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

hello everybody welcome back to a brand new episode of mega-projects in this one the craft that you've probably heard of because of Elon Musk and also because of the sr-71 but it was all kind of secret it's the a12 we're diving into it today and let's get into it [Music] [Music] if like the rest of the world you wondering why Elon Musk there we go and his girlfriend Grimes one-word person apparently named their newborn son the frankly bizarre name of ex a sh a 12 and I only know how to pronounce that AE thing ash because I saw Elon Musk interviewed Rogen's podcast and he says it there then you've come to the right place and yes it does tie in with all mega-projects video today the X stands for the unknown variable which is so cringe already AE is the Elven spelling for AI or ash as I said before but it is the a12 that is of particular interest to us some might suggest that it's a little strange to name the child after a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft yeah I mean Elon Musk is a bit of a strange man there isn't he but hey I think it's fair to say that Elon Musk has been consistently thinking outside of the box for a while now and being weird okay but enough with the baby names let's get down to business the lockheed a-12 came with the exalted nickname archangel for those of you who are so biblically rusty myself included an archangel is an angel of high rank a top dog if you will and the lockheed a-12 was exactly that a thunderous max 3 plus reconnaissance aircraft which only served the CIA for five years from 1963 to 1968 and was only officially Declassified in the 1990s it was a phantom during its time in the skies and because of its more famous younger sibling the sr-71 blackbird it is an aircraft that has sadly slipped out of the limelight until today that is [Music] you have seen mega-projects we did about the u2 aircraft the American spy plane that was famously shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 the u2 had proven itself more than capable but also much more trackable by radar than the Americans and initially thought in that previous video there was the example of light it being really high up the Americans thought the Soviets couldn't see it but there were MIG scrambles but they're just gonna get up there to find it it was just too high despite much tinkering known as project trained by the United States was not able to find a way to reduce the radar cross-section of the u2 which would have made it harder to track so if you can't improve the old aircraft well what are you to do well you build a brand new one of course you're the American military you've basically got an unlimited budget the American military often reaps the benefit of gold fashioned competition and it was through one such battle of aviation minds that the a12 emerged convair and Lockheed were both given the task of developing plans for a new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that would be able to supersede the youtubes the convair model was known as kingfish while the Lockheed plan was known as Archangel 1 or a 1 for short if we fast forward slightly through the developments the crunch moment came as kingfish faced off against the Lockheed model now known as Archangel 11 and I mean kingfish is a cool name but Archangel 11 slightly cooler it seemed as if Convair were abouts a pincher new creative contract but in the final stages a few tweaks to the a11 meant that it moved ahead of the kingfish and on the 26th of January 1960 the CIA placed an order for 12 aircrafts now with the final name a12 the production projects took the name oxcart which when you consider the a12 is blistering speed is just a little bit ironic [Music] the construction of this aircrafts well ahead of its time begins with a wonderful tale of Cold War business espionage today titanium is widely used around the world in just a variety of products from space shuttles to tennis rackets but its use in the late 1950s was still in its relative infancy the US government typically received the titanium it needed from titanium metals Corporation a us-based company however its stockpile of this chemical element was severely limited and was completely insufficient for the a12 design requirements there was however one country with plenty of titanium in reserve and indeed one that pioneered its use in military hardware and I'm gonna give you just one guess because yes of course it is the Soviet Union of all the countries the US needed to try and procure this precious metal alloy from well it was his most fearsome enemy as you can imagine it was completely out of the question for the director of the CIA to pick up the phone and be like hey Soviet Union I need some titanium so instead what they did was set up an elaborate scheme to purchase titanium from the Soviets using various back-alley sources third parties and dummy corporations this resulted in perhaps one of the most ironic ventures of the entire Cold War that a plane was being built to spy on the Soviet Union which had partly come from the Soviet Union this just something very Manchurian Candidate about all of this but just one more point about the titanium at this time it was mainly used for small parts but the design of the a12 called for most of it to be constructed from the rigid and difficult to machine alloy the aircraft's curved layout therefore proved to be a dilemma to its designer and builders a solution was found to cut small Phillips of the material and then glue them to the underlying framework rather than attempt to cut large-scale pieces of titanium as the design progressed further these bullets were eventually replaced with strips of iron ferrite and silicon laminate which proved to be pretty excellent at reflecting radar [Music] as you might expect from such a forward-thinking aircraft testing was a little bit rocky the a12 took to the skies for its first test flight on the 26th of April 1962 with test pilot Lewis shark here at the controls the site chosen was groom Laker salt-flat located in the north of area 51 and it