High and mighty, the single-seat Lockheed A-12 and the two-seat SR-71 Blackbird conducted photographic overflights in North Vietnam at a speed of Mach 3.2 and altitude of 82,000 feet. The closest any enemy ever came to bagging a Blackbird occurred on Oct. 30, 1967, when a piece of shrapnel hit one wing after the detonation of three North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles. The SR-71A shown here operated from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, where the local venomous snakes inspired its tail marking. (U.S. Air Force)