BD-0012 Frank Murray Oral Interview, Lockheed A-12, 4/29/14

okay my name is Ron Kirikou I'm with the San Diego Air & Space Museum today is April the 33rd 2014 and I'm sitting with Frank Murray Gardnerville Nevada and Frank was a well amongst all the other things he flew in his 30 years of the Air Force he include the a12 the CIA spy plane from the early to late 60s so we're going to ask some questions here and start off with were you born on the harm Nebraska and just out of curiosity what your parents do for a living I was an army brat my father was professional army my mom was even in the Army as a nurse what was that right yeah that so they both outrank me and till I made captain now you you went to high school where San Diego and San Agustin ions then being able to and after that during the airforce right out of high school at age 17 I was away into the Air Force where I joined to get some training I needed or thought I needed in what respect I wanted to one I wanted to get the GI Bill which war - GI bill was still going on in 48 when I joined the Air Force and I wanted to get that because my intention was to do a one hitch three years use the GI Bill and go to San Diego State that was my hope but it then try to get back into the Air Force to go to pilot training but you went to pilot training pretty much without doing that because they removed the two-year college requirement during a Korean flap because they just weren't getting enough volunteers enough people to go to training for the increased goal for planets what class are you I was in 53 Charlie it's a VC so you were in the Air Force for quite a while before you start a pilot area I was about four years enlisted before I went to buy the drink okay so we're do two pilot training to phase first phase Columbus Mississippi and the second phase Lorado Texas when I was in Del Rio we're in I was stationed there after after Lorado gunnery school phase one gunnery with it was 84 Strickland 84 well F 80 there 80 Ford's it moved in the second phase of injury so you flew the F 80 as well yes guns a t-bird yeah same thing m'lila fleuti were twice oh so you so out of well trained you got what assignment first assignment was a fighter squadron in France the for 93rd squadron of the 48th wing was at show mark France and what was the mission it was a fighter with FA fours G's at first and then shortly after I got there maybe six months we transition to 86 at now when you say de fighter does that mean you're air or as air to air not air to ground primary air to air okay what were you what was the what were you defending against at that time of friends a part of the NATO force we were part of the support force for the NATO ground forces - so then you transition to F 86 86 F yeah okay and that was the moment radar and all that right no no no the F is you're thinking of the D okay the radar the interceptor all-weather interceptor was the D the F is a basic same one used real but still here to here yeah we also had a nuclear mission toward the end of my time in 86 s they trained us up on mark 12 nuke which was a about the smallest nuclear ever made so was that the that they called they called Victor alert that yeah that's right Victor and sometimes Zhu mu right that was their defense was ooh yeah we said a lot of Victor alert cooking so he came back and then you transitioned at f/11 well came back to 84f vampire-hating force in in sac Fighter Wing in Texas which was a big step backwards from my beautiful 86 we get into bent-wing 84 see 84 F is not much but shortly after that the Wayne transition to f-101a the single-seat nabudu good airplane reconnaissance airplane no no this was a day fighter it was the escort fighter built for sac the original voodoo before the RF even was the a model which had four 20 millimeter guns and really that kind of thing yeah I didn't know that the a and the C where I did almost identical I didn't know that so and what was the how did you light with that with Cenacle you couldn't possibly escort them well that was the fallacy originally when they had be 50s b-twenty nines and stuff the fighter force which mostly 84 to keep up with or or outrun the bomber scream easy right the later on they went to 47 s and 30s not 36 is 47 and 52 s they could run along with the fighters or outrun them in some cases so they sure had more legs so the one long after that that they did away with a fighter escort idea so would you flew the f-101 where did you fly it where we define I started at Bergstrom in Austin okay in the a model Bay and see same thing and after my tour there I ended up in a DC at Otis and they've got the first step one on B's that's a Tuesday that's a two seater interceptor version with missiles no guns okay when you flew Lee and so flying out of what was that what was that Mobius out of Otis and it was air defense mission there's very advanced a man sitting alert same old things lark Barnes yeah I'll let you do that five years 94c at first again I got to fly something you know that's a t-bird with overdrive and television the 94 and did that for a few months and they kept those on until they could get the first one on ones in service and they put those at the 60th buyer and Otis and then I got into the B model bird they had a much bigger engine there 94 C is the one I flew at at j48 with afterburner pretty decent airplane it didn't have any legs if you poked it in burner that emptied the tanks right now so it was the point point defense airplane but it did what it was designed to do 94 is a nice airplane Android so when you get out of the 101 you went to the oxcart program yeah when when I got on Doc's cart I was answering this let's talk about let's talk about that name for a minute what do I think what did that come from I don't know where ox cart came from I was told it just came out of a grab bag of project names it could have been wheelbarrow or something else it just happened to be ox cart was the next name up I guess it's so but then the ox cart it's reached the program and it's also the airplane no no the airplane Cygnus the airplane named Cygnus sold that to the Swan oh I did see yg and us yeah that's the airplane named Cygnus okay and if of okay then the ox cart was the name of the project the whole program like senior crown was the name of the project for the sr-71 senior crown was this project named oxcart was the agency's project name so what did you become first aware of when I volunteered to what ultimately ended up being a part of oxcart I was answering an ad on the bulletin board asking for people to apply for a nasa chase pilot position and it required certain amount of supersonic time and fighter time and all of that so I I answered that request and I had orders to Alaska when that happened I told him I've got orders to go to Elmendorf to fly deuces montu's but and they said doesn't make any difference that if we want you on this will take you and cancel the other ones okay and pretty soon that happen but when I first went on oxcart it was not to be an eight pilot so now when was that when was it they actually joined the program 63 in the summer of 63 in the but you were flying one at once I was currently 101 yeah which which one the 101 be okay which happened to be the chase airplane okay they used on oxcart so when did you first become aware of what you were going to be doing when I got on the base I had no idea that an 812 existed nobody ever told me anything about it they just said it classified job going to work and where was the base area 51 but you hadn't you didn't actually live at area 51 no where'd you live I spent five days a week up there though where'd you live lived in Las Vegas at that time with my family and of course your wife had probably had no idea what you were doing you had no idea what the hell I was doing so whatever what did the what did you do is it as a chase pilot well they were they were photo chasing the airplane in the development years in the first few years they they had a chase on every sortie and we were along to photograph what was happening to the thing as best we could you know but in our speed on it what was your speed level yeah 101 one six one seven Mach number so so that they soon outran you of course when it started accelerating it was gone and that was the end of the photo shot so when you when I know the SR where they would push over to get to go through the Mach to the tree yeah dude as a where for Dale yeah same maneuver we did it's just the quickest way to get super Sun so were you was it sort of a thing where you would often