was from this secretive location that the a12 tests were carried out his maiden voyage was an almighty three kilometers at an altitude of just six meters over the salt below despite some serious wobbling caused by the improper hookup of some navigational chords the flight was considered a success the following day the a12 left the salt flats once again this time clocking up a total of 40 minutes in the air again this was considered a successful flight but it did begin to shed its titanium fillers as it climbed above 90 meters thanks the terms success is a fairly loose concept here engineers spent four days searching the area for the basic Phillips and you know we can see why because of the hassle that it took to get the stuff in 1963 the program lost their first a12 the aircraft's with the distinction article 123 crash near Wendover in Utah though the pilot successfully ejected this did pose a problem of what exactly do you say when a secret spy plane crashes on American soil Kenneth S Collins the pilot of the plane that had gone down was dressed in a standard flight suit which probably helped with the story that a republic f-105 Thunderchief a fighter bomber that had been operating for the past five years had crashed nearby suppose it would have been a lot worse if he had CIA secret project dude or just CIA emblazoned on his flight suit to farmers nearby were dissuaded from approaching the crash site with the terrifying news that the plane had crashed while carrying nuclear weapons now obviously this was a lie but it's certainly a surefire way to keep people away from the crash site nobody likes getting irradiated another way was through cash payments in exchange for silence apparently $25,000 which is about two hundred nine thousand dollars today was paid to each member of the law enforcement team in the area and didn't stop there there were multiple stories of shady payments made in the coming years as the CIA attempted to keep the existence of the a12 secret and apparently if you want to make a bit of extra money on the side move to somewhere near area 51 and wait for things to fall out of the sky don't you that's my advice three more a twelves crashed during testing on the 9th of July 1964 article 133 ran into problems when a pitch control servomechanism froze at an altitude of 150 meters this resulted in the plane rolling to the left exactly what you don't want to do when you're about to land the pilots ejected but because of the trajectory of the aircraft he was blown sideways somewhat miraculously considering the altitude and the direction his parachute opens and he managed to land safely on the 28th of December 1965 article 126 crashed just 30 seconds after takeoff due to a maintenance error but again the pilot was able to eject to safety things were not quite as lucky on January the 5th 1967 as Operation oxcart experienced its first fatality no definite reason for the crash of article 125 was ever given but most likely a fuel gauge error meant that the aircraft ran out of fuel still 108 kilometers from its base CIA pilot Walter Ray did manage to eject successfully but could not detach from his seat and unfortunately died on impact despite the numerous incidents this was actually considered quite normal for an experimental aircraft like the a12 it was quite simply operating at a different level than anything that had come before it in occurrences like these were considered part and parcel of development I mean it's called testing for a reason things are going to go wrong as you find out the way to go right but by the early months of 1967 the US government believed that the aircraft was ready and it was time for it to ship out but before we go into the real world missions that this plane flew let's take a closer look at the aircraft itself the a12 is often compared to its success of the sr-71 and looking at both from a distance they are almost indistinguishable the a12 is wingspan of 17 meters is exactly the same as the sr-71 while its length of 31 meters is marginally shorter than its younger brother and I've actually seen I've been to see an sr-71 in a museum and it was way bigger than I expected as I mentioned earlier the a12 was considered a Mac 3 plus aircraft with a top speed of around 4,000 103 km/h which remains pretty extraordinary even to this day Concorde which we always associate with record-breaking speed at a top speed of 1924 kilometers slower than the a12 although so be fair Concorde is a commercial aircraft UNS you know we don't have any expectations then it's gonna grow faster than a jet like a fighter jet now it must be said that much of the information around the a12 is still classified we have no way of knowing how often or if ever the a12 is needed to travel at this speed just to add to the confusion the sr-71 has a slightly slower top speed but still manages to beat the a12 in some fastest planes in the world list this is probably because they only cover official flights and as we're going to go into shortly the a12 was a most unofficial aircraft the a12 also had a highest service ceiling with a monstrous reported altitude of 29,000 meters that's 95 thousand feet that's not far off three times the cruising altitude of a passenger airliner today just to be really clear that is 29 kilometres straight up into the sky we would need 35 Burj Khalifa's the tallest building in the world stacked on top of each other to get to that height and just before we continue the Burj Khalifa I'm not sure whether to do a mega-projects about that because there are so many videos already out there about the Burj Khalifa though I'm not even sure whether it's worth covering but if you want it let me know in the comments below and I shall oblige because I find it pretty interesting I find skyscrapers pretty I started a channel about mega-projects you are not surprised by this the sr-71 has a service ceiling of 3048 meters less than the a12 which still makes it easily the second highest altitude plane in aviation history the a12 was powered by two pratt and new JT 11 D 20 B afterburning turbojet each coming with twenty thousand five