HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — The U.S. Space and Rocket Center said it got to “unwrap” a special present ahead of the holidays on Wednesday, its newly restored A-12 Oxcart.
On Wednesday, the Rocket Center announced that it was taking down a temporary hangar over the iconic aircraft, which had been up over the aircraft in the Davidson Center lot since August.
Clinica Medica Moscati offering services in Scottsboro
At the time, USSRC said that the hangar went up so the Oxcart could undergo restoration. The center said that the exstensive restoration included stripping the paint to the original surface.
The A-12 Oxcart was a forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird. The two aircraft have a similar shape and dimensions but A-12 operated between 1962 and 1968 by the CIA. According to the Rocket Center, like the later Blackbird, the Oxcart was a surveillance and spy plane which was primarily deployed over Vietnam, North Korea and Laos/Cambodia between May 31, 1967, and May 8, 1968.
Those missions were later taken over by the SR-71, which were operated by the United States Air Force in 1968, and the seven remaining A-12s were put into storage until 1989 when records of the A-12 Program were declassified and the remaining aircraft were offered to museums…