It may look like the SR-71 Blackbird, but this sleek flying beast is not the most famous supersonic spy plane ever created but its father, the A-12 Oxcart. In some ways, it was a better machine than the famous Blackbird. This is its history.
The story of this Mach 3.2 technological wonder starts in 1957 and, like all secret flying things full of gadgets, it’s fascinating.
The OXCART program story began in 1957, when a contractor suggested that high-altitude supersonic flight was the only way to avoid Soviet air defenses. The CIA’s Richard M. Bissell, who was directing the 1954 U-2 spy plane program at the time, was concerned about their vulnerability to USSR radars and anti-air missiles. He was right: in 1960 the Soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 near Sverdlovsk.
By then the A-12 program was already under way: after Lockheed Aircraft completed “antiradar studies, aerodynamic structural tests, and engineering designs,” the CIA gave the green light to produce the 12 aircraft on January 30th, 1960. It was still called the A-11 at the time and Lockheed engineer Clarence L. Johnson was the main designer. He also was responsible for the U-2 but, for some reason and after months of drawings and wind-tunnel model testing, people were still not convinced this beast could fly.
It did, but only after years of tests and adjustments. It was a difficult path. The aircraft skin, for example, had to made out of a titanium alloy, as it had to resist 550 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures while flying at top speed. The aircraft manufacturing process, which at that point only used aluminum frames, was an absolute nightmare. All machinery broke trying to work the titanium and new tooling parts had to be designed and created from scratch. As a result, each plane had to be hand-crafted.
The quest to make its radar signature was also painful. For one year and a half, a full- scale model of the plane manufactured with new radar-absorbent materials was tested. Sitting on a pylon in a secret base and after countless adjustments, it was discovered that adding some big metallic parts to each side of the fuselage reduced the radar footprint. Johnson thought it was going to harm the aerodynamics but, in later flight tests, it was clear it helped the lift. It was all part of the quest for radar invisibility but, years later, these features were used by Lockheed in other supersonic designs. As a result of all these changes to its original design, the plane got its final designation: the A-12.
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