missions. mainly to the soviet union the beginning of the flights like any big test revealed all the pros and cons the altitude of the flight was justified it was almost impossible to reach the u2 at its altitude on the other hand it was impossible to shoot it down but it turned out to be easy to detect by the radars, the priceless point appeared on the screens and was brilliantly displayed and the third problem, the pace of development of air defense missile systems, made the impunity of the u2 a very temporary advantage, even then, at the end of In the 1950s, aviation, industry and intelligence were wondering how they would work when height alone was not enough.

There were several potential paths. The first was to abandon the plane in principle and give reconnaissance functions to satellites despite the apparent obviousness. This option in practice was very problematic, the first satellites could not provide data of the required quality and, even if they could not, everywhere a satellite could replace an airplane, so if space can become a universal remedy, It won't be soon. The second option was to find ways to make the planes even more elusive. In 1956, the Rainbow project was implemented, the task of which was to study the possibility of reducing the radar signature of the U2.

In fact, an attempt to make it stealth, the Rainbow project brought a decent amount of developments, but it did not become a stealth breakthrough. It was recognized that it was promising, but at that time something more was needed, in 1957 it was decided to start completely new large-scale work to determine the research vector, an interdepartmental committee was formed, which, in the opinion of the committee, was named taste project. Due to the speed at high altitude, the special shape of the airframe and the introduction of radio-absorbing materials would complicate the work of radars and make the aircraft untargetable by air defense systems.

Interestingly, special emphasis was placed precisely on speed, the idea was that an object flying at high altitude The speed would still be visible, but due to the signal-to-scan ratio effect of the radar screen, the data would be irregular, the point would jump on the screen, adding altitude and stealth to this could lead to the fact that the plane would be difficult to detect. detect and identify and when this was done it would simply disappear the problem was that the minimum speed had to exceed mach 3 more than 3 000 kilometers per hour and it should not be some kind of prototype record holder but a full-fledged reconnaissance aircraft flying at such speed in cruise mode the cia was inspired but they needed resources even though the future plane was perceived as the successor to the u2 dragon lady it was a fairly simple and cheap project and what was offered now was comparable in complexity perhaps for the space programs the main bidders for the tender were convair and

lockheed

convair, which recently launched the b-58 hustler super solar bomber, proposed creating a small high-speed reconnaissance aircraft that would be delivered to the mission area suspended from an upgraded aircraft super hustler plane

lockheed

led the project of a high speed reconstance aircraft first called u3 and then archangel a kind of new level of project angel as it was sometimes called u2 in the initial stage his plane resembled a large starfighter the idea of ​​taking the f-104 as the bases wouldn't let it go, the competition was tough after it became clear that the super scammer would not become convair and they offered him their kingfish reconnaissance plane.

Lockheed, in turn, devised the Archangel A11, which was the eleventh official iteration of its concept according to various estimates. The transporter plane with its angular shapes and engines embedded under the fuselage was less visible on radars while the A11 was superior in flight performance skunkworks decided to improve the stealth made another mod well it's not really a mod the concept was remade again from scratch but everyone got used to it so finally the 12th version of the archangel was born. In 1960 the CIA selected the Lockheed project and ordered 12 A12 aircraft. Gusto Project. The search for a suitable aircraft was completed and in its place the program arose to create this plane project wagon the work was a secret behind the seven seals the a12 was created within the framework of the so-called SAP special access programs or black projects with The highest level of secrecy among them, for example, was the Manhattan nuclear project and later in the F-117 and B-2 programs, the number of people involved was extremely limited and financing was carried out with closed budget items through funds from the When the design of the Mach 3 Lockheed aircraft took its capabilities to the maximum, supersonic aerodynamics is not a simple thing and in Mach 3 it becomes even more severe, it was the fulfillment of these requirements that made the aircraft so unusual.

