Writestream Radio Network

Take 1,000 aviation historians/enthusiasts and ask them to list 10 favorite airplanes, and there is a 100% chance that on everyone's list will be one or more of the famous Lockheed "Blackbird" family of aircraft. Beautiful, sleek, clandestine, extremely fast, and even sexy to the eye, the Blackbirds were among the most iconic and well-known airplanes of the Cold War. Beginning with the CIA requirement to replace the U-2 "Dragon Lady" in the 1950s, Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and his famous team at the Lockheed " Skunk Works" created a family of airplanes whose performance has never been equaled since being retired. Starting with the single-seat A-12 for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s, Johnson and his Skunk Works team created airplanes that went higher, faster, were "stealthy," and were light years ahead of anything else in the sky. Sadly, in the end, it was not any enemy capabilities that killed the Blackbirds, but high operating costs and an indifferent Congress that failed to see the worth