Purist's note: The only Blackbirds to actually fly with a drone mounted this way were the two M-21 variants of the CIA's A-12. To make an accurate M-21 from this kit will require a fair bit of conversion to the nose and rear fuselage. It may be easier to convert the Testors YF-12. Or just leave the drone off and make a bog-standard SR-71.

Jessie is right, and the only M-21 with a drone on display is at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, inside the Great Hall. You can actually walk around it from two levels. Here’s a link to the display: LINK By the way, note the main gear tires are indeed heat reinforced metallic gray-silver, not black! The largest model show in the Northwest is held beneath and around the M-21 by the Northwest Scale Modelers every year in February. Here’s a link to an LSP article about this year’s show, with more M-21 photos: LINK VR, Russ

The reason that Seattle's M-21 is the only M-21 is that it turns out launching a large drone from the back of a Blackbird at Mach 3 is a spectacularly bad idea. The drone lifted up, bounced off the M-21s shock wave, slammed back down and caused the M-21 to break apart and crash. Sadly LCO Ray Torric drowned when his pressure suit filled with water after the crew landed in the ocean. The accident ended the M-21/D-21 program and after that all D-21 launches were from B-52s instead.

Yep, that’s it exactly. Still an impressive bird sitting there with that drone perched on her back, taking its place in history along with all the other double-deckers— back to Canopus and Mistel and the others. VR, Russ

I just noticed that Hasegawa calls the drone the D-21B. That's the variant which was launched from B-52s, and it had a monstrous solid-fuel rocket attached to it like this D-21Bs were never flown on the back of a Blackbird.

Yes, Jessie is correct again. And I think the MoF also makes that mistake (I wonder where Hasegawa got their info from?). The correct designation for both the MoF and the kit should be “D21”. However, I think the MoF drone was a D21B at some point. In fact, I think all D21Bs were manufactured as D21s, with the rocket pack being an add on, after the failure that caused the crash, so this might be where the confusion started, and therefore almost forgive-able, not really being a mistake at all by the museum, but a for certain mistake by Hasegawa. This is one of the pitfalls of using museum pieces alone as research for model kits. I recently experienced the same thing with an artillery kit (the Roden WWI 8” BL Howitzer), that had the wheels wrong, as they used a modified howitzer from a Finnish museum. Model manufacturers sometimes do this. Hmmm...unless of course, there is really a D21-B in the box, perhaps with the added rocket booster? It would be great to get a look in the box. VR, Russ

Alas, no