The A12 is a delta wing monoplane the wing has a slight wash on the leading edges of the consoles and is coupled with the engine cells and the fuselage with extensions to the nose this solution had quite a few tasks it was supposed to increase the rigidity of the structure this shape deflected reflected radar signal and as an added benefit leading edge extensions increase stability and lift without sacrificing speed The surrounding features are good in modern military aviation. This is a fairly common solution that became popular with the arrival of the fourth generation fighters, but it was in the late 1950s that this fourth generation was still a long way off at the same time as the aircraft. quite large and very elongated with a modest wingspan of about 17 meters 55 feet its length reaches 31 meters 101 feet approximately the same as that of the Boeing 737-200 the fight against radar signatures was also carried out although the aviators did not increase its priority In terms of flight performance, the reduction of the radar cross-section was facilitated by both the minimalist structure of the aircraft and the absence of protruding parts, as well as the use of elements made of radio-absorbing materials integrated into the aircraft structure using sawtooth joints, the aerodynamic requirements and the reduction of visibility strongly. mechanization influenced the A-12 is in fact a tailless aircraft the role of the ailerons and elevators is played by its hybrid elevons four control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing the vertical tail consists of two small fins mounted on the engine the cells and inclined towards the fuselage to maintain their effectiveness in this size were all made by rotating there is no other mechanization such a shortage did not help the pilots the archangels especially the first suffered from a lack of stability and were generally not the easiest airplanes to fly and This is at its speed, even the slightest deviation could throw the plane several kilometers off course in seconds, while changes in flight configuration influenced temperature conditions and this had to be closely monitored, various advanced automatic systems and stabilizers in airplanes, but it took quite a lot of time and effort landing gear the landing gear of the plane compared to the u2 is closer to the classic three-legged with steering wheel in the front but not without nuances are immediately noticeable The legs of the main support are equipped with bogies with three wheels in a row, it was a compromise between the need to maintain a 53.7 ton or 117,000 pound machine and the need to keep everything compact when retracted the bogies were hidden in a niche inside of the fuselage between the fuel tanks this place remained cold enough so that the wheels did not melt;

The wheels themselves included an intricate mesh of aluminum and rubber and were inflated with nitrogen, allowing them to increase their resource up to 20 flights considering temperature differences and takeoff and landing speeds of over 170 knots. This was not a bad parachute. broken ejected from a niche in the upper part of the fuselage near the tail helped reduce speed during landing fuel the a12 fuel system is a special topic aircraft engines burn fuel like hellish dragons 15 to 20 tons per hour of flight easily, such appetite had to be somehow combined with the requirement for a long flight range, meaning that a large amount of fuel was needed, the additional problem was that the plane's wing was adapted for Mach 3 flights.

It was very thin and did not have enough capacity, so the main supply went to the fuselage; in fact, most of its space is tanks like on a rocket. In total they contain 31 tons or 68,300 pounds of kerosene, for example, the fuel reserve of the huge Boeing. 757 weighs around 34 tons 75,700 pounds or 11.5,000 gallons, the characteristic of the tanks was their absence, the metal tanks greatly increased the mass and reduced the volume and the light plastics did not resist the temperature, therefore, the tanks They were actually just separate fuselage sections with no additional fittings. spacers wet wing design the solution was optimal but had one drawback that became one of the funny nuances of the a12 and its relatives the fact is that the elements of the airframe in a hot flight suffered thermal expansion while on the ground for On the contrary, compression such fluctuations led to the fact that on the ground the plane had a leak, the solutions to this problem were too complex and the engineers came to the conclusion that if there is a leak, there is a leak, I must immediately say that By leak I don't mean that fuel gushed out of the plane, it simply dripped and if it dripped in acceptable quantities it was considered the norm with the fuel itself, of course, not everything was simple, the problem was in the required temperature range, from the cold of the street to a hellish furnace under such conditions, ordinary kerosene would begin to boil, evaporate and finally ignite directly in the tanks, followed by, as they say at Spacex, a rapid and scheduled disassembly, the ancestor of archangel fuel can consider the JPTs developed for the U2 to operate in permanent hell conditions.

On the basis of JPTS, the new JP7 fuel was created with a large amount of chemical additives. The task was accomplished. The fuel was stable enough for flight and also played the role of a foil exchanger for a powerful cooling system, without which you couldn't fill the plane it would have simply been fried but in one place the stability was really excessive the jp7 did not ignite in the afterburner they had to add a special spark in its function it was decided to use triathlon or in short it has a combustion temperature very high which was enough to ignite the jp7 its use is noticeable externally when entering afterburning mode the nozzle spits out a distinctive green flame the same solution can be found in the early stages of some launch vehicles such as saturn v and falcon 9. a side effect Triatyl borane is a highly flammable pyrophore, so refueling the A12 is quite unusual.

