Military Monday with John D. Gresham With Col. Rich Graham, USAF (Ret.)

Take 1,000 aviation historians/enthusiasts and ask them to list 10 favorite airplanes, and there is a 100% chance that on everyone's list will be one or more of the famous Lockheed "Blackbird" family of aircraft. Beautiful, sleek, clandestine, extremely fast, and even sexy to the eye, the Blackbirds were among the most iconic and well-known airplanes of the Cold War. Beginning with the CIA requirement to replace the U-2 "Dragon Lady" in the 1950s, Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and his famous team at the Lockheed " Skunk Works" created a family of airplanes whose performance has never been equaled since being retired. Starting with the single-seat A-12 for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s, Johnson and his Skunk Works team created airplanes that went higher, faster, were "stealthy," and were light years ahead of anything else in the sky. Sadly, in the end, it was not any enemy capabilities that killed the Blackbirds, but high operating costs and an indifferent Congress that failed to see the worth of keeping them flying. Today, Blackbirds are the pride and joy of museums across America, where they stand as testament to the national requirements of gathering intelligence over denied territory during the Cold War.

To learn more about the Lockheed Blackbirds, the people who flew and maintained them, the clandestine missions they conducted during the Cold War, and the amazing technologies behind them , join military historian, author and journalist John D. Gresham (@greshamj01) for Military Monday (#MilitaryMonday on the Writestream Radio Network (@Writestream)) at 1 P.M. Eastern time. His guest this week will be retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, along with Blackbird and Dragon Lady driver Col. Richard Graham. Graham is the author of four books on the Blackbirds with Zenith Press (@Zenith_Press).