The A-12 Archangel: Faster, Lighter, Higher than the SR-71 

Don't worry about Russia - they were handsomely rewarded when Obama and Hillary sold them 20% of our Uranium reserves. Compare the cost of acquiring Uranium vs Titanium and you will see that Russia made out when you compare the two exchanges of rare elements.

@@joeyshmoey8514 EXACTLY! THANK YOU!

Business is business

@@joeyshmoey8514 no proof

@JOE BLOW FROM COCOMO please check your info, the Uranium One deal was for a Russian energy company to buy a Canadian energy company that operated uranium mining operations in the US but did not involve any exporting of uranium. Did the Clintons receive payments to help make the deal happen? Probably, they are as corrupt as any other politicians. Does this excuse any actions done by others in the government? Nope.

Haha are you referencing the L.A speed check video?

The "F is for Family model"

@@icicle8263 No that is Mr Shul, the man with severe combat burns from Vietnam. Here is Mr Murray, callsign "Dutch-20". This is where he describes the A-12 and then the SR-71 as the family model with its extra crewmember and extra length, fuel capacity and more weight. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MGdxpqqsHl8.html.

@@randymann7251 The only "blackbird" with an "F" in its descriptor is the YF-12A, the 2 seat version that almost made it to production as a high speed AIM-47 missile carrying/firing interceptor. Similar missiles that became the F-14's AIM-54 Phoenix and AWG-9 RADAR system. Here's a YF-12A in flight, notice its chines do NOT come all the way to the tip of the nose. This lack of front chines was to accommodate the RADAR dish in the nose. pic of YF-12A distinct chines upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/YF-12_Forward_Chine.jpg/330px-YF-12_Forward_Chine.jpg The lack of chines necessitated a large ventral fin to be extended after takeoff as the landing gear was retracted this fin came down in the center of the aircraft. 2 additional non retractable ventral fins were located under each engine nacelle. ONLY the YF-12 had these 3 ventral fins. Heres a pic of the 2 ventral fins under each engine nacelle upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Lockheed_YF-12A_60-6934_in_Air_Defense_Command_markings_1963.jpg/1280px-Lockheed_YF-12A_60-6934_in_Air_Defense_Command_markings_1963.jpg In fact I have pics of myself next to a blackbird and I thought it was an SR-71, but years later noticed that it was indeed one of the 3 YF-12A's. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/YF-12A.jpg/450px-YF-12A.jpg Here's the very vbird I was pictured beside, not same picture, but same bird in teh same position as my pics. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8e/YF-12A_NMUSAF.jpg/1280px-YF-12A_NMUSAF.jpg YF-12A tests flying at over 75,000 feet at Mach 3 were able to not only lock on and then destroy a maneuvering target drone jet flying at 750 feet. The missile was not loaded with a live warhead, the missile destroyed the target drone by physically hitting the drone. Impressive in a time where "look down/shoot-down" RADAR tech was in its infancy. There was the single seat A-12, then the 2 M-21(M for Mothership as it launched the D-21 (D for Daughter) drone to spy on China. M-21 pictured here with a D-21 daughter/drone on its back in teh launch position upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/LockheedM21-D21.jpg/330px-LockheedM21-D21.jpg The drone took pics, flew through China, popped its camera film and allowed the film to descend under a parachute, while awaiting modified C-130 Hercules orbited nearby in order to catch the film canisters mid flight. Very similar ops occurred for the satellite film canisters from the early Hexagon program. The M-21 backseater was known as the LCO or Launch Control Officer. The YF-12A backseater was the FCO for Fire Control Officer. The 3 variants of SR-71 "A", "B" and "C" all had a backseater that controlled all the various snooping and countermeasures devices. He was called the RCO for Reconnaissance Control Officer. A-12, M-21, YF-12A and SR-71 A/B/C all used the J-58 turboramjet engines except for the unpainted A-12 trainer referred to as the Titanium Goose, fitting as the A-12 was referred to as a "Cygnus" or baby goose. (Titanium Goose A-12 trainer pictured here upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/A12Blackbird.jpg/330px-A12Blackbird.jpg It was a trainer aircraft with the backseat position added so that a training pilot can help train the front seater. This aircraft never got J58 engines and always had the 2 J-75 engines which kept her speed limited to just over Mach-2. During early test flights of the A-12, there were NOT many J68s available and there were a few A-12s that flew with one J58 in one nacelle with a J-75 in the other.

