Many Americans can remember the effectiveness of the A-12 during the Viet Nam War. When these planes debuted in the 1960's they were to replace the U-2 spy plane, but were soon discovered to be ineffective against the Soviet's during the Cold War. There are currently only nine left in existence today. One of those planes was brought to CIA headquarters this week where it now sits inactive.
This is a fitting place for the A-12 since it was commisioned as a spy plane for the CIA during the Cold War and was later used in Viet Nam for the same kind of operations. By then adjustments had been made making it more effective and a critical part of the US strategy in Viet Nam.
There was a ceremony held at the CIA for this homecoming where some of the original pilots of the A-12 talked about their experiences with the development of this aircraft in which two of fifteen pilots were killed five of fifteen planes crashed and many problems were ironed out.
The A-12 is now home and the CIA is proud to have it there. The pilots who made them famous are glad to have the plane recognized and I am glad to recognize those pilots for their accomplishments with the A-12.
4 comments:
It is very interesting that there were fifteen crashes in the process of developing this aircraft. I am sure it is a very expensive plane so i can't imagine the total cost of all the wrecked planes. I am sure that was all tax dollars. Hopely the aircraft was useful enough to make the time and money worth it. Anything to keep our country safe.
Dude, isn't that a SR-71? I have never heard it called a A-12. The only other plane with that letter designation is the A-10 and that is a tank buster, not a spy plane.
To clarify when the plane was first commisioned during the Cold War it was named the A-12. It had its problems during the war(getting shot down frequently) so before it was used in Viet Nam it was tweaked to make it fast enough to outrun SAM's. When this new version was released it was named the more commonly known SR-71. The reason the picture confused you is because no major structural changes were made.
ohh alright cool, thx!
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