XB-70 Valkyrie - Mach 3+ Bomber (North American)

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

This thread is dedicated to the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber.

Weighing in at over 1/2 MILLION POUNDS, this aircraft was capable of Mach 3+ speeds.

Here's the WIKI link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

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...and here is a short video explaining the CANCELLATION of the XB-70 Program following a midair collision and the loss of one of the two prototype airframes.
I understand that the remaining aircraft is in the USAF's Wright Patterson AFB Museum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCORwUxlNQo

Carry on.

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

This article spawned the creation of this dedicated thread.....

http://worldwarwings.com/hitting-ma...term=repost-ww2-mr&utm_content=xb-70+valkyrie

And this informative video is the one also featured in the article above.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg67-ptlrwk

 

[Guyfang]

This is another bird my Father took my brother and I to see fly. My Father worked for North American Aviation, and him and his boss took a load of us kids to Edwards AFB and we parked out on a dirt road with about 40 other cars and trucks, to watch the XB-70 take off and land. To a ten year old kid, this aircraft appeared to be half the size of Texas! And what a sound!!

 

[M813rc]

Guyfang, I shall remain forever pea green with envy over that! I would have loved to see that magnificent beast fly. It is one of the planes that enthralled me as a child.

Cheers

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

The XB-70 was one of the first model airplanes I ever assembled by myself - though still under the watchful eyes of my Dad.

The finished product hung from my bedroom ceiling until I vacated that room to go to Basic Training. With it's landing gear extended she was frozen in a steep climbing left turn over my bed..... Ah the memories of that and other aircraft hung there.

 

[Guyfang]

It's strange, how fascinating these old plane are. They seem to have a hold on me, that I am unable to explain. My father worked his whole life in the Airospace industry. Because of that, I had the opertunity to see, touch, get into, and play with lots of aircraft. I was snake bit at a very early age! And then came the space program! Oh man, did I ever love that.

I acheaved a lifes dream, when I was stationed in Ft. Belvoir. The Air and Space museum, in Washington DC. If you have never been, and ever get a chance, move heaven and earth to go. You will only have one regret. You can't see it all in a day, nor a week.

 

[Guyfang]

Guyfang, I shall remain forever pea green with envy over that! I would have loved to see that magnificent beast fly. It is one of the planes that enthralled me as a child.

Cheers

Rory,

The aircraft that set me back the most as a kid, was flat out, the X-15-2. It was a rocket plane. What a sight it was. We of course never saw it launch, but did see it slung under the wing of 0008, the long lived B-52 that NASA had. I also saw the X-15 one time in a huge hanger, but we could not approach it. Still, it was a sight to behold! What a sleek looking bird. The X-15-2 bird was something special. It broke up on landing. Simply broke in half, if I remember right. After North American rebuilt it, it was several feet longer.

The first X-15 crashed. I think it went into a flat spin, at, I think, 80 thousand feet? On the way down, the pilot, tried to correct the spin and shaking, but to no avail. The aircraft broke up at 50-60 thousand feet, killing the pilot. About 10 years ago, I read the transcript of the pilots final several minutes, He tried till the end to recover the aircraft. He spoke in a relatively normal voice, describing each and every thing he could try to recover the aircraft, up until the aircraft broke up. Chilling. Simply chilling. How he could keep his poise that way.

0008, was a B-52, that NASA had for testing various projects. The X-15 was just one of them. The 0008 was, indeed, the eighth B-52 produced. NASA used the aircraft until 2003 or 2004, before finally retiring her, after almost 50 years active duty. If I remember right, the bird is on display at Edwards AFB. There was a very fine article about 0008 in Air and Space, shortly after she retired. She had the lowest amount of flight hours of any B-52 on active duty. And I think she was the last B-52B model in flying condition.

 

[M813rc]

Yes, I have much love the X-15, and good ol' 0008. I've seen the video of that one breaking it's back.
I was obsessed with aircraft from an early age, consumed every book or magazine I could lay my hands on as I grew up, built plastic models by the dozen.

