Analysis of a 1967 A-12 Recce Flight over North Vietnam

Black Shield missions were created to gain recce information over North Vietnam. The A-12 and sub SR-71's were perfect for the mission. Combining ultra high speed and altitude, they were pretty much able to fly over the airspace without fear. The link is to a declassified analysis of on of the Black Shield sorties. The intersting thing is the "no Foreign Dissemination" stamp on the cover. It does make for dry but intersting reading as each site overflown is analyzed

www.gwu.edu...

Nice find! This is the first time I've ever seen a first-hand intelligence report.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

It does make for intersting reading. Not a huge contrevesial thread mind you but for hard core A-12/SR-71 buffs, its fun to check out. Dug it up doing research for our research project....

Imagry from the A-12 aircraft can be seen here, in this case the USS Pueblo that was captured by North Korea.

www.globalsecurity.org...

I would imagine it could do better if it had a chance to evolve, the camera was much larger than the SR-71's as it sit right behind the pilot in the Q bay, an area that was converted into the RSO position for the USAF bird.