hundred pound feet thrust dry and thirty two thousand five hundred pound feet with its afterburner on which was often used during takeoff and evasive maneuvers afterburners are basically a part of the engine that allows it for a short time to accelerate that it burns a lot more fuel with them on so you might now be wondering if you've been paying attention well why is the 1/12 faster but has less power in his engine well this was probably down to the fact that it was six tons lighter than the sr-71 as I mentioned earlier this aircraft was always designed to be able to spy on the Soviet Union I mean who else where the Americans going to spy on in the 1960s however the downing of a u2 over the Soviet Union in May 1960 and the subsequent capture of its pilots meant that the United States has given the USSR a wide berth precisely the time the a12 came onto the scene it's a common misconception that the a12 Arcangel was involved in flights above the Soviet Union in Cuba but as far as we know remember some stuff is still classified these flights never took place however the United States had found itself in a completely new war and the a12 was sent to Southeast Asia operating out of their base on the Japanese island of Okinawa the 1/12 participated in operation black shield which was designed to get a clearer picture of the vietnamese sam missile defense system military movements as well as general surveillance on May the 31st 1967 operation black shield got underway with an a 12 flying at an altitude of 24,000 meters at a speed of Mach 3 clearly and nobody was taking any risks at this point unfortunately we don't know a huge amount about the a12 s involvement in the Vietnam War because much of it was or still is classified but enough has been released to allow us to build up a bit of a basic picture the repro Pfeifer flights involved in operation black shield was often roughly the same the plane would take off from Kadena on Okinawa before turning Southwest as I previously mentioned much of the surveillance passes over North Vietnam were to determine the country's missile defense system as well as the position of Rhodes industry ports railroads and well just about everything else you could imagine by the end of 1967 almost the entirety of North Vietnam had been photographed a twelves returning would typically make an aerial refueling over Thailand before turning for Kadena once again interestingly this route was set up a turning radius of 138 kilometers meaning that on occasions returning a twelves would stray into Chinese airspace for a short period whether the Chinese knew about this is another matter but there were never any reported incidents so probably not so they at least they didn't want to do anything about it things were not quite so simple over Vietnam though as I'm coming to shortly one reason the a12 sent a relatively short lifespan was the rapid improvements of Soviet radar detection and as a consequence North Vietnamese radar detection on three separate occasions grounds where missiles were fired skyward at a 12 passing overhead but only once did the United States come perilously close to losing their prized spy plane over enemy territory on the 30th of October 1967 at least six missiles were fired from the capital in Hanoi the pilot reported seeing four of them gaining on him rapidly from behind and one came within 91 metres of him before detonating we can imagine the pilot thanked his lucky stars and then continued on his way but it had been an extraordinarily close call a post flight inspection actually found a piece of debris from a missile embedded under a wing perilously close to the fuel tank flights over the area where immediately grounded and wouldn't begin again for another two months [Music] the sr-71 arrived on the scene in 1968 and joined its older brother in Okinawa but at just the same time the a12 was going home the American military saw no need for both aircraft so to cut costs the a12 received an early retirement but this wasn't simply because the sr-71 was considered a superior aircraft much had changed since the design of the a12 first appeared in 1960 in just eight short years the US had suffered the ignominy of losing a u2 over Soviet airspace as well as witnessing enormous strides in enemy radar defenses the close calls that the a12 had seen over Vietnam had shown that even at their extraordinary height and astonishing speed they were still extremely vulnerable the introduction of reconnaissance satellites which began with the corona satellite in 1959 showed the manned flights to gather photographs were no longer even entirely necessary today everybody knows about the sr-71 blackbird it has become almost a household name I mean as much as spy planes become household names but what of the a12 not only was it faster and at a higher service ceiling but it laid the very blueprint for the construction of the sr-71 missing out the a12 when discussing great spy planes is like going from a Robin reliant to a Lamborghini something definitely came somewhere in the middle there the a12 has probably been a victim of its own classified nature while the sr-71 was announced the world in 1964 the existence of its mysterious older brother remained under wraps for decades the sr-71 may hold a catalogue of records but is this simply because we've never known the full extent of the a12 escapades well we'll probably never know it may forever remain a thundering elusive ghost of the skies so I really hope you have found that video interesting if you did please do hit that like button below don't forget to subscribe to this channel all of that good stuff as I always say as I said with the Burj Khalifa if you've got a suggestion for this tap channel or let me know in the comments below I'd love to hear about it and most of these are made from your suggestions so yeah suggest a way and they will probably get done and thank you for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 1,900,032

Rating: 4.8806643 out of 5

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Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020