Thirteen A-12's were built for the CIA's "Oxcart" program before being superseded by the USAF's two seat SR-71. The A-12 was shorter in length, visible here with the shorter tail, which would be elongated in the SR-71 to hold more fuel. It also had a single camera and was crewed by a single person to operate both the aircraft and the surveillance equipment. This allowed it to fly higher and faster. The SR-71 carried an entire suite of ECM countermeasures, optical and radar imaging, operated by a second crewman.
60-6925 was the second A-12 to be built for flight testing. For a time in 1962, it was mounted on a pole at Area 51 for radar signature testing. The aircraft were mothballed in 1968 and before "925" was disassembled into five pieces and trucked to Corpus Christi, Texas. There it was reassembled and loaded onto a barge bound for New York City in 1990. Today the plane is on display atop the flight deck of an aircraft carrier at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum.
We have an A-12 here at the USS Alabama Battleship park aviation pavilion! They roll it outside when they have events in the pavilion. It's really big.
I read about the transition to SR71. They got volunteers who met the qualifications to be trained to fly the aircraft, & started training. The aircraft never existed before. Everyone was the 1st!
Then a guy was transferred into the training squadron who already knew how to fly it. The aircraft never existed before, & he knew how to fly it. Nobody was allowed to ask him, & he wasn't allowed to tell.
He'd been a military pilot in the Oxcart program. I'm sure he fried a few brains trying to figure out how he knew.
![image showing [OC] Faster and higher than an SR-71](df379dea-ead6-55d0-b49c-4f16a9ccff54.jpg)
-AtomicAerials- on February 22nd, 2026 at 20:26 UTC »
Thirteen A-12's were built for the CIA's "Oxcart" program before being superseded by the USAF's two seat SR-71. The A-12 was shorter in length, visible here with the shorter tail, which would be elongated in the SR-71 to hold more fuel. It also had a single camera and was crewed by a single person to operate both the aircraft and the surveillance equipment. This allowed it to fly higher and faster. The SR-71 carried an entire suite of ECM countermeasures, optical and radar imaging, operated by a second crewman.
60-6925 was the second A-12 to be built for flight testing. For a time in 1962, it was mounted on a pole at Area 51 for radar signature testing. The aircraft were mothballed in 1968 and before "925" was disassembled into five pieces and trucked to Corpus Christi, Texas. There it was reassembled and loaded onto a barge bound for New York City in 1990. Today the plane is on display atop the flight deck of an aircraft carrier at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum.
regreddit on February 22nd, 2026 at 20:58 UTC »
We have an A-12 here at the USS Alabama Battleship park aviation pavilion! They roll it outside when they have events in the pavilion. It's really big.
civex on February 22nd, 2026 at 21:23 UTC »
I read about the transition to SR71. They got volunteers who met the qualifications to be trained to fly the aircraft, & started training. The aircraft never existed before. Everyone was the 1st!
Then a guy was transferred into the training squadron who already knew how to fly it. The aircraft never existed before, & he knew how to fly it. Nobody was allowed to ask him, & he wasn't allowed to tell.
He'd been a military pilot in the Oxcart program. I'm sure he fried a few brains trying to figure out how he knew.