The JP7 could drip from the aircraft onto the concrete without disturbing anyone, while refueling the Teb was considered extremely dangerous and at the same time required serious precautions, unlike the huge reserves. of kerosene, the teb tank was quite small and this limited the number of afterburner firings to 15 times or so. The flight range of the A12 was approximately 2,500 miles or 4,600 kilometers, which of course is not bad, but still not enough for strategic reconnaissance. increase the range the plane received air refueling tools, naturally, here the a12 also could not be like all normal aircraft, the dry weight of the refueling aircraft was about 27 tons plus the fuel supply of about 31 tons with a maximum takeoff weight of 53. yes, completely The loaded and equipped aircraft was five tons overweight, so it wasdeveloped a special flight scheme.

The plane took off at maximum weight with incompletely filled tanks and began refueling almost immediately afterwards. The air tanker was also unusual. The specialized kc-135q had additional equipment and separate tanks. The fuel was different for the tanker aircraft and the refueled aircraft, at the same time, the refueling process was quite complicated given that the minimum flight speed of the A12 was close to the maximum flight speed of the KC-135, so that one was in danger of stalling and the other of flapping all the time all the planes the heat the a12 was created for flights at mach 3 and furthermore they were not supposed to be short jumps but rather a cruise mode lasting many hours, This meant hours of flying with an aircraft surface temperature above 250 degrees Celsius plus 480 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes even more no type of aluminum could withstand such a load.

Of course, it was possible to use steel, but it was too heavy and at least the flight range would be lost immediately. The only solution was titanium, which is quite durable and lightweight, but a problem immediately arose: there was not much titanium in the US. Previously, it was used in a limited way only in the most critical structural elements and the a12 is titanium 90 and when the traditional suppliers discovered the required volumes they simply gave up the alternative was to obtain titanium from the largest supplier in the world market the problem was that it was the ussr yes one of the funniest episodes of the world aviation industry the plane created to spy to the soviet union it was actually made of soviet titanium but this is the cia shady schemes are their kind of work we created a whole network of resellers through which these deliveries were made The precious metal is still supplied to the United States, but in slightly simpler ways it was difficult to work with titanium, especially considering that you had to make quite complex structures with it.

Lockhead had to redesign production and create new machines and it took a long time to In the early stages, most of the parts were discarded, in addition, there were many discoveries, for example, during temperature tests, the large wing panels degraded. and shrank, which in flight could cause the destruction of the wing. The solution was surface corrugation and special fixing methods emerged. Similar puzzles from almost every part of the plane, but the job was done, the a12 gained the ability to fly with a structure that heated up to 260 degrees Celsius (500 degrees Fahrenheit) with maximum allowable peaks of up to 315 degrees Celsius (600 Fahrenheit) for workers. production was hell and the plane turned out, to put it mildly, not cheap, but the engineers completed their task engines all the tasks assigned to the designers for the new plane faded away before the problem of the power plant the fact is that the Usual turbojet engine is no longer efficient enough at Mach 3 and the load is too large, it simply could not withstand long flights at high speed, it would be better to operate ramjet engines at this speed in which some of the mechanisms are physically absent and their functions are carried out by a high-speed engine with an approaching air flow, everything would be fine, but this very flow is necessary, so at low or even more zero speeds, such an engine is absolutely useless.

The first projects involve the installation of both types at the same time for flights in different modes, but it turned out that the plane was carrying several engines at once, half of which would not work in one of the modes and in our case this is a luxury. unacceptable, it was necessary to make something hybrid that combined both options and then Pratt Whitney initially got involved, the J58 engine was created for a promising supersonic. plane, but it was not successful, however, knowledge of the project returned inspiration to the engineers and they considered the possibility of accelerating it to Mach 3 to 3.2, the engine itself, of course, could not achieve it.