Looks kinda like a station wagon.

No he did not

@@jamesclifford5074 I smell jealous

Thanks for sharing, very interesting indeed, your Grandfather must have been quite a man indeed.

Your grandpa has a cool name.

@@jamesclifford5074 If it's made up he went to a lot of effort to find the name of a real person in that program.

Amazing. I would love to take you for a pint and listen to much more. All the very best & th,anks for sharing man

Thanks for raising your right hand. We owe you a debt of gratitude ( from another Vet)

Thank you for your sacrifice and service sir. Being on the ground in Nam was 1,000 times more intense than being in the air. Not trying to diminish what the airmen were up against, but trudging through the Vietnam rainforest with all that gear not knowing when the next ambush would happen must have been nerve racking! 😳

Thank for your service.

Amazing recollections. Glad you made it out of Nam and are still kicking!

The turning radius of an SR-71 at speed and altitude was 180 NM, which kind of invalidates Brian Shul, flying a racetrack pattern over some building. Brian had a tendency to exaggerate his exploits, i.e., exceeding Mach 3.5, while overflying Libya, when the tactical limit of the SR-71 was Mach 3.35 and slowing below 160 knots, while trying to fly-over a control tower in England. Unless he was in ground effect, just before touching down on a runway, at that speed, the aircraft would have stalled with an immediate pitch-up and loss of control.

And I'm the proud owner of two of Brian's books, early copies of "Sled Driver" and "The Untouchables."

Dotar Sojat thicc ass

@@Bluelevitron - I'd bet on some of the inaccuracy in the tall tales to be deliberate fudging of the flight envelopes details.

@@Bluelevitron nice!

Derkie84 now you have phone zombies

well if an f35 crashed near your area and someone told you it had nukes would you really go see?

Not really, they were just more scared. Remember, schools were drilling children on nuclear attacks and every other story in the press was about the horrors and likelihood of a nuclear apocalypse.

Legal segregation existed in the US in the 60s so I strongly disagree with people being "smarter" back then.

Of course. Now if they told me they were conventional bombs then no way. Not only is a nuke less likely to explode from a crash, if it was "in my area" it going off would probably kill me whether I went to see it or not. In fact, seeing that writing on a plane and thinking just not going near it would save you would be indicative of stupidity.

Having had access to TS materials... The Soviets did make sort of a copy of the S/R-71. It's edges were much more rounded but looked almost identical. They ran theirs to the early 90's. Lyndon Baines Johnson unofficially changed the name of the S/R-71 by accidentally placing the S before the R in notes to the Airforce and Lockheed. Rather than correct him the AF/CIA/Lockheed changed the designation name.

So many remarkable design elements, particularly considering how long ago it was conceived. The pointed cones on the engines' nacelles were designed to deliver the shock waves from supersonic flight directly into the engine intakes to increase compression.

@@jonathanheck631 they also moved forward and aft depending upon speed and thrust requirements. I've heard a few stories about them not working correctly and flaming out. Which from the stories, when that did happen. It REALLY got the crews attention!!! Regardless of age and teething problems, Imo the A-12 and SR-71 is the sexist aircraft to ever grace the sky's!! From design, construction, to flight parameters it's simply an amazing AC. No it wasn't a G machine, no its climb rate wasn't the best, no it didn't have a big gun or high tech armaments. Because it didn't need it. Just light'em up and wave goodbye. I mean the SR-71 raced the sun........and won!!! SIMPLY AMAZING!! Thank You Skunk works!!

Every technology they've withheld will look futuristic

Honestly I thought the A-12 was new. Awesome looking air craft

JESUS THANK YOU

Eyyy, a Scott in the wild!

Well, you’d know ;)

The Museum of Flight in Seattle has an M-21, which is the A-12 based launch platform for the D-21 drone. I ate dinner underneath it once while I was attending my wife’s company party.

@@jamesweldon9726 that's uber koo!!! Lucky you, have a wife and got to eat dinner with her under that?! lucky man!!!! don't let her go!!! Sounds like a keeper to me. Wishing you and yours the absolute best in life! ( sorry I still quite haven't figured out this trolling stuff yet)

Another A-12 is on display at the Medal of Honor Aircraft Pavilion in Mobile, Alabama, next to the battleship USS Alabama.

