During last week's media tour of the Pacific Northwest I was
fortunate to be able to stop off at the Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle. 
The Museum of Flight is one of the best aviation museums in the United States and it gives the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum a good run for its money. In some respects, like its World War I collection, it is actually far better than anything that can be found here in DC. They also have an outstanding collection of early Boeing aircraft as one might imagine...
My favorite aircraft in the collection is the lone surviving Lockheed M-21 Blackbird and its D-21 drone--originally built for the Central Intelligence Agency (it seems the CIA was a much cooler place back then with its own private air force) under the codename Tagboard. There were two of these jets that were built, based on the earlier CIA A-12 Blackbird, but the other one was lost during a drone launch accident. That led to the cancellation of the program...
Of course, there were other Blackbird variants--the YF-12 interceptor, which was cancelled, and most importantly the US Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird. The SR-71 was never really replaced when it was retired at the end of the Cold War... And there are persistent rumors of some black project out at Groom Lake, Nevada; some sort of stealthy reconnaissance/strike aircraft being built by Northrop Grumman, allegedly. But who knows if any of it is true... It could be--there is precedent in the Lockheed F-117 and RQ-170. However, it's not like we're getting confirmation anytime soon.
I didn't have much time, but here is a photo of a replica of
the Wright Flyer...
And some sort of civilian aircraft... I'll be frank, I didn't
check the label, so I have no idea what it is... Like I said, I had less than an
hour, so time was of the essence and there were other military aircraft I
needed to see.
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