sort of a distant formation and you do the same thing and it yeah we'd go with him the best we could and we could stay with him in the excel maneuver until he got to about one four one five and then the eight twelve was gone and you were hooked up we went back in the tanker and hung around and see if he was going to come back nobody wishes did you fly like that yes chase yeah I don't know is there five years I did it the entire time I was there plus buying the a12 did vote yeah but I was flying four different airplanes when I was at 51 as I am the t-bird the 101 the a12 and the little light Cessna that we had for utility so I got like four different airplanes so when you're flying the chase race that were you the CIA then yes okay I got recruited into the CIA about halfway through my five-year tour at area 51 when they asked me if I wanted to fly the a12 of course I said throw me in that briar patch so I had to resign my commission in the Air Force as did all the other guys have refined the a12 so nothing changed though it was the pay was the same in 11 no no it was the same as the year two pilots flip for the agency no it was a little better than air force bail really yeah and it counted towards retirement know that I guess yes Federal service yeah so he ended up with what 29 or 30 year 29 and how come you left with one more year to go in for the got that extra two-and-a-half percent no I didn't I didn't care I well I was I was posted for another unaccompanied tour and I had all the unaccompanied tours I could stand so I said no I think I'll just go and retire where were they to say totally Greenland oh Jesus what you think you made somebody mad a long hiding so I got a chat will you get to fly all the best airplanes but then alone anyway manage that yeah a little one of the way and advance out one just been amazed at how many guys who were you know combat cases and things like that they never make very high rent it's not about dependents yeah I guess well I was even at the time I retired I was still too high school kid I never did get to college oh I got so many adventures going for me that it didn't be include classroom they wanted an aviator they didn't care he had to be able to fly well but they didn't care about how well he did in history and economics it's still look that important is it probably not if what you want isn't it look at all the fish you require an engineering degree or so I'm going to do the job maybe for airplane was ready the State Department was not ready right they were the hold back the agency wanted to put the airplane to work right we had plans to use it in Cuba before that before Southeast Asia and they still wouldn't do it but I couldn't figure this most recent release somebody sent me it was from September last year I could not tell whether they actually over flew Cuba or not no we didn't Wow I mean every day we we were ready that was a remember the name to do that but we were ready to go do that even when we were we had really reached 3.2 Mach yet in you know in operation we were still diddling around at about two eight why because the inlet control system was not working as advertised yet and it wasn't wasn't stable and by the time they got that going it moved on out from - 8 - 3 - right away but we then state really was a whole back of using this thing anywhere in the world really they put a hold on it and it convinced the presidentials advisors and those that this aim was not needed so primarily what you were doing was for that first five years there was was element and training and with a lot to learn yes but the airplane was a brand new idea it wasn't you know reheat of somebody else's idea it was a whole new ballgame did you ever beat killer Johnson sure did you work with him at all or he he used to come to the area frequently what was he like I didn't get that close to him you know I listened to his jock talks and stuff like that he's very smart man of course and you know I had nothing socially to do with the guy he didn't he knew he had pilots up there but he didn't chase it much yeah well it probably didn't care oh he cared he cared much about his airplane and he cared about the people that were flying his airplane building where they lost the drone when that they party cancel the whole idea right then well yeah it was true Harry that that was just the first instant had he gone on with it that would happen a few more times and pretty soon he'd be tough but there she did watch some journals that actually we had with the China noted not off to a twelve they launched those off the b-52 tagboard was the project and project name for the drone carry on an a12 yeah and that went until the first mid-air and then they made the motor height modified the drone to be launched with a booster rocket off of the pylon of a b-52 so the one that they lost it when they but there's the M of the D which there was a mother and then mother daughter mother daughter okay and so there was a collision when the thing lost it that's right on on the light off and launch of the drum the last launch right the the drum Bank left right at launch and took off the rudder and the engine on the left side and everything went to pot after that yeah we're they adult student high-speed yes they were at launch speed they were Mach 3 plus Beck cedar baited with the front cedar Dylan service no they they both got out of the airplane yeah but the back cedar the lco of the launch control guy ended up drowning and for some reason Bill Park to pilot right made it okay out of that one you see it had a thirty two thousand five hundred pounds of thrust per engine and how much fuel did it carry when you took off well we took off with about half a load in the reason why the tires were the limiting factor the tires would blow out if you put a full fuel load on the airplane and tried to take off you rotated the airplane you know as a delta you're pushing down on the main wheels to rotate the airplane up Elavon pushes down on the mains raises the nose that overloaded with the tires to take in the tires several times blew out on rotation then these tires were impregnated with aluminum were they no that was only a coating that was a paint okay on the outside of this mostly on the sidewall soon as you rolled a little bit you know it came off the tread right now that they broke very high pressure of the tires he ran about 375 pounds of nitrogen gas in the tire and how many how many ply 20 to ply well I have one of those tires in the garage it's a warrant very more so then when you got so where do you take off the full full power yes and if the tick off roll was typical 5,500 feet summer like that at area 51 which is about 4,000 feet in the air so now takeoff speed was generally 220 so like that hmm yeah lift off about 215 rotate about 200 knots and then was there a program well let's see it I guess did you always just go and hit the tanker first yes okay so what how did you fly Mel what kind of climate speed no well I'll just go into the tanker we just cruise out at 300 350 how did you find out how'd you find the tanker we knew where he was what we did you have radar this is well no II had no radar we had a beacon that we could turn on that he could see on his radar okay so he could see us and until we got within visual no we couldn't see you did he so then you would come in at thousand feet below is holding altitude would he turn in front of you he'd make a turn to roll out in front of us yes and so that their Navigator was calling the turn and all that I guess well we didn't talk we made radio silent rendevouz practiced only in emergency would we say something until we got on the boom when you got on the boom then the Boomer would talk to you through the boom Interphone okay now when you so now after you come off the tanker you're not filled up and you've got 80,000 68,000 sally's des full okay the 812 so you get sixty-eight thousand pounds no what do you do go through the as we call it the woofer til Excel maneuver which is climb dive we come off the tanker and climb up at point nine nach number until the rate of climb reduced to about a thousand feet per minute when it got to that point when then he need you're going any higher because you were going to slow down and stop so then we would bunt push over a half positive G and dive the airplane on the backside of that maneuver yeah up to about a 10 degree dive at which time during the unload push over thing the airplane would normally go supersonic and get past that I drag transonic range and down the backside in that dive