On 28 December 1965, the third A-12 was lost when "Article 126" crashed 30 seconds after takeoff when a series of violent yawing and pitching actions was followed very rapidly with the aircraft becoming uncontrollable. Mele Vojvodich was scheduled to take aircraft number 126 on a performance check flight which included a rendezvous beacon test with a KC-135 tanker and managed to eject safely above the ground. A post-crash investigation revealed that the primary cause of the accident was a maintenance error; the flight line technician was negligent in reversing the wiring harnesses for the yaw and pitch rate gyroscopes of the stability augmentation system. It was also found that a contributing cause was a design deficiency which made it possible to physically connect the wiring harnesses in reverse.