In total, three AF-12s were constructed, with the maiden flight of the prototype being conducted by Lockheed test pilot Jim Eastham from Area 51 on August 7, 1963. To draw attention away from the covert CIA A-12 program, President Lyndon Johnson announced the existence of the “A-11” at Edwards AFB on February 29, 1963. The “A-11” title was a deliberate piece of deception engineered by Kelly Johnson; but with the AF-12 now assigned an official Air Force designation (YF-12A), this further compounded the confusion!
Test flights of the new interceptor from Edwards AFB continued with increased frequency and confidence and on April 16, 1964, the first missile — now designated AIM-47 — was ejected in flight. Between March 18, 1965 and September 21, 1966, the three YF-12As fired a total of seven AIM-47s. The final mission (G-20), flown in YF-12A 60-6936, successfully intercepted a QB-47 remotely piloted target drone whilst cruising at Mach 3.2 and an altitude of 74,000ft — the target drone was at sea level!
Aerospace Defense Command officials calculated that 96 F-12B production aircraft could replace its entire fleet of Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart interceptors and provide protection for the entire United States against incoming Soviet high-speed, low-level bombers; but it wasn’t to be. Instead, political shenanigans and a long-simmering feud over the appropriation of defense funds between Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Air Force resulted in McNamara denying $90 million worth of funds that had been appropriated by Congress to begin F-12B production. These delaying tactics played out by McNamara eventually paid off and on January 5, 1968, the Skunk Works finally received official notification from the Air Force to close down the F-12B production line. To seal the fate of future Mach 3 aircraft production, Johnson received a letter from the Air Force dated February 5, 1968, instructing Lockheed to destroy the A-12/F-12 tooling, including that used in SR-71 production. In a later response the designer wrote, “We have proceeded to store such items as are required for producing spare parts at Norton. The large jigs have now been cut up for scrap and we are finishing the clean-up of the complete area. Ten years from now the country will be very sorry for taking this decision of stopping production on the whole Mach 3 series of aircraft in the USA.”
It is probably no coincidence that the date chosen to demonstrate some of the YF-12A’s awesome capabilities was May 1, 1965 — five years to the day since Gary Powers was shot down by a Soviet SA-2 during a U-2 overflight. It should also be noted that as impressive as the figures below are, they are not demonstrations of the airplane’s absolute capabilities. For example, on November 20, 1965, an A-12 attained speeds in excess of Mach 3.2 and a sustained altitude capability above 90,000ft. During the first operational deployment of a CIA A-12, from Area 51 to Kadena Air Base on the island of Okinawa, pilot Mele Vojvodich covered the distance in Article 131 (60-6937) in just six hours, six minutes; had it not been for security considerations, this could easily have been recognized as a new trans-Pacific speed record.
On May 1, 1965, Article 1003 (60-6936), crewed by Col Robert L. “Fox” Stephens and Fire Control Officer (FCO) Lt Col Daniel Andre, simultaneously achieved an absolute altitude record of 80,257ft and an absolute speed over a straight course of 2,070.101mph. Lt Col Walter F. Daniel and FCO Maj James P. Cooney took 60-6936 to a speed of 1,688.889mph over a 500km closed course and the same crew got the 1,000km closed course record in 60-6936 at 1,643.041mph.
SR-71
The final variation of the A-12 design was of course the legendary SR-71, but this will be covered in depth in a separate Air Vanguard volume.
OPERATIONAL HISTORY
Since the May 1, 1960 U-2 shoot-down, successive US Presidents continued Eisenhower’s pledge not to sanction manned overflights of the Soviet Union. The loss of Maj Rudy Anderson’s U-2 to an SA-2 over Cuba both highlighted the aircraft’s vulnerability and vindicated the decision to build a replacement, but still the question remained: where could Oxcart, this highly sophisticated, multi-million-dollar program, be deployed?
One possible mission arose in 1964, when KH-4 Corona satellite imagery obtained what some analysts believed was an antiballistic missile site, located at Tallinn in Estonia. The Office of Special Activities (OSA) proposed that a composite mission should be flown consisting of a camera-equipped Oxcart, and a U-2 configured for gathering ELINT. The highly classified proposal had the classified cryptonym Project Upwind. The plan was to fly the A-12, with air refueling support, from the United States to the Baltic Sea, where it would rendezvous with the U-2. The Oxcart would then fly down the Baltic Sea, skirting the coasts of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and East Germany before heading back west to the United States. The 11,000-mile flight would take eight hours, 40 minutes to complete and require four air refuelings. Remaining outside Soviet airspace, it was hoped that the high-speed, high-altitude target would provoke Soviet radar operators into activating the Tallinn system. The A-12 would secure high-resolution imagery of the Tallinn site whilst the more vulnerable U-2 would be standing off, beyond SA-2 range, recording the radar’s signal characteristics. Both Agency and Defense Department officials supported the proposal; however, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was strongly opposed and the influential 303 Committee never forwarded the proposal to President Johnson for his approval.
Another possible area of operations for Oxcart was Cuba. By early 1964, Project Headquarters had already begun planning for possible “contingency overflights” under a program codenamed Skylark. Four of the 13 A-12s then at Area 51 were initially designated as primary Skylark aircraft, namely Articles 125, 127, 128, and 132, and they were later joined by Articles 129 and 131 following the installation of further modifications.
A meeting on September 15, 1964 between Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and DCI John McCone, discussed the limitations of satellite coverage of Cuba in the context of monitoring assurances made by the Soviet Union following the 1962 missile crisis not to redeploy nuclear missiles on the island. The discussion also covered the vulnerability of the U-2 to undertake such missions in the light of past events and the very real SAM threat. It was agreed that Oxcart overflights would be less vulnerable than the U-2, but not entirely invulnerable. McNamara believed that one flight every 30 days would provide enough coverage of the island to fulfill the United States Intelligence Board requirements; but others in attendance disagreed, particularly on the number of sorties required, given a study of the history of weather over Cuba. The parties adjourned, agreeing that the subject should receive further study that should include Oxcart vulnerability under the Skylark program and a substantive judgment as to the number of flights required from November 1964 to November 1965 in order to accomplish acceptable coverage of the island with usable photography.