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The SR-71 Blackbird Was Fast, But It Couldn't Catch The AR-12 Oxcart
[The National Interest] Key point: The Oxcart’s stealth features never proved adequate to avoid detection by Soviet-built radars.Analysis of Week’s photos located the USS Pueblo near Wonsan anchored next to two patrol boats‐and also revealed that Pyongyang had not mobilized its troops for war. This led Johnson to rule out plans for a preemptive or punitive strike in favor of diplomatic measures which eventually saw the ship’s abused crew released nearly a year later. On October 30, 1967, a CIA spy-plane soared eighty-four thousand feet over Hanoi in northern Vietnam, traveling faster than a rifle bullet at over three times the speed of sound. A high-resolution camera in the angular black jet’s belly recorded over a mile of film footage of the terrain below‐including the over 190 Soviet-built S-75 surface-to-air missiles sites. The aircraft was an A-12 "Oxcart," a smaller, faster single-seat precursor variant of the Air Force’s legendary SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. Posted by: Besoeker 2020-04-11 |
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