The Archangels

The Archangel, Book Two, CIA Area 51 Chronicles. Project Gusto produced the CIA program code-named Oxcart to develop the stealthy A-12 Archangel as a new U-2 follow-on aircraft. Under CIA Project Oxcart, the stealthy A-12 Archangel was flight-tested at Area 51, Nevada, under a shroud of secrecy. Flying at 95,000 feet and 2,221 mph or Mach 3.35, the A-12 was the fastest, highest-flying jet-powered, piloted aircraft ever, faster than the Air Force's SR-71, who officially holds the speed record.

The Lockheed A-12, a high-altitude, Mach 3+ reconnaissance aircraft, was built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the U-2. Lockheed's Skunk Works built the plane based on the designs of Clarence "Kelly" Johnson. The aircraft designated A-12 was the 12th in a series of internal design efforts for "Archangel," the aircraft's internal code name. In 1959, it was selected over Convair's FISH and Kingfish designs as Project GUSTO winner and developed and operated under Project Oxcart.

The combination of the shootdown of the U-2 over Russia in 1960, Russia's moving into Cuba, and the war in Vietnam placed a heavy load on the Central Intelligence Agency to develop a replacement spy plane, unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The CIA reestablishes its Station D at Area 51 under the CIA's new Directorate of Science and Technology, where it develops America's first stealth plane, the A-12 Archangel.

The A-12 plane, designed with slide-rule technology, spends 18 months on a pylon situated on the dry Groom Lake during RCS, radar cross-section evaluations by the CIA's special projects team at Area 51. It flies 2,850 secret flights out of Area 51 during the flight tests known as Project OXCART. From Area 51, CIA Director Helms deploys people and three planes to a CIA outpost in Kadena, Okinawa. There the CIA operationally overflies North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea during Operation BLACK SHIELD before the Air Force replacing it with the SR-71, the fourth member of the Blackbird family.