Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: gatech!srchtec!johnb@gatech.edu (John Baldwin)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: F-12
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.030406.19@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 30 Aug 90 03:04:06 GMT
References: <1990Aug23.015015.2788@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gatech!srchtec!johnb@gatech.edu (John Baldwin)

>
>Performance of the YF-12 was roughly comparable to the other Blackbirds,
>circa Mach 3 at circa 75,000 ft.  Armament was four big Hughes missiles
>that were descendants of the big Eagle (meant to arm the Navy's Missileer,

Has anyone else seen this film short, or am I just misremembering it?  :-)
It was some early footage of YF-12 test flights... the camera was obviously
mounted in a chase plane, and the YF-12 test-fired one of its missiles.
The missile came off a hardpoint on the underside of the fuselage, forward
of the wings... it dipped a little (presumably to clear the ship), got just
a little forward of the aircraft's nose, and then lazily drifted back until
it was well behind the YF-12.  It then chased the mothercraft for a while
until the YF-12 had thoroughly outrun it and the missile ran out of fuel!

-- 
John T. Baldwin                      |  johnb%srchtec.uucp@mathcs.emory.edu
Search Technology, Inc.              | 
                                     | "... I had an infinite loop,
My opinions; not my employers'.      |  but it was only for a little while..."