Blackbird Beginnings: The A-12 Oxcart Story

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. When Francis Gary Powers was shot down flying a U-2 over the Soviet Union, 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 territori…