A-12 mission on 8 May 1968, over North Korea. On 4 June 1968, just weeks before the fleet's retirement, an A-12 from Kadena, piloted by Jack Weeks, was lost over the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines while conducting a functional check flight after the replacement of one of its engines. Frank Murray made the final A-12 flight on 21 June 1968, to Palmdale, California, storage facility. On 26 June 1968, Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, presented the CIA Intelligence Star for valor to Weeks' widow and pilots Collins, Layton, Murray, Vojvodich, and Dennis B. Sullivan for participation in Black Shield. The deployed A-12s and the eight non-deployed aircraft were placed in storage at Palmdale. All surviving aircraft remained there for nearly 20 years before being sent to museums around the U.S. On 20 January 2007, despite protests by Minnesota's legislature and volunteers who had maintained it in display condition, the A-12 preserved in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was sent to CIA headquarters to be displayed there. A-12 aircraft summary Timeline Major events in the development and operation of the A-12 and its successor, the SR-71, include: 16 August 1956: Following Soviet protests about U-2 overflights, Richard M. Bissell Jr. conducts the first meeting on reducing the radar cross section of the U-2. This evolves into Project Rainbow, a bid to prolong the aircraft's operational life through a package of modifications. Called "Trapeze", these added wires and paints impregnated with tiny iron ferrite beads and ECM systems. The modified U-2s were called "Dirty Birds". Ultimately, the program failed to substantially reduce the U-2's RCS, leading to the decision to develop a new aircraft with stealth characteristics. December 1957: Lockheed begins designing subsonic stealthy aircraft under what will become Project Gusto. 24 December 1957: First J-58 engine run. 21 April 1958: Kelly Johnson makes first notes on a Mach-3 aircraft, initially called the U-3, but eventually evolving into Archangel I. Kelly noted in his A-12 diary, "I drew up the first Archangel proposal for a Mach 3.0 cruise airplane having a range at ". November 1958: The Land panel provisionally selects Convair FISH (B-58-launched parasite) over Lockheed's A-3. The A-3 was an unstaged (non-parasite) aircraft that cruised at Mach 3.2 at . The Land Panel favored Convair's design, which had a smaller radar cross section than the A-3. On 22 December, Convair was instructed to continue FISH's development