when you got to about 1/4 or something 1.4 Mach then you'd start to pull out and level out again about thirty thousand about where you started except now you were supersonic and the inlet starts to work at nine point six spike starts back door's bypassed doors start to modulate and away you go for thumper differences is that the point when the door starts to modulate and then these white charts of it is that what it sort of becomes a RAM chip no partial engine no okay it's a regular turbojet at that point okay you've got to get to reset speed which is up around to four to five and get in to bypass on the engine when the engine goes into bleed bypass then if technically becomes more or less a turbo ramjet okay so now you have died now you've started your claim and do is there a set claim speed yeah we after a while after the airplane proved itself we climbed it 450 knots equivalent for 450 keys yeah now we can't engage the autopilot in the climb to really engage T's hold which made it easy to do then you and then oh don't have so it would make the track by itself he's not going to work right if you try to climb it too slow then it works better getting the inlet to work quicker and get into the excess thrust regime which happens because of a working Inlet so now when you say excess thrust regime you mean when the bypasses are open and now it's becoming them none of the bypasses the bypass is open and close auto in Auto to maintain a two things I got to start again the spike is positioned to hold a shock in the appropriate part of the lip of the inlet right doing so creates high duct pressure if it's more than the engine can stand in the plenum chamber which is the area in front of the engine the bypass doors will be automatically open and modulate as needed to hold the pressure that's tolerable by the engine so that the inlet is working to satisfy the engine and in so doing they get maximum power out of it the working inlet on this airplane gives you sea level power at about eighty thousand feet which is tremendous that's all due to recovery of the duct so the the inlet system is a number of doors forward bypass doors aft bypass doors and spike and those all work in unison to get the engine to be happy if they get out of whack with what the engine needs you might suffer what's called a nun start or an ad and aerodynamic disturbance which is a crock but anyway that's what somebody called it we called it a nun star who who thought of this miss is such a clever idea the inlet yeah the only good idea to bypass I was lucky of course Lockheed is into recovery ducts on lots of airplanes they've been doing that for a long time but nothing this of this gravity is serious so the idea was the inlet spike moves the shockwave to a point which has been is sort of compressed air which goes in when the bypass opens it puts this compressor know the bypasses the forward bypass doors job is to dump excess pressure in the duct right overboard then it cell you can see those grills on the outside of the nacelle okay the air bleeds out through those holes on the outside of the nacelle right the inlet at times can pack more air than the engine can burn okay so if you don't do something about that you're asking for a nun start or compressor stall right and their end up being ultimately the same thing poor operation and and maybe even loss of control where you could it sort of said you could you could sense the entity hood start happening you told you could actually go to field needle it up yeah but it does the only thing I remember on unstart awareness was if the inlet is running too smooth to smooth no Rumble at all watch out but also you have a you have a barber pole on the compressor Inlet pressure gage in the cockpit that barber pole is positioned by the air data computer and sort of tells you if you get the head of the barber pole above it you're going to unstart so you want to stay just at the barber pole or just under it just under it the typical end that has a little bit of a Rumble to it then I'd call that a safe Rumble that's okay when it gets dead smooth watch out you're right on the unstart margin and the unstart is is not fun what happens well the engine basically normally one engine at a time not the two together one engine will compress the stall essentially which makes it go from producing big thrust to producing nothing and all of a sudden the airplane wants to go sideways because on one side you got no push on the other side you got max so it's not a way you'll fly what's recovery what you do move the spike forward and open the doors you don't pull the power back another side no you don't have time to mess with that a lot of unstart should get better and start on one side you have a sympathetic on the other duty yaw right then so the other side now you got them both dumped but in recovery move the spikes forward some start them forward open the doors and it recovers normally right away you probably blew the a/b out a lot of times it did you have to restructure you afterbirth how do you what what looked after per the chemical ignition system let the AV and the main engine the TV te be that triethyl boring nobody really shots it I think there's 16 you can plan on 16 slugs of shots of two if you shut tip in there when the bird what happened nothing just wasted the only way to give it a shot of Ted there's two ways it's mechanically simple when you move the throttle from off to idle it gives you a shot in the forward chamber Slayton for start-up right and when you move the throttle from military position and lift it over the ramp into a B you give it another shot in the afterburner section around the flame holders okay so there's it's a if you can't give it a shot without moving the throttle that's what does here yeah what - yeah I want to kind of go backwards here for a minute the starting procedure it's just these people don't think about this pretty much but I think it's amazing that you had there's no starter on the airplane no but did woody how did you do it what was what was the the engine had to be externally cranked I had to be turned by - well the original starter that we had at the area on the a12 and the only one we ever used on the a12 was a start cart that would had to GM big-block v8s in it originally I think Buick Wildcat engines were four 55s right later they put 454 Chevy's which is about the same in Joe but they had two of them in the cart turning a transmission with a torque shaft that engaged the main engine so they roll the cart under the nacelle and remove a cover raise the torque shaft and engage it to the accessory drive box of the engine why did it take eight or nine hundred horsepower to turn that thing over well the engine is a big slug and you're turning not only the engine you're turning its gearbox - with its pumps and generators and all that stuff everything has to be turned do they use to start karts one on each engine then yes okay so when you review it you could do it with one that you'd have to move it from side to the other so you were started it was a deafening field beautiful sound I love that that was music I loved it because when you got the speed on the engine on the start the engine would outrun the start cart in other words it would accelerate away in turning faster than the start cart could turn it and about that time when the cart operator sees that happen he pulls the throttles off on those big v8s and the neighbors short stack exhaust system God they would cackle and you could hear it over the j58 it was beautiful and loved it so where did you I guess after the after you've given us able to rob the engine then at some point you push the throttle forward and yeah when you to start the airplane normally when after you do your pre-start checklist you know and you're ready to go and everybody else is ready to go then on the intercom you tell the guy who's at the left engine the guy that's running that cart out there you just tell him turn the left and then you'll you'll say Roger or something like that and pretty soon you'll hear the engine engage and start turning the main when you see the tack of the j58 move from off with nothing and start up at that point you move the throttle from off to idle that gives you starting fuel and also get your shot at tail and normally shortly thereafter you see the egt start to rise the exhaust gas temperature cool and when it starts up then it's just a few seconds after that that the engine is going on its own and it out runs the start cart then you before you start the right engine you do the