I suspect the Chinese leadership wouldn’t have wanted to admit to the existence and incursion of a plane so much more advanced than anything they had. And so beyond their capabilities to do anything about. So a big “nope” at the upper levels of Chinese military as well.

Hay, when you can solve a problem in a moral way that helps you to sleep at night? You do it.

Fantastic story. Thanks for sharing it! 👍

I love reading the comment section for hidden gems like this, thank you for sharing bud

"relocated" yeah, 50 miles off shore with concrete shoes on!

Well goes to show that the Civil Engineer did a better job of counter intelligence than the CIA did on that front, and restricting his model purchases from the beginning would mean that he would never have caught the "leak" and many wasted hours looking inside the camp when some random passer by who made models was the unwitting leak ... people see unknown things in the sky, people take pictures, if they have the skill they remake them .... its how humans have made money for millenia, and seems to be a weakness in intelligence thinking at that point

They were not designed to leak on the ground then seal up once heated up at speed. They didn't leak at higher altitudes because by that time the tanks weren't full anymore. Each area of the jet had a certain allowance for the number of fuel drips per unit of time were allowed. Certain areas allowed more leakage than others, some didnt allow any drips Once a certain level of "drips per hour" had been violated, the aircraft is pulled and its tanks are resealed. It was the sealant used that would degrade due to the thermal/chemical/physical movement of the joints that caused the leaks. Every 1-1/2 hours these beasts had to slow down/descend from Mach 3 plus/80,000+ feet and come down to 250knots/25,000 feet and sit on a tanked for over 15 minutes. A-12 held 68,000 pounds the SR-71 being longer held approx 80,000 pounds of fuel. The blackbirds became so heavy during fueling that towards the end of the filling session, the pilot had to engage a single afterburner in order to keep up with the tanker aircraft. They would stroke the afterburner in one engine and then control speed with the other engine. These birds were in a constant dance of acceleration/climb from a tanker with decelerating/descending to a tanker.

And the M-21/D-21 pair while we are at it :-)

The Eagle Missiles for the YF-12 were used on the F-111B, then improved and called AIM-54 Pheonix and put on the F-14 Tomcat.

RS-71 do u know the story behind that

@@boruff68 Those would be the pilot training aircraft.

@@canddtv221 Politicians lol

Me too, I thought of only blackbird as the

then you never heard of the YF 12 A either. The "fighter" version. The only example made is at, "THE NATIONAL MUSEUM of the USAF" Dayton,OHIO.

@@jeffreymcfadden9403 not entirely true. The SR-71C at Hill AFB is a YF-12 prototype that was modified into a trainer for the SR-71 program.

I heard from a friend the SR-71 fuel tanks were designed to expand with the skin of the aircraft and seal completely when heated by supersonic friction. Before getting up to operating temperature the tanks would leak, which was why they refueled in mid-air after takeoff. That is a ballsy way to deal with fuel leaks!

@@firstmkb I agree the fuel tanks are integral to the aircraft structure. The highest temperature occurs in the outer edges of the aircraft-they are trimmed with composite materials like the Space shuttle. Fuel is used to cool the aircraft and balance the Pitch (AOA).

@UCYyt9WQ9FZXGrgZBIpF_3KA I, as one, am not willing to argue the point of weather or not the A-12 and or the SR-71 had afterburners, It seems to me that if you are capable of writing in these comments....then for sure you are capable of looking that information up for yourself!!!! And if it's any good for you I'm going on 79 year's myself. But if I feel like making a comment about something I, as one, make DAMN SURE THAT I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! Michael said that. Bye for now my friend

Have read stories from pilots that claimed to be far over the top speed declared for brief moments. The limit is susposed to be the windscreen temperature limits.

@@firstmkb The SR71 also used a specialized jet fuel named JP7 which was specifically designed to have extremely low volatility, low vapor pressure, and high oxidation stability, all meaning that it's extremely hard to ignite. The stuff was so unwilling to ignite that every single time that the engines were started or went into afterburner they had to shoot an extremely volatile hypergolic chemical called Triethylborane into each engine in order to ignite the fuel. The airplane was incredibly fuel efficient once it got above about Mach 2.2 because above those speeds the engines would transition from functioning like normal turbojets to functioning as ramjets, the SR-71's had a fleet of tankers in the air wherever they needed while they were on mission, the only thing that gave them a hard limit in terms of mission length was the limited amount of Triethylborance (TEB) charges they had.

