Warbird Information Exchange

The natural metal A-12 trainer on display outside the Los Angeles museum shows what a weathered A-12 looks like- not rusty. As Stephan says- we won't see "rust" on the titanium skin.



I have seen her up close, and she looks weathered.

A-12's first flew in natural metal and a touch of black on the (hotter) leading edges, nose, tails etc. Finally they went to all black, and all the operational versions that flew in the later 1960's were all black, and went into storage that way. It seems that only this sole A-12 and the M-21 drone launcher (preserved at Seattle) remained in the two tone natural metal.

Note this photo at Palmdale of the A-12's in storage. You can just see one two tone aircraft near the top. Also note the red/pinkish panels showing up on a few of them. My guess these pinkish sections are unpainted special fiberglass used on the chines and some leading edges. The A-12 and SR-71 designs included leading and trailing edges made of high-temperature fiberglass-asbestos laminates. Note we are seeing some red peeking through on both the titatium and figerglass areas of the picture on the A-12 at Huntsville. I conclude primer.



So we have some red showing through the A-12 at Huntsville. My guess is we are seeing reddish primer as the black paint has faded.

I offer this thread title could be "A-12 rattybird..."

The red in the picture of the A-12s in storage are protective covers placed over certain areas that have vents or were susceptible to damage due to being composite materials. You can see on the closest aircraft how the panels are raised over the rest of the aircraft.

Ahh, thanks CAP. Also intersting to see what seem to be false serial numbers and USAF markings. All part of the cover. Think they were under wraps for 20+ years.

For a long time all of the A-12s and SR-71s carried spurious markings. Never really worked though because the fence spotters quickly figured out which was which and like with the RC-135s and EC-135s, the USAF eventually just gave up the gig and started putting the real tail numbers on.

The A-12 / YF-12 / SR-71 series airframe is in the 90% Titanium by weight range. T metal does not rust. It has the same strength as stainless at about 1/2 the weight. In a bit of Irony, nearly all of the titanium sponge needed to make the A-12 / SR was imported from the Soviet Union

Yes, the redish panels in the storage photo are ground and maintenance covers.

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