left engine after start checks which is the hydraulic system of course jackets oil pressure do the normal husbandly chores of looking at engine that systems there move the flight controls make sure that the L and a hydraulics which is the left and hydraulic systems are are working and that the controls work when you're satisfied with that little bit and the pressures are checked then you tell them to turn the right and that same procedure goes on on the right engine and it starts to much the same I never ever heard of a false start let me start or anything like that it started every time so let's just take Annette at order but maybe I could as I move around the tape so now you're after you're up at altitude you've climbed you're on you're you basically do it a cruise climb sort of thing aren't you you climb more or less at full bore till you achieve level off which is achieving three point two Mach number in brine right around 2.6 Mach number in the excel you come into an area of excess thrust so to save fuel through use going down the road we would throttle back about five thousand pounds per side at about two point six to five to six right in there what's your field flow level off fuel flow I remember was about nineteen thousand pounds per side to start and if that's begin cruise on the climb it was something over sixty thousand pounds per side burn fuel like crazy Jesus but climbing because you're getting lighter well you level off pretty well at seventy-five thousand where you achieved three to write the equivalent speed there is 390 390 knots equivalent okay and you're going to go by the indicated airspeed indicator it's out to lunch it's completely useless at cruise well how did the equivalent speed of Kea s how did that it was a digital readout and a little instrument called the TDI the triple display indicator of semen we are busy officially yeah that little it shows you corrected values keys Mach number and altitude and where the boiler gauges in the cockpit are probably out to lunch they don't mean anything we'll put the but your indicated airspeed I always understood that their airplane flies an indicated airspeed it does but the the one you've got the indicated airspeed indicator in the airplane is a combination Mach meter indicate their speed indicator like yet on a net poor or anything else well so what would so what else did your keys to be you said three T's and yeah three ninety at initial level off but if there was was there any indicated airspeed on the irregular air city of indicator is probably 200 knots higher so it's useless to order that's higher reading higher Wow and their shockwave standing all over the pitot tube so yeah it is really out to lunch you can't use that so did you so at Elsa did you flight it out on else to hold most of the time or you know knock holes buckled so we have to gently go up yeah and as you got lighter in my cold it'll climb when you get it about as high as you want if you want to level off there you don't have to go to altitude colder to throttle back a little bit you stop the cruise crying so what - what was the no temperature made a big difference yes so the colder the fire you could go out of the temperature at really high altitude typically is around minus seventy right and but it hasn't changed going from A to B or anywhere else it pretty well stays about the same if it if it changes and I've seen it but not often if the temperature changes it's normally a rapid change as you move from one slug of air into another if you're in Montcoal the airplane is going to make a correction because the temperature effect on my cold on Mach number is immediate that's the thing that changes Mach number in air is to change the temperature so now when you were flight emission when you were flying like for instance over Korea you wanted to be at a certain altitude cap which was in 80 mm and no we weren't ever I don't think we ever flew in altitude hold never mock cold not cool so when you're actually on climb Keys hold on descent keys hold we had an equivalent airspeed hold position of the autopilot but on a mission didn't want to be as if you were going to like keep climbing as weii as I can get yeah so if you go to nine years within reason so what was the highest ever got 86,000 or you mean our mission what any mission it's well on tests ops 88 well post 89 yeah but that's a home just flying at our somewhere else flying a test house that I actual honor on over flight missions I think the highest I got was 86 and the thing was still climbing but I was done with my mission and after that I just swatted back a little bit and you know you're no longer over denied territory you're going home so speed of hope we talked about a little while ago what is it the old question what does it feel like to be 86 thousand feet what do you do there sensations that you've thought about the past did it really and not much I remember I think the most notable thing I can remember about ice beam I altitude was flying the thing at night because of what we had a thing we call fireflies there was some must have been some dust or something that was incandescent as it hits the windscreen and it's kind of funny I've never seen that before and you see these little streets it's like driving your car in a rain where you're only one drop of rain at a time you know like under a thunderstorm at the beginning you've seen those but it's the same kind of a thing except it's an incandescent it's a little flicker of bright light that night you really notice that and then you may have a whole flurry of it I don't know what it is dust or micrometeoroid I don't know what the hell it is but it was notable but stupidest kind of like Selma say Nobles fire but little bro know if you were running down dust I was totally oh or something you're running down something and when it struck the windshield if any can it lit it lit up and the other thing I liked was looking at the afterburner plume through the little periscope that's in the top of the canopy you can look back and see your abs at night and they're gorgeous they're big blue flames hanging back behind here and at least as long as the airplane they're gorgeous so you got a get a periscope above and periscope below as well yeah the downward looking view scope yeah but you had that little periscope that was in the top of the canopy and really poke it up it can be retracted or you push it up and you move it left and right and look left engine right in my brother so uh which sleep I normally left that little thing up all the time so okay okay these are questions from an sr-71 file okay were you did you ever have to use military thrust and just have it a tap a burner during their refueling yeah yeah after you got about half a load of fuel onboard you became power limited but both engines in mill was not enough to stay on the boom so I used to like the left a B at men and that left the throttle is closest to your left leg if you will to be maneuvered in the military range you know less than military to hold position on the boom but yeah we had to we had to stroke the burner in order to maintain position for refueling how much time do you think it would spend on the on the boom six no no about 20 minutes if you were really light when you got the tanker like say six or eight thousand pounds maybe eight thousand yeah it'd take you 20 minutes on there so when you're refueling in the mid 30 somewhere thirty thousand week we refueled higher than the SR because we didn't pick up nearly as much fuel he had capability of 80,000 pounds we were full at 68,000 did the tanker have to push over it and if not they did in the SR apparently yeah they had toboggan brig Ambika eats a lot bigger and heavier so as you come off the burner now or ever come up a tanker then you just stroke the other burner and neutralize the rudder and accelerate away and go back to the same climb schedule he did before yep and then when you get up to dude you have a checklist on your knee the whole time so your eye and I had one hour where it was it was in the cockpit somewhere so most people just did it on haven't done yeah once you're happy with your airplane you've flown it for a while you don't need a checklist your phone I use a checklist more in that airplane and I did in any airplane I've ever flown I did that I pre start many many steps a lot of fiddling around with the I NS and stuff that I'd never never used before there must have been with the first air place to have I in this I don't know first one I ever flew that I like I flew the f4d model