WhiskeyTango, on the YF-12, you are 1/2 right. 3 YF-12s were built. 60-6936 crashed in 1971, both pilots ejected safely. 60-6935 went to the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH in 1979 where it has been ever since. The above photo was taken in 1990 at Beale AFB in CA, so neither of those aircraft could have been involved.

The final YF-12, 60-6934, was involved in a landing accident in 1966 where the front half of the plane was trashed. The Skunk Works took the front of a static test model and paired it with the rear of the YF-12 and converted it into a SR-71, 61-7981. It quickly gained the nickname “The Bastard” because it all ways pulled to the side (left if I remember right, been a few years since I read the book about it) and as this was before modern fly by wire systems, the pilots had to put extra pressure on the flight stick to keep it going straight. On a long flight, the pilots were drained from the extra strength involved and constant course corrections not needed in the other Blackbirds, hence the name.

Anyway, the point to all of that, half of a YF-12 is in that picture, it’s the Blackbird at the very top.

Also, all the aircraft are SR-71’s. The final flight of an A-12 was 1968. The above picture was operational Blackbirds at Beale just before the first decommissioning.

And one final thing, at one point the YF-12’s were going to “blow something the fuck up”. If memory serves their were 12 missile launches, with 8 of them hitting the targets dead center at mach 3.2 It was decided not to pursue it because they were so fraking fast nothing could catch up with them and of course budgets, at one point around 100 were ordered until that was nixed down to 3.

Yes, I’m a total Blackbird junkie, no, I don’t have a life :p