Years before the SR-71 Blackbird made headlines, its CIA predecessor—the A-12 Oxcart—was already flying Mach 3 reconnaissance ...

Summary and Key Points: The A-12 Oxcart, predecessor to the famed SR-71 Blackbird, was a groundbreaking reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed’s Skunk Works in the late 1950s. -Designed to ...

Here’s What You Need to Remember: The A-12 project turned out to be dead on arrival, in large part for reasons that had nothing to do with the aircraft’s performance. In the years following the 1960 ...

Louis Wellington Schalk Jr., 76, original chief test pilot for the A-12 Blackbird spy plane built by Lockheed’s storied “Skunk Works” in 1962, died Friday in a hospice in Arlington, Va. The cause of ...

What You Need to Know: The YF-12 was a high-speed interceptor developed from the A-12, the predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird. Designed during the Cold War to replace the F-106 Delta Dart, it boasted ...