The Lockheed D-21 was an unmanned ramjet powered drone craft that would fly over "high-threat" targets to make the desired photos. It would than fly to a safe area and drop the photo canister with a parachute. The idea was to pick the parachute with its load in mid-air by a special JC-130 Hercules. Developed in the 1960s by Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works, the D-21A would be deployed from the top secret Lockheed M-21 mothership that was a modified A-12 with an extra crew member and would piggy back the drone near the mission area. The M-21 mothership with the D-21 only made some test flights that were unsuccessful.
The D-21 was than modified to D-21B, now for deployment from 2 modified B-52H motherships from wing pylons. The D-21 was fitted with a separate large ramjet rocket.
Some 38 drones were apparantly manufactured. But only a few operational D-21B reconn flights were apparantly made with the B-52H Senior Bowls in South East Asia and over China. A D-21B wreck is on display at a Chinese museum. The remaining drones were put in secret storage in 1973 at Davis-Monthan.
M-21 mothership
D-21
Lockheed D-21
This D-21 drone was seen as preserved at Blackbird Airpark at Palmdale Plant 42 since September 1991 where it was seen in 2016.
Photographed 2016 by Cees Hendriks (C) Copyright!
Scale Models: the D-21 drone was available in 1/72 from Eagles Talon/ Wings Model which also had a 1/48 kit.
It was also included as D-21 in a combined package with a SR-71 kit in 1/72 scale: Monogram/ Revell kit #5810, Hasegawa SR-71A kit #02041, Italeri SR-71 #145 and Testors SR-71A #674
(but it never flew with the SR-71).
This walk around page was first created January 2019 by M. de Vreeze; note Copyright! No part may be published without prior written permission by the author / IPMS Nederland.