Welcome everybody, it's been a long time since i posted my last "Spy plane" (i didn't even use custom thumbnails back then!).
But here's a new member of the family, and also the most frustraiting aircraft i've ever developed.

-What is this?
As the name says this Is a spy plane, more specifically a high speed aircraft capable of going over Mach 4.5. This aircraft had HUGE problems in production caused by an autoroll problem that i unfortunately couldn't fix, so this plane in particular isn't the original model and you'll see the huge difference in one of the random shots at the end of the description.

-Controls
A detailed description of how the plane needs to be operated is present in the in-game instructions

But here's a small list to get you started:
Ag1= supersonic mode
Ag2= reverse thrust
Ag3= activate the engines
Ag4= activate/deactivate main lights
There are other controls but these should be enough even if i highly suggest reading the instructions

-Lore (you can skip this)
Political tensions were rising, the "united states of erth" (or USE for short) was on verge of war with some of its neighbors. Their relation with the "Itenian nation" (a colonial power bordering the country) was deteriorating and led to the rise of espionage missions to get ready for possible attacks, following their extremely used tactic of "Knowing the enemy's move before they even approve it". The government soon requested the N.A.F. to intensify Spy plane operations but the company wasn't ready, their S.P. 8 were now old and the itenians not only knew about the plane but they had interceptors and missiles capable of shooting it down. A new design was needed and that's were C aircraft manifacturer (C.A.M.) enters the picture. "Canbell Aircraft Manifacturer" was an old company that was once the pride of the nation, they were responsabile for the C series, a group of early, maily prop driven, fighters that were later replaced by the M.A. series. Unfortunately the company was in a downward spiral, they were masters of prop engines but failed to adapt to the supersonic jet age and their last militar aircraft, the C 7 Supersonic fighter, was a disaster with only 10 units built when they would have needed to sell over 70. The company needed a huge financial hit and they grabbed the opportunity to build erth's new high tech spy plane. They designed a sleek and modern jet capable of Mach 3.5 and even if It would have been easy to shoot down it had a low profile to make it harder to spot on radar, the aircraft would also feature cutting edge avionics and an advanced autopilot sistem . Unfortunately this giant leap forward in technology became only comparable to how the entire program fell flat on its face. The first prototype was rolled out 2 and a half years later than promised because of design issues around the wings and after just 2 weeks of testing things only went worse. The aircraft had huge stability issues at high speed even with the autopilot on, not to mention the tons of structural issues that locked the aircraft at an operational speed of mach 1.2, time was running out and the company placed more and more people in the program when 9 months after the first flight, tragedy struck. The only working prototype disintegrated mid-air during a high speed test at mach 3.4 bringing its pilot down with him, the company faced huge repercussions for it. They didn't have an aircraft, they only had 3 years of development left, the N.A.F. was knocking harder and harder on their door asking about the plane, they could also risk at any moment a lawsuit from the family of the victim of the crash and pulling out of the program now would mean losing trilions of dollars worth of Money and having to fire 1/6 of the company's employees (Everything that could go wrong WENT wrong). The only thing left to do was risky, but It was the easiest way out of the mess, first they apologized to the family of the victim paying a good amount of money and saying that they couldn't easily predict that the aircraft would be that dangerous. Second they ordered a general redesign of the aircraft letting many different engineers offer their own design and third they admitted to the N.A.F. that they had issues but that they wouldn't move the deadline at all. The new aircraft would have been made with one single philosophy "make the most out of the cheapest". Soon out of the many modifications of the original design came what seemed the perfect plane. It was enterely design to fit on the A.C. 3 engine pods that they developed under contract by "Water Works", It had a simple structure with extremely simple design choises and while it wouldn't be as cutting edge as the original It would have been faster with an expected top Speed of mach 4.2 that once It was built It was eventually exceded with the aircraft racing over Mach 4.5 making It impossible to intercept. The plane was built in record time and they managed to deliver the first prototype 2 and a half weeks before the deadline that would have eliminated the contract.
The N.A.F. was overall positive towards the design for the simplicity even if it was still defined as rough and brutally oversimplefied.
A total of 130 were built and entered service in the "screaming phantoms" squadron that eventually got them called the exact same name
Other modifications were built to be sure the aircraft would at least pay off the development cost but they would be only barely enough to break even. Unfortunately for C aircraft manifacturer this plane wasn't the big hit they expected and later they would be absorbed by one of their biggest rivals, the Markus Aircraft Company. For the S.P 9s they would go on to serve the N.A.F. for years and even get featured in many pieces of media but their simple design and reduced tension between nations later on would severely reduce their number going from the original 130 to 60. Surprisingly enough non of these were lost because of shot downs and any airforce to encouter them would have huge trouble trying to bring one down.
(Wow this was longer than expected)

-Random shots

"Let's start this thing"

"A design that never was"

"Landing to refuel Is overrated anyway"

"Speeeeeeeed"