I’m glad you didn’t name her “Enterprise”.

right? we dont want to hear someone else talk about things, we want to hear SIMON talk about things

If only I could heart react this..

He just wants people to comment, it helps the algorithm.

Rocky nah, trolling him was hiring the construction company to break danny and sam out

DEW IT! *CRACKLES MANICALLY*

Some of the ads are really, really gross-- apparently saved for late night hours. We might attempt to believe RU-vid had better standards, but that is probably a wasted effort..

Ikr

Yup. I'll stick to Scott Manly who doesn't put ads in his videos and very similar content

Seriously, I see NO commercials anymore. I forget that RU-vid has them. I got the free AdBlock thing. I'm on my desktop now, but sometimes I watch on my phone that doesn't have the app, and it sucks! I've had it for a long time, and no problems.

@@TheDing1701 I watch way too much stuff on my phone, and my laptop is right there lol. Thanks for the info anyway TheDing.

Our FFG tracked both the Space Shuttle and S/R-71 once. Each appeared as ONE BLIP and was gone off our radar screen. If you blinked you missed it.

But every video is well made and very informative!

He has enough for two Infinity gauntlets.

@@peytonberg7872 especially informative because every 2:30 you get shown ads

😂😂🤣

@Irish Jester still takes skill to present it in a way that people actually listen to and comprehend.

@_SilverArrow_xxx I did, thanks! He actually was the engineer who solved the problem of the over-heating of the air inlet (RAM effect, he said) where the seals and solder on the electrical components would melt at over mach 3 from friction. They didn't want to use water coolant and another tank, so he had the idea to use the fuel to pass through the inlet housing. It had three positive effects: less weight with no additional coolant tank/pump, saved needing to enlarge the plane and pre-heated the fuel for burning efficiency.

Better would be the TR3B.

Nah galaxy is sick tho

Great idea!

Ah, the good old C-5. Was stationed for years at Dover AFB and while they make great videos for their figures, those old beasts are really difficult to load!

Years of that thing flying a few hundred feet above my house has left me not only desensitized to it, but also annoyed by it's obnoxiously loud engines. Since then it's been replaced by the C-17 here, which isn't nearly as loud luckily.

Production: Success is mission completion. Experimental Projects: But did anyone die?

Gone in 60 seconds

I did the same when I was stationed there in the 80's :-)

It was used as a testbed to develop technologies that were later needed during the development of the “Aurora” hypersonic aircraft in the 1980s, which is still classified but has been seen and heard by lots of people

it was great for its time ,but some seem to think it compares to the independence day alien space craft in performance lol

@@scooterdogg7580 It was also obsolete when Sputnik was launched and the threat became Soviet ICBMs. It was designed really for one mission, as a highspeed Interceptor.

@@scooterdogg7580 I grew up in an RCAF family and ever since the cancellation of the Arrow they have never forgotten which party did it. That said, we can see from this video that interceptor aircraft had been rendered obsolete. The British also cancelled their maga-interceptor, the TSR-2 for exactly the same reason.

@@kimchipig The TSR-2 was to be a low level nuclear bomber to replace the V-Bombers. It was cancelled under American pressure and they offered Britain a deal on the F-111 as a replacement. The deal went sour after delays and cost over-runs on the F-111 so Britain did not get its new bomber until it developed the Panavia Tornado together with european partners.

the arrow was definitely the real deal, killed by politics .

At speed, the intakes provided over 60% of the aircraft's thrust. I don't know how that works, to be honest, but none other than Ben Rich, the lead engineer who designed the intakes, confirmed this to be true in his book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed". The improvement in fuel burn was mainly due to the intakes also, from what I've read. Of course, higher speed required a higher fuel burn rate (the laws of physics being what they are), but the burn rate per pound of thrust went down, as did the burn rate per mile. Those intakes were pretty friggin' amazing.

@@ztoob8898 I think its literally pulling in so much air that its pulling the plane forward.

@@ztoob8898 it uses compression forces according to Bernoulli's principle for air compression being negligible at lower velocities, but inversely more important at higher velocities. The more you can slow down an extremely fast gas, the more it will increase in pressure at supersonic speeds. The engine adjusts for compression ratios at supersonic speeds to maintain an increasing thrust. So yeah, it kinda just pulls air in to move it forward using physics.

