The A-12 Archangel: Faster, Lighter, Higher than the SR-71

Hello everyone, welcome back to a new episode of mega projects in this, the ship that you have probably heard about thanks to Elon Musk and also because of the sr-71, but it was all a secret: we are the a12. Let's dive into it today and get into it if, like the rest of the world, you're wondering why Elon Musk, here we go, and his girlfriend Grimes, a one-word person, apparently named their newborn son the frankly bizarre name of ex a sh a 12 and I alone. I know how to pronounce that thing AE, ash because I watched Elon Musk interview Rogen's podcast and he says it there, so you've come to the right place and yes, it relates to all the mega project videos, today the X represents the unknown variable.

Which is already so embarrassing. AE is the Elvish spelling of AI or ash, as I said before, but it is the a12 that is of particular interest to us. Some might suggest it's a little strange to name the child after a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, yes. I mean, Elon Musk is a bit of a strange man, isn't he? But hey, I think it's fair to say that Elon Musk has been constantly thinking outside the box for a while now and being weird is fine, but enough about baby names. get to work, the lockheed a-12 came with the exalted moniker of

archangel

for those of you who are so biblically rusty, i included an

archangel

, he is a high ranking angel, a top dog so to speak, and the lockheed a-12 was exactly that.

The thunderous Max 3 Plus reconnaissance plane that only served the CIA for five years, from 1963 to 1968, and was only officially declassified in the 1990s, was a ghost during its time in the skies and because of its younger brother most famous, the blackbird sr-71, is an aircraft that has unfortunately left the spotlight until today, that is, you have seen megaprojects that we made about the u2 plane, the American spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, the u2 had proven to be more than capable. but also much more radar trackable than the Americans and initially they thought there was an example of light in that previous video as it was so high up the Americans thought the Soviets couldn't see it but there were MIG scrambles but they'll just get it . up there to find it, it was too high, despite much tinkering, the US-trained project known as could not find a way to reduce the U2's radar cross section, which would have made it harder to track, So if you can't upgrade the old plane well, what are you going to do right?

You build a new one, of course, you are the American military. You basically have an unlimited budget. The US military often benefits from gold competition and it was through In one of those battles of aviation minds, the A12 emerged. Convair and Lockheed were tasked with developing plans for a new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that could replace the YouTubes. The Convair model was known as the Kingfish, while the Lockheed plan was known. as Archangel 1 or 1 for short, if we go a little further through the developments, the decisive moment came when Kingfish took on the Lockheed model now known as Archangel 11 and I mean, Kingfish is a cool name, but Archangel 11 is a little cooler, it looked as if Convair was on the verge of a new creative contract, but in the final stages some adjustments to the A11 meant it got ahead of the Kingfish and on January 26, 1960 the CIA placed an order for 12 aircraft which now with the final name a12 are the production.

The projects took on the name Oxcart, which, considering the A12 has breakneck speed, is a bit ironic that the construction of this aircraft so far ahead of its time begins with a wonderful story of corporate espionage from the Cold War. Today, titanium is widely used around the world. a variety of products, from space shuttles to tennis rackets, but their use in the late 1950s was still in its relative infancy. The US government generally received the titanium it needed from Titanium Metals Corporation, a US-based company. However, its reserves of this chemical element were severely limited and it was completely insufficient for design requirements. from a12.

However, there was one country with a lot of titanium in reserve and in fact one that pioneered its use in military hardware and I'll just give you a guess because yes, of course, it's the Soviet Union. Of all the countries the United States needed to try to obtain this precious metal alloy, it was its most fearsome enemy, as you can imagine, it was completely out of the question for the director of the CIA to pick up the phone and say: "Hello, Soviet" . European Union needed some titanium, so what they did was set up an elaborate plan to buy titanium from the Soviets using various clandestine sources, third parties, and fictitious corporations.

This resulted in perhaps one of the most ironic ventures of the entire Cold War in which a plane was being built to spy on the Soviet Union, which had partly come from the Soviet Union. This is a very Manchurian thing about all this, but just one more point about titanium at the time, it was mainly used for small parts, but the design of the a12 required that most of it be constructed from a rigid alloy and difficult to machine. The plane's curved design, therefore, proved a dilemma for its designer and builders. A solution was found to cut small Phillips from the material and then glue them to the underlying frame rather than trying to cut large scale pieces of titanium as the design progressed, these bullets were eventually replaced by strips of iron ferrite and silicon laminate which They proved to be quite excellent at reflecting radar, as you might expect from a forward-thinking company.