and I've never heard of initial or of course he wouldn't in pilot training here but navigation systems or we're talking about yeah how accurate was it for you guys haha not good you mean GPS you've gotten your fishing boats way more accurate than what we had I think a speck was like a half a mile that actual position it did fairly well I was surprised at how well it did at times it has some sort of a sequence it goes through and gets accurate and then less accurate at other times I don't know what that term is but I didn't worry about it it always got me most of the time got me where I wanted to go so now when you're up at else to be honest sequence again you're up at altitude you got your space suit on basically what's your range of visibility can you look up Street overhead no you can't see anything overhead because it's top of the canopy is solid it's metal so you got the two side glass you can't see out the front either to speak up it's difficult to see anything out of that airplane what is this - there's a split windshield like the yeah I'm sorry sure exactly the same and then the did it have the problem with the put that stuff in the glass sort of melts Eila yeah so you have problems yes the seal intended to melt out yeah and they'd shave it they'd use a razor cutter and this stuff would flow back on the glass and they the crew chief had clean it up you know enamored of got too bad they'd have to pull the windshield and reseal it and put it back in and it was just a silicone type of high-temperature sealant so but they up at else - though you look out and I get you can definitely see the curvature of the earth sure and was bright blue up above and then getting black as you love above about 60,000 65,000 it starts getting dark above and you can see stars in broad daylight well bright ones well and I guess that I mean I had the occasion to beef directly away from the Sun at sunset and I was at you know 35,000 feet or whatever it was and I was looking at and you know you get this tunnel effect and I finally realized though it was it was a shadow of the earth going up into space mmm I mean you're supposed to really seen that from my altitude we didn't do a lot of flying at sundown I don't think we flew at night once in a while mainly to maintain a capability of ferrying at night we didn't really have a night mission our cameras for daytime cameras all right way so you can have all the electronic gee-whiz stuff that the Sr had no we only had one single camera film mainly the PerkinElmer camera and it was the basic one and apparently a better camera than the SR because it was much higher resolution right much longer focal length and you had you had various targets around the United States you could over fly just to see yeah as we have prepared targets which were painted contrast targets on top of buildings and hangars all over the country we'd fly over those all the time just for something to do and some check the resolution of the camera but now that you know you're laying down a supersonic boom all over the country why isn't it that you can turn very well it's too high the pressure at the surface you know from 85 thousand even though you're making a wave is still quite low because you're so far away it was 16 17 miles up did you have to debrief the start-stop altitudes for contrails I don't think anybody paid any attention to it it was a big deal with the sr-71 they had to pay attention to where they were contrails were starting somebody was worried about it we didn't wear your operational sorties radio silent from eggs and start to landing pretty much yeah we didn't use the radio and refueling we talked to the tanker but only after we got on the so now when you you flew out a Kadena you flew you think you had five missions five-year operational missions you and those were Korea and North Vietnam and so how did you know what it was seven - I mean you've started interest honey to know when it was time to leave - taxi takeoff and all that well they gave us a takeoff time to shoot for okay so we you know we taxi in time to make that maybe have a minute or two sitting at the end of the runway did you get a flash a light or flasher flare no we talked to the tower what he did okay oh yeah we talked to the town sure we talked to our our ground support guys you know on the airdrop sure cuz they would plug in when when we got out to the runway for run-up the lead guy in that troop would plug into our theater into the airplane you know and yet headphones on we could talk to him who was your callsign it varied from one mission to the next operational missions had a unique callsign for everyone they were all different and how about this the Dutch 20 Coulson was a Dutch call signs were the at home in the States assigned calls and they were personal all all a 12 pilots were Dutch and the number was significant as to who that who it was I was deaf to zero in the cuff of the fist our guys were public Aspen and and some others I don't remember I think I think Maury is this Abu hav you Abu because that was the black snake yeah yeah I thought they use that oversees more than livid no no BA reassess what was your average level of altitude and was it hard L to it or did you cruise climb typically you'd intercept cruise Mach number at 75,000 so you climb up accelerating as you went and when you got to 75 you make a major power reduction to more or less level up to cruise speed and power so you go back mostly on fuel flow just reduce throttle to about as I remember about 19,000 pounds per side for cruise and then when you later on when you cruise climb maybe 10,000 to up to about 85,000 or second for an hour at 3:00 leo yeah and doing it's about 2200 I guess there's many 100 yeah his question is other than Cuban sorties which there weren't we never get Cuba did you fly any operational missions for the United States no did the HPL ever deployed England no and then the next one did a 812 pilots have visual sightings of sa-2 firings yes and when were those when we talked about that bidding those those were over North North Vietnam and but you didn't you yourself for lucky in it I never got I never I got raw indications that they were getting ready to do something nasty raw stands for radar homing and warning but they never did to me did the so know what what fellow did have some as many as 6 missiles fired Danny on one mission yeah on one leg he had 6 si to shot Eddie would would that be let's see when do they fly it when they start flying over DRA Vietnam may 67 I think was the first flight and less light the last flight less operational mission for the a12 was over North Korea it was may 68 okay and that was Jack Layton's he flew the last operational mission and it was North Korea were you must have told a secret to last moment well I threw the second North Korea over flight right but it was there was other up that was in that was in February of somethin 68 yeah we we had some more on North Vietnam routine you know over flights after night anything well so there weren't who was it did I read a total of 57 operational missions or something like that I don't know the there was twenty eight hundred and something total a twelve flights of all kinds you know desktops and uh evidence you Breschel missions were called black shield missions let me get my glasses oh yeah yeah black shield was the codename given for the operation in the Far East yeah so I see the mission you have one there from well let's talk about how many times did you were fighting North Vietnam would you recall I don't know four or five okay did you ever see the pictures no what I take that back at the end of the program when the director of Central Intelligence called for the pilots to come see him in Washington who was at that uh Helms okay we all flew back and you wanted to say thank you and we flew back to the CIA headquarters and they had a bit of a briefing prepared for him and it showed some of our highlight missions you know and he was very cordial about the whole thing but that was the only time I think I ever saw any of the take well if the think of the the pictures taken though they weren't developed there I mean there was an odd process to get him developed that on the first missions neighbor the film was flown all the way back to New York Rochester or wherever the heck Kodak was to process the film later on when they equipped the recce tech outfit at Yokota I think it was in Japan they could do it so but that still the film had to be downloaded and flown normally by c-130 up to the 67th reconnaissance Tech's