Undoubtedly one of the highlight aircraft designs of the 20th Century was the Lockheed Blackbird. The majority of the public with any interest in aviation knows about the SR-71. But that was not the first Blackbird variant to fly. It was the A-12.

This aircraft came about as it was pretty obvious that the U-2 was not going to be able to survive on its ability to fly at high altitudes alone. While it was (and is) an excellent camera platform, it is hampered by its rather slow speed. The design of the plane meant that it was subsonic and in an era when missiles were becoming more and more able to reach the near stratospheric flight altitudes of the U-2, it was obvious that the next generation of 'spyplane' had to be fast as well.

For years the U-2 had been overflying the Soviet Union and able to do so with impunity as Soviet interceptors were not able to reach the altitudes at which the U-2 flew. Despite the knowledge that the Soviets were able to track the flights, the missions continued. This came to an end in 1960 when they managed to shoot one down with SAMs and captured the pilot, Gary Powers. From then on, the U-2 was forbidden to overfly the Soviet Union and so had to do 'standoff' missions just outside the border.

Fortunately, its replacement was already being build, and this was the A-12. The design and development of the A-12 required a number of challenges to be met. The biggest one was how to make the plane less visible to radar. The first use of what is now a cliché, 'stealth technology', was designed into the A-12. This ranged from the shapes and materials used in the plane to the paint put on it. This was not an easy task for the aircraft was also supposed to fly at Mach 3+ for sustained periods of time. This meant that the materials in the plane had to withstand the heat of friction as well stay viable for the duration of the airframe's life.

Not wanting to ruin a very cool part of the book on how these things were worked out, I can only say that they succeeded.

Included in the book is not only the development of the A-12, but also the YF-12A interceptor. The A-12's operational history is included and that fully covers its use in Vietnam and other crisis areas until the aircraft was withdrawn from service in 1968. The reason for this was that the two seat SR-71 was operational and it did not seem to make sense to operate two similar platforms from two different agencies (CIA and USAF) at the same time. While the SR-71 was superior to the A-12 in many ways, one area of lesser abilities was in cameras. Regardless, the A-12 program (Oxcart) was terminated and the extant airframes eventually made their way to museums after the planes had been in storage for many years.

In all, it is a very well done book that shows attention to research that does a great job of telling the story of this remarkable aircraft.

February 2014

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