The calculations showed that at a speed of more. that mach 3 the pressure and temperature were so monstrous that no material could withstand a couple of hours of such a flight and at least the turbine would go to the scrapyard, however, if we consider the j58 as a basis for a further then it was no longer a bad option Pratt Whitney seriously revised its creation and added, let's say, a number of technical solutions that made it much more interesting, it's time to get acquainted with the turbo jet engine and, therefore, with the power plant of the A12 is a very unusual complex hidden under the fusion cells: a seriously revised turbojet engine, surrounded by a second bypass circuit that is not at all the same as on modern aircraft, there is a huge intake peak in the front and many channels External ones are scattered in the front. nacelle, let's see what it is and how it works at the initial stage of the flight, when the plane simply takes off from the ground and gains speed, the engine works as usual, adjusting the thrust with the afterburner, the air flows through the internal circuit to the motor. and through the bypass circuit around the engine, cool it and mix behind the nozzle, cooling was very important, especially near the afterburner, the temperature there exceeded 1900 degrees without blowing, even the complex structure with the ceramic coating built there did not would withstand a long cruise mode to get enough air from the outside additional channels located at both the front and rear open as the speed increases the settings change the amount of air entering the external circuit from the air intake grows and the function of the bypass channels changes now that they serve not to suck in the air, but on the contrary expel it, eliminate excess pressure in the circuits and eliminate the boundary layer, finally, the tip itself, surprisingly, is made of heat-resistant plastic. heat with a sharp titanium tip and can move around the system controlled automatically.

The unit with increasing speed moves backward at a cruise of Mach 3.2, this displacement reaches 66 centimeters, which allows the aircraft to control the configuration of the supersonic shock wave at the entrance, reduce its speed and stabilize the pressure so that the air flow directly entering the engine has optimal parameters in various flight modes and even all these additions were not enough at maximum speeds the engine, especially the turbine, is still experiencing too heavy loads here another set of air ducts bypass plays its role by creating in a sense another circuit that removes part of the air from the compressor, bends around the turbine and injects it directly into the afterburner.

In the end we obtain a kind of hybrid of turbojet and ramjet in the initial stage of flight at low speeds and altitudes the j58 acts like a classic turbojet engine, but the higher the flight speed, the greater the role the ramjet elements take on. At a speed of mach 2.2 the turbojet represents 73% of the thrust and at mach 3 this proportion drops to 17.6 the a12 becomes almost a ramjet, naturally, this entire parade of technology is computer controlled, although the pilot has the ability to manually adjust key functions, the thrust of this monster corresponded to the j58 that emitted between 145 and 150 kilonewtons, for example, the thrust of the General Electric F-101 engine of the B1 bomber with subsequent burning is 137 kilonewtons when the creators of the plane saw what the creators of the engine offered them the question was dressed Lockheed received an order for the archangels pratt whitney received an order for the burning hearts for them cockpit and equipment the a-12 took over the location of a pilot whose overall functionality was similar to that of the u2 pilot for some time the aviators argued about the arrangement of the cabin it was proposed to place the pilot in the escape capsule but this decision complicated the structure and made it heavier so it was decided to make a conventional cabin with an ejection seat and have the pilot wear a pressurized suit that with minor adjustments was made borrowed from NASA astronauts in fact, after a while almost the same suit came to the circular modernization of the u2 the design of the cabin without a second thought was taken from the canopies of high-speed rocket planes a canopy in the shape wedge with a powerful joint and a group of thick quartz glass sections of a small area this design limited the view but in the reconnaissance aircraft it was not particularly critical and there were no other options the outside temperatures exceeded 300 degrees Celsius 600 fahrenheit and even with a powerful cooling system the internal temperature reached 120 degrees Celsius 250 Fahrenheit touching the glass was not recommended with recognition equipment it was both easier and more difficult the suppliers of this technology were already trained by the strict requirements of the dragon lady, but in the case of the archangel it was also necessary to deal with the temperature like in a stove, everything had to be seriously reworked, the materials adapted and the temperature control system implemented, but in the end the job was all done.

As with the U2, much of the reconnaissance equipment was located in the q-bay behind the cockpit, in addition the cameras and sensors were placed in four compartments in the lower part of the fuselage at the base of the wing extensions. attack and some space on the nose. The a12 had the ability to install several cameras capable of photographing with a resolution that allows objects as small as 30 centimeters to be identified. This is an explanation of why aerial reconnaissance was preferred to space reconnaissance. At that time, the Corona satellites gave images that allowed us to distinguish objects about 12 meters in size, so how do you like the device?