water and they would process it and and I don't know who had to do this one me all I did I got to fly that's they never say it - now would you actually when you're actually going to make a camera run I know you had three different kinds of cameras but you've talked about one and we only used one camera operationally and it was fairly simple I mean it basically standby warm open yeah well you had a couple of positions you had a normal position an emergency position of the camera and another one called cloud setting and you ran the camera normal in the normal switch position if all was as briefed if you got there and you deemed it was more cloud than briefed like 50 percent cloud or something you go to the CL position on the camera contort what would it do it took out the normal velocity overwrites computation which is input by the ANS and the altimeter and stuff you know how fast you're gone it knew the airplane system knew how fast you're going how high you were your bank angle knew all those things it reported it so hard it was each frame had that information along with the position informations field base what was the somebody wasn't there a monitoring agency that kind of kept track of where the flights were no because I know I think but huh no the only the only thing that anybody knew where we were was when our bird watcher which is our telemetry system that's what I meant the bird watcher would sing didn't give position if you were on track on target and doing your a code you know when you should be they knew where you were because you were if you were doing what they said on the film to do you would strike can hit the a code button on you on the birdwatcher never chirp it would sing and they'd get this hf signal to the ground stations then they'd know where you were but there was no tracking us I think the best tracking that was done was our intercept of the unfriendly radars reporting well they would report to their headquarters and stuff and some of our stations were snooping that information oh well really so we were using their air defense network as our FAA well so ok now the airplane could take a lot of pictures I mean it took as I recall 2,500 miles where the picture is 74 yes why yeah we never did that though we'd run it for a minute or two and then turn it up so how long were you if you were over flying at North Vietnam let's say you're coming from east to west it's not you don't go very you're only gonna be taking pictures for two or three minutes yeah then you fly out over the coast on the opposite side I support if we kept the camera on before we were over the target and we kept it on after the main interest portion you know of the of the run and then we go to standby on it so now you're at altitude your buck 3.2 and you're eighty thousand feet or whatever yeah and now you want to go back and you want to go the opposite direction you bend your knees now you want to go west normally go to and after the first pass you'd go to a tanker in the case of North Vietnam we were quite a way from home we were 15 1,800 miles from home right so we had we didn't have a enough fuel to make two passes you know like go 180 and go back over the target again without going to a tanker first so we fly through on pass number one and then go descend to a tanker fill up and then reclined back out and go back and run on it on a different track usually so you refill over toilet yes okay you normally and so it'd be about an hour difference whether way back I guess yeah about an hour from the first time you went you go back over again yeah so that those missions were five five six hours three and a half to four no later on so you flew several missions over Vietnam and then the Pueblo gets captured yeah and was it late December or early January of 68 January 68 is right then we flew the first mission was bombed by Jack weeks and he was over once on Harbor about two days after the capture of the boat and then you flew over it a few days later I flew it a month later or something in February so he went there were trying to figure out where the boat was right yeah they found it on the first mission very well and photographed it on the second mission I think it was moved or something but we still did repeated passes over the country we weren't just after the boat we were after whatever we could get in a couple three passes so potential targets perhaps military targets but you didn't know ECM type information they did not detect us so you didn't have any raw deer warnings not no warning at all was dead quiet and I am told that the Chinese were tracking us and told the North North Koreans know that you are being had but I don't think they ever sauce they never lit up the light one nothing ever went on did you get a little small Rogers but they know all we had was those lights that are above the viewfinder shield the glare shield well is a set of lights above there and that's it and that would show the rough direction of a threat right and whether they launched or not was indicated by the oh I lights and then if the jammers worked right you get the big light come on jam green so another fellow that had them fired at him did he take he knew they've been fired did he take any evasive action Joe he kept going it's just bigger speed was good enough I guess and the raw here and the countermeasure system we had was pretty smart you know my boy you've seen that too he might have been had that it not worked this was alive everything was gone Maury was talk about being fired at what he did is he just turned she said that he said they could detect that they've been seen that the Vietnamese would sometimes simulate that they had fired but he said they could tell that the missile was talking back in steering it would send a signal as it turned left that it would say okay I'm turning 11 so when they do that then they have a beacon on it the missile has a beacon right the uplink command from the ground station to the missile is talking to that beacon then the beacon responds with certain information he said but that's how they knew that had been fired actually for yeah so he looked out he saw it coming up and they got turned towards it you know to solve the solution yeah you know to we were directed you just keep going well he said also that what he got back on the ground he they they do because of Sky Watcher or what it was that they didn't have a birdwatcher on the sr yeah he had something he had something because they have a recorder well they knew he was off-track yeah so they came in said lucky how come you turned early and he said well they fired a missile at me so there was a big yeah flap about that yeah I wouldn't have turned had they launched I still would not turned I would have just trusted the the EWS anyway push the throttles up a little further but you're already at the limit yeah but you're there you got no you could push those bottles up but they your plane you can't do anything was it diluting one of the limiting factors the temperature of the inlet and the temperature is the limiting factor of the airplane and what was the number on that 427 compressor Inlet temperature that's a limit that's pretty darn hot for just compressed air or when you think if that's it you hadn't seen a fire yet wow that's amazing well do you want to talk about flying over Korea what was was there wasn't much to it besides just do it and that it was a simple mission they told us that expect a good response in other words probably a lot of missile activity right and we were all surprised to find none yeah they didn't even know we were there so they didn't do anything even though ended they did raise the minimum penetration altitude prior the Vietnam North Vietnam penetration men been with 75,000 which what the hell you've got the 75,000 an hour before you got there but though it wasn't hard to make not on the first pass second pass coming out of Thailand the other more dicey about getting the outstrip as a distance double again I'm off tanker to first camera running it's pretty close but the men penetration for Korea North Korea was up to eighty thousand they jumped it up five thousand feet still had no trouble getting there none at all a lot of us are missions I knew were flown in the 70s though because they just didn't have the capability to get any higher so now you told me a little while ago that you thought the year that overall the a12 was a bitter airplane TSR yeah I think by design is typically the first model of a lot of things you don't get better by loading it up more adding more sensors