@@autisonm The J58 is a Turbo Ramjet. At High mach, the spike does the majority of the work compressing the air which is then bypassed around the main engine (compressor,combustion chamber and turbine assy) and into the afterburner section. This makes the afterburner way more efficient because this highly compressed air is unburnt thus having more oxygen. So in reality the afterburner is used constantly at high mach numbers, but it's not technically an afterburner at this point (because the majority of air is unburnt when it enters) just a large combustion chamber. The main Engine at this point is providing approx 20% of thrust It can be a difficult concept - I used to work on fighter engines, and understand supersonic intakes (shockwave and pressure reversions etc) mainly it's just witchcraft But basically what you're trying to do all the way through an engine is manage pressure and velocity - As Pressure increases so does temperature and velocity decreases - if you restrict the air then velocity increases and pressure/ temp decrease. Put your thumb over a hose pipe - high pressure behind your thumb with water slowing down - past the restriction low pressure and water velocity increases.

@@bencolbert6732 At supersonic speeds each inlet swallowed 100,000 cubic feet of air per second, the equivalent of two million people inhaling in unison. Once the engines are increased to military power, their rpm's and the air, flowing through them, remain constant. The inlet guide vanes on the face of the compressor will have rotated from the axial to their cambered positions, at speeds around 1.7 to 2.3 Mach. The engine is providing all of the thrust that it can produce, 17 % of the total thrust at Mach 3.2, with the inlet producing 54 % and the ejector 29 %. The face of the compressor actually has a slight negative thrust on the aircraft. The spike and shaping of the inlets provided an astounding 84 % propulsion efficiency, which was 20 % more than any other supersonic propulsion system ever built.

If you read “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” by Annie Jacobsen, you’ll read a lot of the history of the A-12. Don’t let the book title scare you. It’s not all about UFOs and stuff. Really good book and comprehensive history of Area 51 and what they’ve done there.

I believe you can see an A-12 in person aboard the USS Intrepid in NYC.

A good friend of mine yes.

Was he though? The swept back wings come from German research and the Germans also developed a high-altitude spy plane in WW2, which was very, very similar to the basic design of the U-2. It's called the DFS 228. They benefitted quite a bit from captured German research. However, the Americans produced very innovative designs during the war as well and yes they also had great engineers. I am just saying that there is a lot of German technology in the post-war jets of the US. West Germany even developed a plane very similar to the F-117 before US pressure resulted in the cancellation of the project. Look up the MBB Lampyridae. *Edit: And the design of the A-10 was heavily influenced by the "Unnamed" Junkers Ground Attack Aircraft. Hans-Ulrich Rudel was also an advisor to Fairchild-Republic.

@@generalripper7528 Yes he was and a very good friend of mine.

@@generalripper7528 The US had swept wings. You have oversimpliffied the entire process of both the design and manufacturing of these extraordinary aircraft. When they started this, titanium couldnt be formed. They invented everything necessary to form and machine titanium from scratch. That's like the full lifespan of an entire civilization in a year, by one team on one project. If Johnson isn't a genius, then why have Archangel and Blackbird NEVER been surpaassed?

@@davidmyersretiredaerospace8038 Wow! Do you have any Kelly Johnson stories to tell?

Well did he see any thing like ufo or Bigfoot???

@@dallasjelinek6432 No, only the beautiful, shiny, Lockheed A12 aircraft he was charged with keeping a secret at the time. :)

Wasn't the A-12 the initial CIA variant and the SR-71 was for the actual military?

Michael Edelman the YF-12A was armed. None went into production... or did they?

Couldn't they have mentioned Clarence "Kelly" Johnson at least ONCE in this video?

The fourth variation was the M-21, although short lived

mn french the missiles initially designed for the YF-12 ended up on the F-14

I heartily second that!

Yes yes yes!!!

This is a great video on that: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wk6Qr6OO5Xo.html

I do to want to be mean but this is not an airplane channel it is one about massive projects and the A-10 was no more massive the most other aircraft. He does aircraft that were hard to design and create.

My cousin was a crew chief on the A-10 and one father's day he gave my uncle one of the bullet proof window panels, it's like 3" thick. What a cool gift. I asked him about obtaining one of the depleted uranium rounds but getting one of those was an impossibility unfortunately.

