The base museum Blackbird temporarily displayed on active ramp has a new hard wearing gloss paint finish. Although some purists may not like this I think it looks stunning and should save the curator repainting her every two years!
The black paint is now looking extremely faded after years of California sunshine. This machine is believed to have visited Mildenhall on the 9th July 1983 marked as '17962' whilst testing the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS).