‘A weird thing was that after an (A-12) flight the windshields often were pitted with tiny black dots, like burn specks. We couldn’t figure out what it was.’ Norman Nelson, the CIA’s engineer inside the Skunk Works
In 1959, Lockheed started the development of a long-range, high-altitude aircraft initially designated as the A-11 as part of a Cold War project. The project was led by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, Lockheed’s Vice President for Advanced Development Projects, who had previously overseen the creation of the U-2 spy plane.
Five years after development of the A-11 began, on February 29, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that the aircraft—now upgraded to the A-12 Oxcart with a lower radar profile—had achieved speeds above 2,000 mph and altitudes over 70,000 feet during Area 51 tests. After one A-12 flight, the windshield was discovered to be covered in insect specks.
Norman Nelson recalls in Ben Rich’s book “Skunk Works”;
‘I was the CIA’s engineer inside the Skunk Works, the only government guy there, and Kelly gave me the run of the place. Kelly ran the Skunk Works as if it were his own aircraft company.
‘A weird thing was that after an (A-12) flight the windshields often were pitted with tiny black dots, like burn specks. We couldn’t figure out what it was.
‘We had the specks lab tested, and they turned out to be organic material—insects that had been injected into the stratosphere and were circling in orbit around the earth with dust and debris at seventy-five thousand feet in the jet stream. How in hell did they get lifted up there?
‘We finally figured it out: they were hoisted aloft from the atomic test explosions in Russia and China.’
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Photo by CIA and U.S. Air Force