And this without modern design technologies and computers with crazy mathematical models. Veterans of skunk works sometimes laugh that they have created the most advanced and futuristic airplane in the world using a good slide rule. The personnel policy followed in the footsteps of the Dragon Lady. Experienced air force pilots left the service and were registered as civilian workers with salaries paid by the CIA. Given the working conditions, the requirements for them were similar to those for astronauts, including age, height and weight. the special roadrunner squadron began in 1960 primary and backup pilots 12 aircraft 24 people for archangel testing a training site was also prepared as the u2 Groom Lake at the Sierra Nevada desert base 51 another secret aircraft and once more a desert without curiosity ice the program was slightly delayed mainly due to the engines the j58 were impressive but it took a long time to perfect them this did not please the client the aerial reconnaissance at that time became very difficult the incident over sverdlovsk with the downed u2 became for the cia in not only a shocking surprise, but also the realization that now they had nothing to fly over the ussr, the dragon lady was no longer going there, pushing the work forward Lockheed decided to start testing a prototype with the engines j75, this engine was more modest than the 58, but it had good performance and the most important thing was available.

It was installed in the f-106 delta dart f-105 thunder chief and in skunk works it was not unusual for the j75 to lift the u2c towards the sky The assembly of the first prototype was completed at the end of 1961. In the spring of 1962 the plane was ready and luck struck them true to their passion for unauthorized maiden flights, the plane took off on April 25, it did not work very either due to a failure in various control systems. It was extremely difficult and the prototype rose to a height of 6 meters 20 feet, flew 3 kilometers or 2 miles and landed right in the desert, the flat surface and the large area of ​​Groom Lake did their job, but many people got away with it. gray hair that day.

After a sleepless night on April 26, 1962, the finished prototype made its first official flight. Not everything went perfectly, but the A12 performed much better than the day before and spent 40 minutes in the sky during the year. They joined it with four others, of which it was a training version with two cabins. Here they decided not to immerse themselves in innovation and use a design similar to that of the U2. The second cabin was located behind the first and was elevated to provide outward visibility. The nickname seemed funny. From titanium goose quickly glued to the plane, the goose was actively used to train pilots and once even managed to ride the boss.

Kelly Johnson was sitting in the cadet seat and the plane accelerated to Mach 1.5. An interesting experience when the designer actually flies the creation of it and not just looks. From the sidelines, the tests of this equipment were carried out quite successfully, although they were limited by the engines, the j75 gave a thrust of approximately 77 kilonewtons, half that of the j58, the a12 lacks thrust-to-weight ratio and did not could go faster than mach. 2. work was stimulated again by circumstancesCuban missile crisis not only did Soviet missiles suddenly appear practically at American doorsteps but their air defenses shut down another U2 this time also killing the pilot it seemed like the archangel was missing the fight for The finished engines arrived at the end of 1962.

The A-12 began flying with the newly manufactured 58 and was eager to reach the mark of modern Mach 3. It turned out that it was not an easy matter. Difficulties constantly arose with the new engines the peak of these problems was the loss of one of the prototypes the pilot ejected successfully but the plane crashed in Utah here the security service showed itself brilliantly the military officially announced the crash of the F plane -105 Thunderchief and under the pretext that there were nuclear weapons on board, they immediately dispersed the locals, removed the remains and forced witnesses to sign a confidentiality agreement with a lump sum of 25 thousand dollars.

This is the cost to taxpayers for the lack of neuralizers like in men. in black the aircraft began to jump beyond mach 3 from the summer of 1963 maintaining speed for 10 to 15 minutes at first glance modestly but any other aircraft at that time even if it could reach such speed it would be for a much shorter period The problem of maximum cruising speed was solved in 1965, when the Archangels learned to maintain a speed of Mach 3.1 for more than an hour and a half and short-term maximum speeds were already around Mach 3.23. The flight altitudes corresponded to those at which the A12s flew easily. an altitude of 24 kilometers 80 thousand feet with a ceiling of approximately 27,90,000 feet its cruising speed could be considered mach 3.1 which is approximately 1,800 knots or 3,300 kilometers per hour the history of the A12's records is quite murky given the secret of the plane much of the data it contains is not published or is published so vaguely that it can be interpreted in any way the cia loves to brag that its plane was faster than the air force's sr-71, on the one hand this is credible given that the Blackbird with almost the same thrust was larger and heavier, on the other hand the CIA can hardly be considered a kind of agency that can be trusted at its word in June 1964 , when the planes had flown around 2,800 hours during the entire ordered time. the insignia had been completed in total at that time 18 aircraft were assembled 12 a12 basic a titanium goose which by the way still had the j75 two more aircraft carriers of the m21 drones plus three aircraft were modifications of the yf-12a interceptor for the air force but the test story did not end there Lockheed continued flying the planes at full capacity at the end of 1966 one of the planes flew with refueling 16,412 kilometers 10,198 miles It's like taking off in Nevada flying to Japan turning around and flying back in six hours, having Taking into account the delays in refueling, the first information that something big and fast was being created in the United States began to appear in 1964 and Lyndon Johnson, who entered the Oval Office, wanted to give an official press release.

