
Courtesy: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center The YF-12 "Blackbird" was an experimental fighter-interceptor version of the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. In Air Force flight tests on May 1, 1965, the YF-12 set a speed record of 2070.101 mph and an altitude record of 80258 feet. First publicly displayed at Edwards Air Force base in 1964, the YF-12 was never adopted by the military as an operational aircraft. It was, however, a precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane. Two YF-12 aircraft were flown in a joint Air Force-NASA research program at the NASA Flight Research Center (now the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center) between 1969 and 1979, although the second plane, piloted primarily by the Air Force, was lost to an inflight fire in 1971. The two YF-12 aircraft bore the serial numbers 60-6935 and 60-6936. The YF-12 allowed NASA researchers at all four of the agency aeronautical centers (Langley, Lewis, and Ames as well as the Flight Research Center) to study the thermal, structural, and aerodynamic effects of sustained, high-altitude, Mach 3 flight. Painted flat-black, the YF-12 was fabricated primarily from titanium alloy, which enabled it to withstand skin temperatures of over 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Work on the YF-12 began in secret in the late 1950's at the Lockheed Advanced Development Projects office, better as known the "Skunk Works," in Burbank, California. Flight data remained classified long after President Lyndon Johnson announced the plane's existence on <b>...</b>
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