The plane's testing was a bit rocky. The A12 took to the skies for its first test flight on April 26, 1962 with test pilot Lewis Shark here at the controls. The chosen site was the Groom Laker Salt Flats located in the north of the area 51 and It was from this secret location that the A12 tests were carried out. Its maiden voyage traveled three kilometers at an altitude of only six meters above the salt below, despite some serious oscillations caused by improperly connecting some navigation ropes. The flight was deemed a success the next day, the a12 left the salt flats once again, this time logging a total of 40 minutes in the air again.

This was considered a successful flight, but it began to shed its titanium fillings as it climbed above 90 meters thanks to the terms of success. It's a pretty vague concept, the engineers here spent four days searching the area for the basic Phillips and you know we can see why because of the trouble it took to get the material in 1963, the program lost its first A12, the aircraft with the distinction article 123. crash near Wendover in Utah, although the pilot was successfully ejected, this raised an issue of what exactly is said when a secret spy plane crashes on American soil Kenneth S Collins, the pilot of the plane that had gone down was dressed in a standard flight suit that probably helped with the story that a Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a fighter-bomber that had been operating for the past five years, had crashed nearby.

I guess it would have been a lot worse if he had a secret CIA project or just the CIA stamped on his flight suit. Nearby farmers were dissuaded from approaching the crash site by the terrifying news that the plane had crashed while carrying nuclear weapons. Now, obviously this was a lie, but it's certainly a sure way to keep people away from the accident site. Nobody likes to be irradiated any other way. Through cash payments in exchange for silence, $25,000, which today is around two hundred and nine thousand dollars, was apparently paid to each member of the law enforcement team in the area and it didn't stop there, there were multiple stories of payments shady things made over the next few years as the CIA tried to keep the existence of the a12 a secret and apparently if you want to make a little extra money move somewhere near area 51 and wait for things to fall from the sky, right?

That's my tip three. plus a twelve crashed during testing on 9 July 1964, Article 133 ran into trouble when a pitch control servomechanism froze at an altitude of 150 meters, causing the aircraft to roll to the left, exactly what don't you want to do when He was about to land, the pilots were ejected, but due to the trajectory of the plane, he flew to the side, something miraculous considering the altitude and the direction in which his parachute opens, and managed to land safely on December 28, 1965, article 126, it crashed just 30 seconds after takeoff. due to a maintenance error but again the pilot was able to eject to safety, things were not so lucky on 5 January 1967 when Operation Oxcart experienced its first fatality, a definitive reason for the accident was never given from the article 125, but it was most likely a fuel.

A gauge error meant the plane ran out of fuel 108 kilometers from its base. CIA pilot Walter Ray managed to eject successfully, but was unable to disengage from his seat and unfortunately died on impact, despite numerous incidents, this was considered quite normal for an experimental aircraft. Aircraft like the A12 were simply operating at a different level than anything before, in events like these they were considered part and parcel of development. I mean, it's called a test for a reason, things are going to go wrong as you figure out the There's a long way to go, but in the early months of 1967 the US government believed that the plane was ready and that It was time to take off, but before we get into the real world missions this plane flew, let's take a closer look at the plane.

In itself, the a12 is often compared to its success from the sr-71, and if you look at both from a distance, they are almost indistinguishable. The A12 has a wingspan of 17 meters and is exactly the same as that of the SR-71, while its length of 31 meters is marginally shorter. than its younger brother and in fact I have seen that I went to see an SR-71 in a museum and it was much larger than I expected, as I mentioned earlier the a12 was considered a Mac 3 plus aircraft with a top speed of around 4,000 103 km/h, which is still quite extraordinary even today.

The Concorde, which we always associate with record speed, with a top speed of 1,924 kilometers slower than the A12, although, to be fair, the Concorde is a UNS airliner, you know, we don't know. If I have any expectations, then it will grow

faster

than an aircraft like a fighter jet. Now it must be said that much of the information about the A12 is still classified. We have no way of knowing how often or if the A12 is ever needed for travel at this time. speed Just to add to the confusion, the SR-71 has a slightly slower top speed, but still manages to beat the A12 for some of the fastest aircraft on the world list.

This is probably because they only cover official flights and, as we're going to get into, Before long, the A12 was a very unofficial aircraft. The A12 also had the highest service ceiling with a monstrous reported altitude of 29,000 meters, i.e. 95,000 feet, which is not far off from three times the cruising altitude of a current airliner, to be very clear, is 29. kilometers into the sky we would need 35 Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, stacked on top of each other to reach that height and just before continuing with the Burj Khalifa I am not sure about doing mega projects on That is because that there are already so many videos about the Burj Khalifa, although I'm not even sure if it's worth covering them, but if you want, let me know in the comments below and I will oblige you because I find it quite interesting.

