The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird ranks as one of the most elegant, sleek and powerful aeroplanes ever designed. But it was not built to be admired – it was built not to be seen at all. The high-altitude aerial reconnaissance sorties it was to perform were top secret and carefully concealed from public knowledge. However, as the aircraft have become museum pieces and details of their work declassified, the whole story of their design and operation can finally be told.

This fully revised and updated edition of Paul F. Crickmore’s classic Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Missions draws on 850 pages of documentation and images covering the A-12 Oxcart programme that have been declassified by the CIA since the publication of the previous edition. These crucial documents range from discussions at the highest levels of the US government concerning the rationale for Oxcart’s development and eventual deployment, to extremely detailed intelligence data gleaned from each of the 29 operational missions flown by Oxcart during Operation Black Shield over North Vietnam and North Korea. CIA and USAF pilots give tantalizing accounts of their highly covert sorties and what it was like to fly the Blackbird and its brethren, while allied and former Warsaw Pact fighter pilots describe how they tried to intercept the spyplane as it flew at more than a mile every two seconds, 15 miles above the Earth’s surface