Mostly unrelated, but I used to live near an Air Force base and saw a B-2 Spirit once, among the quietest planes I've ever seen (assuming similar altitude to the usual C-130s they flew out of there). Navy Hornets, OTOH, are so effing loud I'm surprised they ever hit a target. You can hear them coming for miles and miles.

HABU out of Kadena were SR 71’s

What year were you over there?

For those interested, 'Habu' is the name given to several pit-vipers native to the Ryukyu Islands.

@@malusignatius and a sake, lol!

I grew up in Northern California. I had the luck to see SR-71s flying around every once in a while as a kid. Sometimes just a few thousand feet up over Sacramento. It was always a huge surprise, and I wondered what the hell was going on for it to be so far from Beale AFB, so low over a populated area.

Actually, they needed their own fuel trucks, because the SR-71 (and the A-12) burned JP-7, not JP-4 like everything else; I doubt any Air Force base except Beale kept JP-7 on hand.

@My Dude ?????????????

Kudos to you. I did ME for 4 semesters before changing my major back to EE and just taking a minor in ME. Fluids was a bitch... I'd rather count electrons than calculate the pressures a fluid excepts on a wonky geometry.

@@Lawrence330 I can totally understand your point! I spent 20+ as an A&P (while not one of my degrees, I do consider myself as an ME) before I went and had the bright idea of getting a computer science degree. I'm just glad I didn't have to do any hard maths with fluids!! Lol

khkartc the trainer variant

I second this

Better would be the TR3B.

the R101 she was the largest airship ever bult so large the Titanic coud fit inside and crashed in a French village on her maiden voige from India to the UK killing 48 of her 54 crew and passengers. as a side note Iron Maiden wrote an 18 minute epic about this airship and her crash

@@Tommy-5684 Every time I hear Titanic I think: That boat used 600.000 kg of coal in one day..... Wauw!

Akron / Macon. >.>

Ahhh Navstar

Heck yes! I'd say GPS counts as a megaproject! The array of applications and just how reliant modern technology has become on it is incredible. It's so necessary for modern tech that there are 3 other separate world wide navigation systems built by other countries that don't trust the US and so created their own to ensure they have access to a GPS system. (Russia, China, and Europe all have their own systems) Plus Japan and India have their own regional positioning satellites (in geostationary orbit so the ground trace covers their respective countries) to make sure their countries are covered.

slide rule - that is ignorant Chris.

For real. For our U.S. persons that's only 19 feet off the ground. Might be cool to see though. (from a distance) :)

It was not a flyby it was a take off with the landing gear staying out. The landing gear apparently created instability and the pilot decided to land on the salt flat instead of risking a turn.

Definitely would have needed an extra pair of undies and pants for sure....!

@@barthoving2053 Yes, I'm aware of that from the vid, as I have excellent listening skills. This was just a joke.... (i.e. ANY flyby at 6 meters would be an interesting flyby.) Get over yourself.

Yes your dad is correct. Not an engineer myself but others here have spelt out that the A-12 would essential rip itself apart. So pilots were speed limited

This is actually true of most supersonic aircraft with variable geometry intake (the J58 installation is those mobile cones and trap doors; on F-15, those would be sloping ramps). As you gain speed and keep the oblique shock adapted, the pressure gradient in the intake gets larger, increasing thrust -- at such regime, the engines are just pumps to get rid of the air from the intake that is actually providing the propulsion. That is the reason the F-15 speed, for instance, is often described as "Mach 2.5+", since Mach 2.5 is not really the limit of what the propulsion system can deliver. This is not as much "classified" as "never really tested".

Considering the heat at which titanium loses it's structural rigidity it's been estimated the top speed of the A-12 (or Blackbird) is around Mach 3.5 - 3.7 At that speed the heat generated by air friction would heat the metal to the point the plane would fail.

My Uncle who was an SR-71 pilot would only say Mach 3+, then smile...

@California Dreamin Yeah, he was very interesting indeed!

You Can't be a innovative billionaire without being weird looking at you howard huges

Still feel a little sorry for the baby. Just a little though because his/her (don't know wich it is - don't really care, I actually didn't know Musk had a baby until I saw this vid) dad is one of the richest men alive, I'm pretty sure that makes up for the crappy name.

