Talyn
Emissary
Note: It's amazing what these folks designed paper sketch's and slide-rules, built rather quickly, & flew with w/o todays computers.
-----------------------------When Francis Gary Powers was shot down flying a U-2 over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, it became apparent the Soviets had finally found a way to knock the high-flying spy plane from the sky at last. With the Cold War heating up and in order to continue overflights of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact territories, a new aircraft was needed; one with tremendous speed, range, and altitude capabilities.
The Need for Speed
Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Projects, or better known as the infamous ‘Skunk Works’, had been working on a replacement for the U-2. President Eisenhower had officially and publicly ended U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, but Kelly was determined to create an aircraft that was leaps and bounds ahead of its time and the U-2.
Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson of Lockheed’s ‘Skunk Works’ poses at the wing of a U-2. Johnson picked up the name ‘Kelly’
after how he handled a school yard bully during his youth, breaking the offending youngster’s leg in the process.
Johnson’s peers decide he needed a good Irish fighting name, and ‘Kelly’ was chosen from a popular song at the time,
‘Kelly from the Emerald Isle’. The name stuck. (Image Credit: U.S. Air Force)
Blackbird Beginnings: The A-12 Oxcart Story
The well-known SR-71 owes its roots to a more obscure predecessor, the A-12 developed by the famous Lockheed ‘Skunk Works’ as a successor for the U-2.
theaviationist.com
A Lockheed A-12 (60-6931) on display outside CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. After hundreds of hours flown by the elite team of CIA
and Lockheed pilots, the A-12 was declared fully operational, attaining the design specifications of a sustained speed of Mach 3.2 at
90,000 feet altitude. This is the number eight in production of the 15 A-12s built and has 232 flights to its credit.
(Image credit: Central Intelligence Agency)
Note: I've seen several SR-71/A-12 including this one.
Underside view of the Lockheed A-12 (60-6927) two-seat trainer at the California Science Center in Los Angeles clearly shows the myriad
of panel work required in constructing such an advanced aircraft. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Left is SR-71A (61-7973) Right is A-12 (60-6924) on display in the Blackbird Airpark, Palmdale, California. Behind them and facing away is
a U-2. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)