adding weight adding fuel all these things detract from the handling qualities of an airplane so the a12 was the original design the basis for all the other ones of course was the a12 and and it was considerably liar simpler less automated which required a bit more of the pilot I think especially in those days was one of the reasons for the SR because they could put a backseater in you think multi sensor was the reason for the SR and then when you had to have somebody to run it and then it dictated another guy well there was a big political battle in CIA in the USAF as well to only about then everybody trying to get rid of the a12 that there was no battle before they said the 8th row has got to go to bed well the 8th well I mean if you guys went to yudina prior to Georgia but then you stayed for a while where they were we overlapped them and covered for them in their early first few missions right they were concerned that maybe they would have an abort for some reason and we would back them up so we did back them up so we never have to fly they went so you must have briefed together no no no we knew we briefed our mission it was basically the same as their so we would fly the same tracks as theirs but we didn't brief together we never saw those guys so when you had when you when you were there at Kadena they had four airplanes there as I recall we had three three okay it's great when you head but they were because they're here three how many did the Yemeni is ours were there I think they had four okay but we only had three and they were all housed in separate years I guess they had each cell yeah we had four we had four hangers three with a twelve sentiment and the one-on-ones we had to one of ones over there for a while chases and we lost one of them the weatherman dinged it crashed it was killed so we had one 101 it was in the other cell so now with knowledge to it's good to the point you're about time to come home and because of the politics that we're going on they decided to quit funding the a12 may forget it we wanted the last airplane over on May 16th or something like that yeah and they were going to shut the program down in June I think yeah everybody was flying them back to 351 well we only had three airplanes okay 127 129 and 131 in those airplanes were the same ones that went over at the beginning of black shield those three airplanes went over we lost 129 on a test stop prior to its being returned to the States and you would actually flow the airplane a couple days before in a desktop and I flew it yeah I flew it what was to have been its final test op and after that if everything was okay it was going to go home it was better with I had a I had a problem with the right engine it would not go into bypass as it should it was late going into bypass it was like Mach 3 should have done it at to four to five somewhere in there and that was a failure of the fuel control to get that job done it's normally signaled to do that at two four to five and I squawked it on return then after it did finally get into bypass it ran fine and on the D cell they would not come out of bypass whatever the hell was bugging it wouldn't let it come out of bypass so as as I slowed down the engine compressor stall and quit because it was stuck in bypass and when it got down to about Mach 2 it didn't like that either so it just barked and quit and when I decelerated to subsonic I tried it again I real it it to see if it would light up and lit up fine so I came back and landed with two engines operating and I wrote it up Jack weeks and I were the two guys on station at that time it was only two pilots there with three airplanes and we were doing the test ops getting emergent come home and so weeks flew the second tests up on 1/29 and for the only indications we have is what the bird watcher said was going on the telemetry and apparently the the right engine failed and catastrophic leak probably the best gets is that the engine came apart and they had changed that engine that wasn't the same engine I had written that they took another known good end out of a can put it in there to fly it and it failed it so they never did find the airplane or anything they never found anything of weeks or the airplane nothing it was if they had the last thing they had of course was the bird watcher chirping over temp then low altitude low below 70,000 so it was coming down so what was the eject will but you can't tell how fast or whether their play was intact or whatever boy we knew that he gave an a code at the beginning of the turn on on that test opera being a code meeting the a code is a signal that I'm okay it's an it forces the bird watcher to chirp the a code which is one of the sensor trips so he gave the a code at the start turn and he wouldn't have done that if he was off altitude or it wasn't working right or unstarted or any other thing so it was okay at start turning and by timing about five minutes later he would be about the apex of the turn blue and complete that term and head for home the bird watcher started signaling over temp and then low altitude and then repeat over town and then nothing and apparently the airplane came apart best guess right there so they had a c-130 search a risky work or had a major search-and-rescue effort up they even even had SRS participated they were there at the time and they went down and did wide area photography the area seeing if they could find something and they never did and nor did anybody else and meanwhile one of the airplanes on station 127 through home in five hours and five minutes or something like that all the way were not a problem and then 131 the last airplane started out with Ken Collins for home and I was in the tanker well you were trying to get a speed record going over you know no we were just trying to get home well one of the things that red city they ended up with a speed record after all well cut with Sullivan but not with 131 it was a speed record it took five and half days we took 11 day lower than 131 yeah you could have put a sail on it and got it on good it broke everywhere could live LaRoque and we went in Wake Island with it and then I can went home two weeks funeral or memorial service and I stayed with 131 at Hickam and it took three tries to get that pig to go home find out when you went into a place like Hickam I mean hiccup said let civilian Airport what that's a joint use it military base to what must have just right unless you flew in at night I mean yah we were there during the day people must have been just a guest to see this thing they're not oh yeah they're not little airplanes no nobody made a big day of a good other way it's her lift you go back it fit like a huge rear up by this time the SR has been announced as being an entity and all that this is 68 so most people looking at it can't tell the difference tree on SR on a 12 what is the I still have never been quite clear in this whole story about the the SR versus the RS versus you know the so I'm recording according to the things I've read this books I've read President Johnson misnomer the name of the airplane it was supposed to be Rs 70 one right and you know the B 70 by this time they've been called Rs 70 reconnaissance strike right he got it twisted around a little dyslexic I guess and he said sr so they met and changed all the books and called it an s art he's the president yeah he can do it you know they know the difference for the a 11 in the a 12 that's another one that was confusing to read a a 11 is a misnomer there never was an A 11 built right there was an A 11 in Kelly's plan going from a 1 to a 12 right but basically a 11 wasn't an a 12 without chimes with a cylindrical fuselage did what was in the chines the trans was an anti radar the development it was one of the things they went through in order to give them the housing you know to mount to mount the transparent panels and to reduce the by static response I have an interesting piece back here I'd like to show you I have a piece of Elavon trailing edge that came off the airplane in Mobile and the reason I got that was that during Katrina during that right Americain they had a huge wall of water go through the storage building at where the a12 is housed and this wall of water came through and pushed a wall down in this building and pushed the a12 back into the girders damaging the trailing edges of the Elavon one spike was also badly damaged when a 51 in the same building was pushed into the nacelle of the a12 but the guys down there gave me a piece of that that thing and you want