A sleek piece of Cold War history was put on display at the CIA yesterday -- the once supersecret A-12 spy plane, which flew higher and faster than any other manned aircraft to spy on North Vietnam and North Korea.
"It was a beautiful airplane," said Ken Collins, a retired air force colonel and one of only six pilots to fly the A-12s.
Collins and other veterans gathered at CIA headquarters to reminisce about aircraft which shattered records for speed and altitude in the secrecy of a 1960s CIA program codenamed Oxcart.
A black, needle-nosed missile of a plane with curved wings that anticipated modern stealth aircraft, the A-12 hit speeds of more than 2,200mph (3,540kph), or more than 3.2 times the speed of sound.
It cruised at altitudes between 80,000 feet (24,400m) and 90,000 feet, so high that the earth's curvature was visible from its cockpit.
"A marvel of aeronautical engineering, the A-12 literally took people's breath away when they first saw it fly," said CIA director Michael Hayden, an air force general.
The aircraft was so fast that it took only about 12 minutes to traverse North Vietnam.
Temperatures on the edge of the cockpit windshield would rise to as high as 680?F (360?C), Collins said.
And as the plane blasted through Mach 2.5, two-and-a-half times the speed of sound, it would be slammed by shock waves so violent that the planes would pitch and yaw, and sometimes stall.
But Collins, who flew six missions over North Vietnam, told reporters "it was a beautiful airplane to land, and just technically a fantastic airplane to fly."
The A-12 on display on the grounds of the CIA -- which was known as "Article 128" -- is one 15 A-12s built. Only nine survive. Five were lost to crashes, and two pilots were killed.
Collins recalled ejecting and parachuting from an A-12 over Utah when a computer failure caused his aircraft to stall, pitch and go "flat upside down."
The A-12 was designed by Lockheed at its famous Skunk Works facility as a successor to the U-2, which had become increasingly vulnerable to Soviet air defense missiles.
"The goal was an aircraft that could outrun any Soviet missile," Hayden said.
They began operations in 1965, but flew combat missions out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa for only two years before they were retired in 1968.
Ironically, the U-2 is still flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, though even it is now being eclipsed by high-flying drones called Global Hawks.
No A-12s were shot down, even though the Soviet Union learned of the outlines of the program and Russian and Chinese radars were able to track it.
"We were fired at frequently. They could track us. People kept changing our defense systems. But they kept coming up with new stuff," Collins said.
"But they never got the SAM [surface-to-air missiles] high and fast enough to get us. [We were] pretty comfortable up at 85,000 feet at 2,200 miles an hour," he said.
The CIA did not acknowledge the program's existence until 20 years after its last mission, and only this week declassified documents related to the program and published an official history of Oxcart.
Codenamed "Black Shield," the A-12s last missions were flown in 1968 over North Korea after the capture of the USS Pueblo, a US electronic surveillance vessel seized in international waters.
Hayden credited the photographs taken by the A-12s with two key intelligence findings.
Missions in 1967 found that North Vietnam had no surface-to-surface missiles, easing US fears of an escalation.
And an A-12 photographed the USS Pueblo in a North Korean port three days after it was seized on Jan. 23, 1968.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese