July 19, 2005

The hunt for #928. In 1967, an A-12 blackbird crashed in the Nevada desert on its return to the Groom Lake airbase. Almost 30 years later, Tom Mahood set out to find the crash site. It's a story of modern archaeology that has top secret black titanium spy-planes, codenamed compatriots, CIA coverup stories, FOIA requests, and some great detectiving. Plus, he sinks his truck.

Glossary Groom Lake - secret airbase in Area-51 A-12 - the classified forerunner of the SR-71 fulgarite - sand fused by a lightning strike. Glenn Campbell - former publisher of the Groom Lake Desert Rat Tikaboo - a ridge that affords a view of Area 51 BLM - Bureau of Land Management Rachel (Nevada) - small town near Area 51

posted by un- 19 years ago
  • Some newer pics. Also Cherokee Mine on Microsoft Terraserver, a good starting point for anyone who wants to do the same detective work. Beats me where the wreck is.
  • fascinating. Thankyou.
  • Man, it's absolutely bizarre to think of this. I live in a medium-sized US city in a very very very rural state, and I have difficulty imaging the federal gubmint able to test sophisticated military apparatus like this on vast uninhabited wastelands. Or, rather, lands that are now, definitively wasteland.
  • Nice post un-, cuz ya beat me to it! I've been "percolating" several resources with regards to the Blackbirds, aka "Habu" planes. An intersting site (which I just linked to) is habu.org. Of particular interest is the image gallery which displays retired and "lost" aircraft. Here's #928. Some nice in-flight multimedia clips as well (some of the links follow to NASA, which is another plethora of goodies to look at). Anyone care to join me for a shot of habu sake?
  • mmm, sake ... with snakes! I found it particularly interesting to learn just how leaky those blackbirds were. And they had to use special fuel that wouldn't blow up due to the high temperatures. It's also kind of ironic that the only source for titanium that made these exotic spy planes possible was from the USSR. And then we turn around and used those very planes to spy on the USSR.
  • Great post, un-. Your A-12 link points to the wikipedia SR-71 page, though. Were you thinking of the A-12 Oxcart?
  • Were you thinking of the A-12 Oxcart? Um, yeah, that was an oops link, I should have linked to the A-12 page. But almost the same thing :)
  • This has always been one of my favorite A12/SR71 stories. My matte black Thinkpad a couple years ago was named "habu"...