Image:A12Blackbird.jpg

Uploaded to en wiki at 10:52, 26 August 2004 by en:User:Kowloonese.

His description:

A-12 in Museum.

This picture shows a one-of-a-kind A-12 trainer with an extra cockpit for the instructor.

I took this picture in Aug 2004 at the California ScienCenter's Roy A. Anderson Blackbird Exhibit & Garden in Los Angeles.

Regular A-12s were one-seater spy planes built for CIA. Compare to the later SR-71 which were two-seater spy planes built for USAF. Compare to the YF-12 interceptor which has a pointy nose cone. All three types of airplanes A-12, SR-71 and YF-12 are designed with different capabilities for different missions and have distinct exterior features though they look very similar. Even press release photos from the government sometimes mixed up the pictures. It is unknown if the mix up was intentional or not because these projects were in secrecy and unclassified pictures were hard to come by.

On 26 January 1960, the CIA ordered twelve A-12 aircraft. After SR-71 was chosen to replace the A-12, May 8th, 1968 saw the last operational mission of an A-12, which was over North Korea. After this, all A-12s were sent back to Palmdale to be put into storage for several decades before going to museums around the United States. This particular specimen in LA is the only A-12 trainer ever built. It was put on display in 2003.

The plaque at the exhibit said the following: Spy in the sky The A-12 Blackbird flew high and light A-12 Trainer Specs Material: Titanium Length: 31.2 meters (102 feet, 3 inches) Wingspan: 16.9 meters (55 feet, 7 inches) Height: 5.6 meters (18 feet, 6 inches) Takeoff weight: 53,000 kg 117,000 pounds) Landing weight: 23,600 kg (52,000 pounds) Speed: Mach 2.0, twice the speed of sound Altitude: 18,000 meters (60,000 feet) Engines: 2 Pratt & Whitney I-75 engines, each rated at 17,000 pounds of thrust First flight: January 1963 Number of flights: 614 Hours of flight: 1,076 hours flying time

Did you know? The A-12 trainer has two cockpits: one for an instructor and one for a pilot in training. Black paint on the plane's nose kept reflected sunlight from blinding the pilots.

Built for extreme performance The Skunk Works, a special classified-projects group at the Lockheed Aircraft Company, made huge advances in aircraft technology to build the A-12. Since the A-12 as the first titanium aircraft, the project team discovered a lot about how to work with this challenging metal.

The A-12 team developed new methods so fuels and oil could stand up to the extreme heat in the plane's engine. They also tested new ways to make aircraft less visible to radar.

Kowloonese, the copyright holder of this work, has published or hereby publishes it under the following license: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation license". Aragonés | العربية | Asturianu | Български | বাংলা | ইমার ঠার/বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী | Brezhoneg | Bosanski | Català | Cebuano | Česky | Dansk | Deutsch | Ελληνικά | English | Esperanto | Español | Eesti | Euskara | فارسی | Suomi | Français | Gaeilge | Galego | עברית | Hrvatski | Magyar | Bahasa Indonesia | Ido | Íslenska | Italiano | 日本語 | ქართული | ភាសាខ្មែរ | 한국어 | Kurdî / كوردی | Latina | Lëtzebuergesch | Lietuvių | Bahasa Melayu | Nnapulitano | Nederlands | ‪Norsk (nynorsk)‬ | ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬ | Occitan | Polski | Português | Română | Русский | Slovenčina | Slovenščina | Shqip | Српски / Srpski | Svenska | తెలుగు | ไทย | Türkçe | Українська | اردو | Tiếng Việt | Volapük | Yorùbá | ‪中文(中国大陆)‬ | ‪中文(台灣)‬ | +/-

La page ci-dessous contient cette image :

• Lockheed A-12 Oxcart