The supersonic race was in full swing and the news of a Mach 3 plane would have added points to his administration and it was no longer possible to keep everything a deep secret. They couldn't infinitely blame everything on the poor aliens but of course no one was going to talk about it. the fact that a cia mach3 reconnaissance plane was flying over the desert the main hero was the yf-12 air force interceptor which was being tested at edwards airbase in california as well as the sr-71 reconnaissance plane created on its base, special emphasis was placed precisely on them, there was no mention of the A12 and flights in a prepared area of ​​the lake and if someone noticed it they could always tell that it was the same YF-12 in mid-1964 the flight test program It was completed and the CIA pilots began to sit in the cockpits of the archangels.

At that moment, the intelligence pressure reached its limits and they demanded that the planes begin to carry out missions. There were three priority observation areas, the first two, the USSR and Cuba were very important but the saturation of the air defense systems was so great that the explorers were in no hurry to enter there. The third priority area was China, whose airspace was also quite covered but, according to various estimates, it was still available for the archangels and it was decided to test. The A-12 was chosen for the deployment of the planes to the Cadena Air Base in Japan and preparations had already begun to receive unusual guests, but then everything came to a standstill in the Pentagon and the State Department prevented the CIA from expanding its operations.

They considered China too dangerous. Furthermore, intelligence took a risk by sending the U2s on missions, but that risk was acceptable. It was a very simple plane and its fall into the hands of the enemy was not considered a great disaster, but if the advance of the A12 turns out to be in its place, it will be a problem The peak of controversy around the A-12 was in 1966, when talks began to complete the works and get rid of the park. The reason for raising this issue was not only the incredibly complex and expensive technology, but also politics.

The A12s were CIA planes with their own department and operations while practically the same work was done by the SR-71, which was under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force. This was not liked by Congress, which did not understand why it was the budget paid for two overlapping programs salvation was vietnam those are really the vagaries of the cold war the confrontation that began there and quickly turned into direct military action forced the united states to temporarily forget about elimination and deploy the a12 group In Japan, in the spring of 1967, three planes arrived in Okinawa.

The first flight over Vietnam lasted just over three and a half hours at Mach 3.1 at an altitude of 24.4 kilometers or 80,000 feet. The main tasks of the A12 were to search for strengths of the air defense positions of the North Vietnamese forces and confirm the presence of launch systems for intermediate-range ballistic missiles, the latter were not found there, which is good, some people in the army already had theories of that Vietnam could become a second Cuba and then the flights would not be far from the nuclear buttons. They were carried out regularly and during the first missions the plane did not encounter resistance from interceptors or air defense missiles, which led to the conclusion that they were very difficult to notice, which means that all these dances with stealth were not in vain , but they were not happy with Much later, the enemy learned to see the scouts in the sky of Vietnam and began to shoot at the planes, but the directive sa2, which became the main enemy of the u2 against the a12, which It flew several kilometers higher and four times faster, it turned out to be ineffective despite all the epic fireworks in the sky no plane was shut down in 1968 the a12 managed to fly over north korea and it turned out that the country was too small for them The planes passed their entire territory very quickly and had to turn around there because the USSR was next door.

The problem was that at cruising speed the turning radius of the A12 was approximately 74 miles and at this stage the planes were constantly at risk of fly into China's airspace but again the Chinese did not even try to shoot them down, since practice has shown that the main enemies of the A12s were themselves during the entire time of operation, which was not that long. Of 13 aircraft, five were lost, but there was not a single combat loss among them, in reality, this was the end of the reconnaissance run of the a12 and the decision on the elimination of the park was carried out, this mainly provoked protests by lockheed but the decision was made the plane like a true rock star left the stage at the height of his career the archangels were put into storage and the oxcart program officially ended a decade after its launch, the story of the founder of the family ended there but the story of his heirs continued, before us are the three children of the archangel, the YF-12 interceptor, the M21 aircraft carrier and of course, the superstar of the air force, the SR-71 blackbird, in This we will take a break for now, like and subscribe to the channel so as not to miss the continuation of this mach 3 marathon, fast, very fast flights and soft landings for you.