>>63951122
>SR-71 Blackbird
checked, (You)r picrel is maiden flight of the Lockheed A-12 OXCART s/n 60-6924 Article 121 over Groom Lake on 30 April 1962
for this flight and first year of operation the airplane flew with J75 engine powerplants (the J58 engine wasn't ready until 1963), at speeds only up to around Mach 1
Lockheed's A-12 was a secret CIA project and flown only by CIA pilots (just like the original 1955-60 U-2 was)
The A-12 was a single-seat, photographic overflight recon plane (just like the U-2), designed solely to fly *over* enemy territory to take pictures with its huge cameras which were the largest ever fitted to an airplane.
A-12s at the Groom Lake test site didn't start getting the iron ball black paint until 1963 and even then, it was only a portion of their outer surfaces (leading edges of wings, nose-fuselage chines); the overall black scheme for A-12s didn't appear until 1964 and still, the top moving surfaces of their vertical stabilizers were left unpainted.
(SR-71 which first flew 22 December 1964 had smaller/less powerful-capable camera than A-12, but was fitted with more electronic sensors, and an additional crewmember in longer fuselage)
SR-71 didn't exist until 1964 and was a different, separate multisensor reconnaissance aircraft for the Air Force (and the "Blackbird" nickname for the A-12/YF-12A/SR-71 family didn't come along until after the mid-1970s initial public displays of the Air Force's SR-71 at airshows)
