Who can tell me what this is? 



And if the writing can give you a clue, don't look at it...

It is the wonderfull A-12, the most sweet plane that never was put into production. It could have been the world's sweetest nuke bomber. But nooooooo, instead it was modified and turned into the SR-71.  

Dumass USAF.

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..........which BTW Steve, the development rate of the Avro team, would surely have been a natural progression since they already had the internal weapons bay idea, which has only really come to the front in the F-117 and the F-22, although this was a feature of the F-106 in the past but not adopted on any other front line "F" models 'til the Wobbly Goblin...........

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The TSR.2 was actually under threat in favour of unmanned missiles. This turned out to be a mistake & the F-111 was seen as a cheaper alternative. This depite the development costs & the fact that the TSR.2 was already flying. It's a very similar story to the CF-105 & was the writing on the wall for the British aircraft industry.

It's interesting to speculate on "what might have been" but in truth we shall never know how successful these projects would have turned out. Many promising aircraft have been cancelled for one reason or another throughout the history of aviation. It's quite possible that some were not as good as they might have appeared. I can think of many examples of prototypes that I saw demonstrated at Farnborough in the 1950s-60s that looked promising but disappeared without trace. This was the Golden Age of British aviation & it was exciting to be a small part of it.

The cancellations were mainly due to the policies of the government in power at the time. Most politicians know very little about aviation & I suspect the same is true all over the world.

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They are actualy black.They are painted with a special paint that will resist the heat from the speed of the plane.

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Very interesting Silent. The British government's missile policy led indirectly to the development of the Hawker P.1127 (later to become the Harrier) as a private venture. http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/history1_2.htm

It's also worth considering what effect the Hawker P.1129 had on the cancellation of the CF-105. Apparently Duncan Sandys has more to answer for than I realised.
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Sadly this is all irrelevant now & pure speculation.

Wow, these forums have incredibly knowledgeble people in here. I think applause is in order here? 

I am terrible at naming planes, but was searching around until I came across this pic. Here's their name for it...                 YF-12 A-12

So a lot of people were right on this one, but then we got around to the color of it and and to the A-35 Missle Defence System in Germany?... 

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GODDAMMIT,DUDE!

For the 10395th time: THAT F*CKIN MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM IS IN RUSSIA ,NOT GERMANY!!!

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I'm sorry if I didn't read it word for word! I had to scan through it all. Man, calm down now...

OK, calm down guys. Foxtrotter won't be bothering anyone again.

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I'm not infallible & know very little about the SR-71 or modern US aircraft for that matter. I did a quick search & most people seem to agree that the special paint is black but it's not properly cured until the aircraft has flown for a couple of hours. (Some modellers have suggested that it's actually dark blue as SiverFox mentioned.) After curing the shade is slightly different. This is why a freshly painted aircraft in a museum would not be the same shade as an operational one. In the same way any major touch-up jobs would require the complete aircraft to be stripped & repainted.

PS. I was once told there is no such shade as black.

LOL

I also understand that there are so many shades of "black" paint that this is the most difficult colour to match.

Moral: Never buy a black car.

As an example, this is my own little "roller skate". What colour do you think it is?

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This has fooled everyone I've asked & illustrates my point. Although it looks black or various shades of blue depending on the light, the colour is officially named Nordic Green. There is actually very little green in the paint at all. It's just possible to see small flecks of green in the metallic finish if you look closely enough in bright sunlight.

Mazda 323 GLX Auto. Reliable & economical to run. The 3-door model is quite rare. Looks small but I can get more in there than some estate cars I could mention.

I've had it a few years now but it suits me. If I get another car it will probably be the same make. I always fancied an MX5.

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I've seen one in real life too. Wasn't there only three made?

I found this interesting site that should tell you all you want to know about the Blackbird variants. http://www.sr-71.org/

It appears that 50 were built including the A-12, M-21, YF-12A, SR-71A, SR-71B & SR-71C. I was surprised to see that 20 of these were lost with a number of crew fatalities.