I find skyscrapers. nice I started a channel about megaprojects, this doesn't surprise you. The SR-71 has a service ceiling that is 3,048 meters less than the A12, still easily making it the second highest altitude aircraft in aviation history. The A12 was powered by two Pratts. and the new JT 11 D 20 B afterburning turbojet, each with twenty-five hundred foot-pounds of dry thrust and thirty-two thousand five hundred foot-pounds with its afterburner, which was often used during takeoff and evasive maneuvers. . Afterburners are basically a part of the engine that allows you to accelerate for a short time and burns a lot more fuel with them on, so now you might be wondering if you've been paying attention, why is the 1/12

faster

but has less power in your engine?

Well, this was probably so. to the fact that it was six tons

lighter

than the SR-71, as I mentioned before, this plane was always designed to be able to spy on the Soviet Union. I mean who else were Americans going to spy on in the 1960s, though, the takedown. of a u2 over the Soviet Union in May 1960 and the subsequent capture of its pilotsThey meant that the United States gave the USSR a wide berth precisely at the moment when the A12 entered the scene; It is a common misconception that the a12 Arcangel was involved in flights over the Soviet Union in Cuba, but as far as we know, let's remember that some things are still classified.

These flights were never carried out, however, the United States had found itself in a completely new war and the A12 was sent to Southeast Asia operating from its base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, the 1/12th participated in Operation Shield Black, which was designed to obtain a clearer picture of the military movements of the Vietnamese Sam missile defense system, as well as general surveillance. On May 31, 1967, Operation Black Shield began with 12 flying. at an altitude of 24,000 meters at a speed of Mach 3 clearly and no one was taking any risks at this time unfortunately we don't know much about the A12's involvement in the Vietnam War because much of it was or still is classified, but it has been published enough to allow us to build a basic picture.

The Pfeifer breeding flights involved in Operation Black Shield were often more or less the same. The plane was taking off from Kadena on Okinawa before turning southwest, as I mentioned earlier, much of the surveillance. The steps over North Vietnam would determine the country's missile defense system, as well as the position of Rhodes' industrial ports. railways and just about everything you can imagine By the end of 1967, almost all of North Vietnam had been photographed and all twelve Those returning normally did an aerial refueling over Thailand before turning towards Kadena once more, interestingly this route had a set turning radius. of 138 kilometers, which means that sometimes upon returning a twelve would get lost in Chinese airspace for a short period, whether the Chinese knew about this is another question, but no incidents were ever reported, so probably not, so at least At least they didn't want to do anything.

In this regard, things were not so simple in Vietnam, although as I will come to shortly, one of the reasons the A12 had a relatively short lifespan was rapid improvements in Soviet radar detection and, as a consequence, of North Vietnamese radar on three separate occasions. were fired into the sky at 12 passing overhead, but only once did the United States come dangerously close to losing its prized spy plane over enemy territory on October 30, 1967, at least six missiles were fired from the capital, Hanoi, the The pilot reported seeing four of them approach rapidly from behind and one came within 91 meters of him before detonating.

We can imagine that the pilot thanked his lucky stars and then continued on his way, but he had been extraordinarily close, a post-flight inspection actually found a piece of debris. Starting with a missile embedded under a wing dangerously close to the fuel tank, flights over the area where immediately grounded and did not begin again for two months, the SR-71 arrived on the scene in 1968 and joined At the same time as the A12 returned home, the US military saw no need for both aircraft, so to cut costs, the A12 received an early retirement, but this was not simply due to to the SR-71 being considered a superior aircraft.

Much had changed since the A12 design first appeared in 1960. In just eight short years, the United States had suffered the ignominy of losing a U2 over Soviet airspace, as well as witnessing enormous advances in enemy radar defenses. The close calls the A12 had seen over Vietnam had shown that even at their extraordinary height and astonishing speed they were still extremely vulnerable. The introduction of reconnaissance satellites beginning with the Corona satellite in 1959 demonstrated that manned photography flights were no longer possible. They were completely necessary today everyone knows the blackbird sr-71 has become almost a household name, I mean as much as spy planes become household names, but what about the a12?

Not only was it faster and with a

higher

service ceiling, but it laid the foundation for the construction of the SR-71, omitting the A12 when talking about a great spy. Airplanes are like going from a dependent Robin to a Lamborghini. Something definitely came somewhere in between. The A12 was probably a victim of its own classified nature, while the SR-71 was announced to the world in 1964. The existence of its mysterious older brother remained. Secreted for decades, the SR-71 may have a catalog of records, but is this simply because we have never known the full extent of the A12's escapades?

Well we will probably never know, he may forever remain a thunderous and elusive ghost of the skies, so I really hope you found the video interesting, if so please hit the like button below, don't forget to subscribe to this channel , all that good stuff, like I always say, like I said with the Burj Khalifa if you have a suggestion for this channel tap or let me know in the comments below. I would love to know and most of them are made from your suggestions so yes I suggest a way and they will probably be finished and thanks for watching.