Roadrunners Internationale expressively credits Joerg Arnu,
webmaster of dreamlandresorts.com
for sharing this article authored by our mutual friend and associate, Peter
W. Merlin
OXCART Down! - Searching for the remains of a secret spy plane
By Peter W. Merlin, October 2003
Desert Quest
Peter Merlin holds pieces of A-12 (60-6926/Article123) at the crash
site. The long, arduous search had finally paid off.
The desert holds many secrets. On a cool October day in 2003, I held one of them
in my hand. A shard of titanium gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight as I
examined it. The fragment was about six inches long and less than two inches
wide. An attached clamp held a segment of metal tubing, probably part of a
hydraulic line. There were no markings. It might not have looked very
impressive, but, to me, it was like the Holy Grail. It was part of a once-secret
airplane and it represented the end of a search I had begun ten years earlier,
though the real story began several decades before, at the height of the Cold
War.