me to go get it it was it looks like a minute you want to talk about they went a little bit hey 1 da 1 you have the fastest airplane to the slowest I dare point I did on the world did that happen volunteer really now when I got back into the Air Force at the end of oxcart I rejoined the Air Force got my commission back and rejoined the Air Force and went on as a captain major I was a major at that time and the I had a two-year duty and travel restriction because of oxcart my involvement without start they didn't want me going anywhere for two years no combat area you know anywhere so that's that could make a good prisoner with you well they didn't want me singing or so and I got captured right away and tell him what I knew about scarper so living with that I was happy to get back in the Air Force number one but number two I was red hot for Southeast Asia assignment because my record showed that I'd never been there right I never you know I was out not was I was out of the Air Force yes I wasn't in the combat zone so anyway you probably my friend you said like could you tell no I couldn't tell him you mean you could tell the Air Force was not surfaced yet oxcart was not surfaced at all until 82 just isn't worse th so you leave the Air Force and they don't know why you've left now and now 16 now 668 I went back in you go back in again and well I mean somebody does the paperwork right yeah but not only do my my records show that I was assigned to the Pentagon in the years I was on up so again so you couldn't say oh and by the way I didn't say anything in this very strange situation we tell anybody but they waited for two or three years before you went cuz you didn't go to at 71 right I went over in 70 70 okay yeah two years after oxcart was over I had a volunteered statement in before that right and I had friends who had flown in Southeast Asia na ones and they were touting the mission and said it was great and you ought to try that and I thought about it about two seconds and I decided that they're right I'm going to be something different and the search and rescue role which was sending the main thing you know the sandy a ones are the they're the guns for the Jolly Green you know yeah regard the Jolly so he can do his job of getting people out so I wanted to do that and I did that so I went over in 70 and 71 and flew a tour and the slowest thing in the theatre just about but that was a was a great mission and a good good results it's 67 missions oh yeah so when those missions were pretty long too or thing yeah yeah through 3-4 hours and when at nkp when I got there there was two squadrons there had been three yeah but they were down to two and within a month or two of my time at nkp they got it down to one squadron and they just got through the airplanes gave the Vietnamese the extra airplanes and the way we went so you were flying just mostly both I've used is a fact to tell you where to go and did you sit alert on strike yeah yeah but most of our main mission was SAR search and rescue so we were with the jollies so and you do because I think was it a Firefly flew at night and sandy flew during the day was that what it was no Firefly was one of the squadron call signs okay Firefly hobo that's the squadron artists and was a fun airplane I had a good time with that I enjoyed it it was I ended up commander of the squadron otherwise that I had a probably a hundred missions but oh I said they did all the damn means and everything else all the fun flying was going on I was defending the squadrons but at the stand-up what happened after so whatever it is you could have what did you actually get out of the service they 77 okay so you had mother six years to go but what you did I had yeah six or seven would you do I went to find in a test watering down in Florida testing testing air defense weapons go back to the water will again 101 t-bird 102 I was it hooked look quite a little too I didn't really check out what we had him in the squadron and I was a commander down there so I got to fly whatever the hell I wanted that I wasn't primary crew and anything but tell her at the last light in year 12 I think that was that was my favorite story of your things you wrote last night your last flight yeah you mean to storage yes well it again was 131 I finished all of the flights the last four or five flights in that airplane were by me trying to get the damn thing home and then by the way when you refer to numbers it always preceded by article isn't it oh yeah the 131 Isaiah that's the Lockheed number we didn't use the tail numbers of the airplanes we never did we just call them by their article number but normally just shortened to the three energy Stello get that the the final flight of any consequence was from Hickam back to 51 and I took it home and that then they downloaded the sensitive equipment that was still on the airplane all I could it take for victim two hours total you know diddling around with the top off tanker and all of that what was the fastest from Kadena do you know five hours and five minutes I think Denny Sullivan yeah I have a postmarked envelope that he carried back that was postmarked when he left down there and then marked in postmarked again when he arrived at the area and he got there before he left because the date-time group shows another day you know but he left on one day and got back to here on the day before but anyway that's another story but I have that in the scrapbook which I will show you in a little while I'm so sorry fly back from loved it so know you're flying no I just brought it back to the area right finally right for three of three attempts right then it kept breaking this same fuel line and they finally had to change the engine and the gearbox it at ekam vibrations you think yeah it was yeah misalignment of the shaft right between the the when they called airframe mounted accessory box and a matte accessory drive a matte between the a matte which is that the accessory case is not mounted on the engine right it's mounted in than itself the engines above it and the two connect together with the shaft anyway that was out of out of Tolerance vibration they finally found it changed both of those items and the engine ran good then on the way back the egt clock quit on that engine completely just a connection somewhere so I just smashed up the fuel flow to the other side and came home to that good but when I got it to the area they had it for a day and a night well they downloaded the ECM and stuff like that that they wanted to take out of the airplane before it went into storage at Palmdale this is the cameras up to right camera was taken out over there okay yeah bridges that ballast and so the launch for Palmdale was to be done in the dark so that they still they didn't want this airplane seen so I took off about five in the morning at the area in the dark and and flew down to Palmdale then they did something nice at that time and allowed the families children wives the other pilots everybody to go out to Palmdale and be there at the hangar in sight to where I parked the thing after landing so when I got there I made a couple of passes and afterburner go around just a thrill the kids you know and all that stuff right in front of them just laid it off and it was light and you move her down what's the straight on must've went straight up it did you've been good and then I landed and the family got to see it from close by and trouble was we didn't know pictures nobody thought to take a picture there that was a missed opportunity would have been a great picture but other cell phones out there but no cell phones nope and we should have said take a picture sure somebody would have taken a picture yeah but we didn't but anyway that was the end of the that was the last flight of an a12 anywhere and it was the airplane of dream and I parked it nothing wrong and then they put him in hangers they stayed in hangers for quite a while yeah about 15 20

Channel: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives

Views: 128,950

Rating: 4.7808218 out of 5

Keywords: San Diego Air and Space Museum, Lockheed A-12, Lockheed, Blackbird, Frank Murray, kelly johnson, clarence johnson, skunkworks, mach 3, CIA, CIA spyplane, Jack Kelly, USS Pueblo, North Korea, Wonson Harbor, Area 51, Lockheed Corporation (Organization), SDASM/Oral History, sdasm oral history

Id: SSTRXGP0nWM

Length: 86min 36sec (5196 seconds)

Published: Fri May 30 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/pball2]

I like this. Favorite caption is "college not important"