Martin RB-57D Canberra

The Martin RB-57D Canberra was a specialized high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft that the Glenn L. Martin Company developed from its B-57 Canberra tactical bomber, itself a license-built version of the English Electric Canberra. It grew out of a December 1952 United States Air Force study for a jet reconnaissance aircraft able to work at about 65,000 feet, and it first flew on 5 November 1955. Martin gave it a much larger wing, new J57 turbojet engines, wet-wing fuel cells and a lightened, unarmed airframe, and only twenty were built, in four variants. The type flew reconnaissance and air sampling missions for the Air Force and for Taiwanese crews under CIA sponsorship, and one was shot down in 1959 in the first successful shoot-down of an aircraft by a surface-to-air missile. Wing fatigue ended front-line use, but converted EB-57D aircraft served as radar targets until the last was retired in 1979.