A mystery project (a mystery to me, at any rate) is Bell's "Weapon System 118P." What few references can be found about it generally put it in with boMi and RoBo (sub-orbital manned recon/bombardment systems... predecessors of Dyna Soar). However, several photos of display/wind tunnel models of “Special Reconnaissance Airplane Weapon System 118P” have come to light, including:
This shows what is clearly an airbreathing manned vehicle intended for high speed. For a long while, this photo and a bunch of references to documents dated 1956 held by the DTIC (a FOIA request for them having been made in May, 2006.... STILL waiting) was the only hard evidence.
On my recent trip to the Niagara Aerospace Museum, I got to dig through their archives. It's a randomized jumble. But there I found several more photos, shown below. These show the same vehicle. No real data as yet, just the images (which were filed incorrectly... you go looking for them, you won't find them. I found them purely by accident). But it *sure* looks like somethign meant to fullfill the same role as the SR-71. Could it have been a little-mentioned competitor to the A-11 and Kingfish? I can't say, but it doesn;t seem unreasonable.
[added individual pics - Overscan]
This shows what is clearly an airbreathing manned vehicle intended for high speed. For a long while, this photo and a bunch of references to documents dated 1956 held by the DTIC (a FOIA request for them having been made in May, 2006.... STILL waiting) was the only hard evidence.
On my recent trip to the Niagara Aerospace Museum, I got to dig through their archives. It's a randomized jumble. But there I found several more photos, shown below. These show the same vehicle. No real data as yet, just the images (which were filed incorrectly... you go looking for them, you won't find them. I found them purely by accident). But it *sure* looks like somethign meant to fullfill the same role as the SR-71. Could it have been a little-mentioned competitor to the A-11 and Kingfish? I can't say, but it doesn;t seem unreasonable.
[added individual pics - Overscan]