@@ln7929 he passed Forbes yesterday on the worlds richest man.. They don't count China though ?? I read that there's a guy in China that makes more in one day then Amazon makes in a year... They even have a holiday for him.. Don't know if it's true,I saw it on youtube a week ago..lol

@@jeffgambill3821 Putins the number one almost certainly. That bloke has been squirreling dough out of the country like its a trolley dash for 20 years.

@@13lochie lol,that's pretty cool, I have no idea what you just said but I wish I could talk like that... What is a trolly dash.... I've never heard of that but I assume it takes in a lot of money

6,000 MPH?

@@3ducs that seems like a ballistic missile being tested with some form of guidance.

I think that's what he meant.

how do they deflect it though? is it something in the material its made out of or special tech on the aircraft itself?

@@YannisG784 Yes, everything; from the choice of material to the way they structure the material, angle of the surfaces, the paint they coat the body in, the way they position the air intakes for the jet engine (compressor fan face is a MAJOR radar cross-section). As an example when we had a type of a ship in the navy, switching the round hand railing for a square handrailing with one of the edges pointing sideways made a huge difference for the radar cross-section like this; , as the radar bounced more either up in the air or down into the water.

I’m I’m

Actually the A-12 that the CIA flew in 1967 and 1968 in SEA did not carry any missiles, only cameras. It's brother, the YF-12A, which initially set the speed records was designed to carry a precursor to the AIM-54 Phoenix, which was the AIM-47 Falcon...Initially the A-12s that flew in mid 1962 were equipped with J75s because the J58s were still having teething problems after 4 years of development. By 1963 all the A-12s had been re-equipped or built with J58s. The J58 was NOT a ramjet..... it was an after burning turbojet with a bypass that overcame aerodynamic issues with the engines flying at speeds over MACH 2.5. This bypass principle was later used on the big fan jets we see today on most jets... especially airliner engines..

While they are spectacular, I guess there is not much need for that specific capability. It's very expensive to develop, not fault proof, can still be shot down. And then there are spy satellites nowadays which can provide very precise picture. In a sense, they are the logical next step. Much faster and higher. ;)

I've heard the SR-72 is actually undergoing testing right now, and is able to hit Mach 6+.

@@Sk4lli Can be shot down? How many Archangel or Blackbird have been shot down?

@@jeffprice6421 I didn't say there were any that have been shot down. But it's possible, to be fair, that's also true for spy satellites. But it was even mentioned in the video.

The classified information on the SR-71 is mind blowing stuff! I wish that since they retired the SR-71, they could release it’s mastery of the sky. People who have seen it fly, like I have , know it is still the best thing ever to have flown!

You're close, but not quite right. The YF-12A was a preproduction design for a high speed _interceptor_ (not a fighter) - three airframes were built, flown and tested. The production version was to have been called the F-12B, but the program was cancelled before any were built. There was never a YF-12C - That was a fictitious designation applied to NASA's SR-71 to help keep it secret. I've encountered this idea that the plane could "out fly much of its ordinance," before but I'm baffled as to where it comes from - The YF-12A carried only one weapons system, the AIM-47 Falcon (also known under other designations such as GAR-9), a predecessor of the US Navy's AIM-54 Phoenix, and those things *_definitely_* go faster than anything in the Blackbird family.

Yeah. I think it hasn't been long enough since the Nimitz one, probably takes a couple weeks with scripts and editing.

And here I was thinking you'd come here looking for Drachinifel's latest video upload. I've done it. If you're not a follower of "The Drydock" you should be.

Colin Gravon, I think it takes a few months.

Very funny ashley 😆

I wonder if the drydock will become an ongoing thing like the ever elusive brick video on Half as Interesting.

One is also on display at San Diego Aerospace Museum... Right at the entrance to the building.

There's an SR-71 hanging in the lobby of the Cosmosphere in Kansas, and it's pretty well lit. Surprised the hell out of me to see such an iconic plane in the middle of pretty much nowhere.

The Chinese Communist regime B S their citizens the same way as Russians did. Many bone-head Chinese currently guess they can fight America and defeat Americans.

@Murmurations - agreed~! Some icons in Soviet history are unique treasures~! However - cant resist saying; such beauty & charm are rare; - thus with reverence; - I know why the caged bird sings.

Seen crazy videos on here of trains dropping ore directly into ships.