Built and designed in the 1960s after the A-12 Oxcart, the SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest, most vanguardist air-breathing airplane in the history of aviation. These once classified photos reveal how Lockheed built both birds in secret, in California. They look taken at the Rebel base in Hoth.


"Everything had to be invented"

The A-12 and the SR-71 were a completely different design from anything else before it—and everything after, as time has demonstrated. At the time, many of the technologies needed to make these airplanes were considered "impossible." And yet, thanks to Kelly Johnson and the amazing team at engineers and scientists at Lockheed's Skunk Works, they were invented from scratch—in twenty months.

According to Lockheed Martin's official account, Kelly Johnson—the engineer who made the A-12 Oxcart and the SR-71 Blackbird—"everything had to be invented. Everything." From the The Pratt & Whitney J58 engines—a technological feat still unsurpassed by today's mass manufactured airplanes—to its titanium skin—capable of surviving temperatures from 315C (600F) to more than 482C (900F)—and composite materials. Its landing gear, for example, is "the largest piece of titanium ever forged in the world." Ironically, the United States did not have enough titanium to build these airplanes, so they have to buy it from the Soviet Union. Imagine that: Buying the only material in the world that could make an spy plane from the country you wanted to spy.

more with photos

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