Who Likes Aircraft ?
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Looks like one of the pre-production Hughes AIM-47 Falcon missiles being loaded onto a YF-12A. I don't think there were any weapons on the SR-71.
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Correct on all counts!
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In the photo of new A-12s , the predecessor to the SR-71, I think the correct year is probably 1964. 84 is way late.
Harvards over Toronna!
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At first I had the same thought. But this could have been where they were stored prior to being dispersed for display purposes around the country. Note that the photo says "THESE WERE THE NINE A-12s", since there are nine air-frames in existence. Of the fifteen originally built, six were lost between 1963 and 1968.
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Lockheed's D-21 supersonic drone equipped with a camera, not a warhead, designed to be carried and launched from an A-12. Because of difficulties, it was later carried by pylon on a B-52.
This one, launched over China in 1971 to spy on a nuclear test site, was lost and crashed. It was recovered by China and is currently on display in the China Aviation Museum.
Another one, with guidance failures, overshot China and crashed in the Soviet Union. They recovered it and reverse engineered it, intending to build their own similar mach 3.5 drone. However, for the same reasons that the US stopped using it, they decided that satellite reconnaissance would be the way forward in future and didn't produce it.
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Duckmanreno
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Muttley do something
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