The model building translated well later, as my son and I helped reassemble the 1/1 scale F-84E at the museum on Camp Mabry recently. The only snag we ran into was having been sent the vertical fin of an F-94 amongst all the F-84 parts!
The aircraft was displayed for a while "undergoing maintenance" with the fin on trestles.
The proper tail was finally tracked down at a museum in California, where they were trying to figure out why their F-94 fin didn't fit. A trade ensued, both planes now have their proper feathers.
http://www.lonestar-mvpa.org/events/2016/jet.htm

My main interest is military aircraft from the 50s-70s, but I love them all. If it gets off the ground, I'm interested.
A while back, a buddy and I flew an L-29 Delfin to an airshow. While we were there, a powered parachute guy offered to take us up in his 2-seater. My buddy smiled and politely declined, he wasn't having any of that 'no decent cockpit' nonsense! Me? You bet! Let me tell you, that thing was a blast! Top speed was maybe 30mph, but it really was fun to fly. Takeoff roll was about 15', landing rollout was perhaps 2'. If you ever get the chance to go up in one (under?) do it.

Cheers

 

[Piper Cub]

Yes I'm pretty sure 0008 is sitting at the south gate to Edwards. It's been a couple years since I was up there but I think that's one of the planes there. XB 70 really was an amazing airplane. I have a model of it that was signed by one of the pilots, Fitz Fulton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzhugh_L._Fulton Every year the local airshow has a tent with retired test pilots who have some really amazing stories to tell. I can sit in there for a long time listening to them talk about all the airplanes they got to fly in and work around.

 

[Guyfang]

Yes, I have much love the X-15, and good ol' 0008. I've seen the video of that one breaking it's back.
I was obsessed with aircraft from an early age, consumed every book or magazine I could lay my hands on as I grew up, built plastic models by the dozen.

The model building translated well later, as my son and I helped reassemble the 1/1 scale F-84E at the museum on Camp Mabry recently. The only snag we ran into was having been sent the vertical fin of an F-94 amongst all the F-84 parts!
The aircraft was displayed for a while "undergoing maintenance" with the fin on trestles.
The proper tail was finally tracked down at a museum in California, where they were trying to figure out why their F-94 fin didn't fit. A trade ensued, both planes now have their proper feathers.
http://www.lonestar-mvpa.org/events/2016/jet.htm

My main interest is military aircraft from the 50s-70s, but I love them all. If it gets off the ground, I'm interested.
A while back, a buddy and I flew an L-29 Delfin to an airshow. While we were there, a powered parachute guy offered to take us up in his 2-seater. My buddy smiled and politely declined, he wasn't having any of that 'no decent cockpit' nonsense! Me? You bet! Let me tell you, that thing was a blast! Top speed was maybe 30mph, but it really was fun to fly. Takeoff roll was about 15', landing rollout was perhaps 2'. If you ever get the chance to go up in one (under?) do it.

Cheers

About 20 years ago, while visiting my father, he took us down to some dirt strip outside of Phoenix. He said he had been going down about 1-2 times a month and going for a ride in an Ultralight. He asked us if we wanted to go. Without LOOKING at an Ultralight, I said hall yes!!

Then the guy brought it out. You know, there just wasn't much to it. Not much at all. My father and youngest son went first, with the pilot. This guy was all crippled up. Could hardly walk. My son, (age 10-11) asked him why he walks so funny. The guy told him, "My parachute didnt open. The reserve wasn't much better. I had to stop jumping, so now I fly Ultralights". My wife about fell over. Anyway, they took off. Flew a big circle and landed. It looked like a fight was going on in the cockpit, (if you want to call it that, it was more like sitting on a thimble, in a ice cooler). So I ran out and held the wing while the three of them wrassled around. It seems as though as soon as the pilot got about 500 feet off the ground, my son, who was sitting on my dad's lap, put a stranglehold on the pilot, in front of him. And wouldn't let go!. Joe the pilot figured he better sit down or he might just pass out from lack of oxygen.

Next up was my wife and oldest. It went fine, they were gone 40 minutes. Then I went. After I got over the trauma, of sitting on an egg carton, with a thin couple of wires between me and the ground, with NOTHING to GRAB onto, it was real nice. But there is NOTHING between you and the ground. Yeah, yeah, you're belted in. But you just don't think about that! Just, wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, is it a LONG ways down. He took me up around 1500, 1800 feet and we sailed around for a half hour, or so. Would have stayed longer, but the daily monsoon rains were comming. Not a good idea to be up then! The powered parachute is even more "skimpy" on what you can hold on, but I think I could now do it without toooooooooooooooo much problems. Maybe next year when we go to Austria, I might try it. Here in germany, it's possible, but they make such a big deal out of it.

 

[M813rc]

The thing we flew was like a tandem tricycle with a big fan at the back. Had proper stick, pedals and throttle, even a couple of instruments up front. But that was it. All slung under a big rectangle parachute that was about 15 or so feet above you in flight. Looked a lot like the ones in the attached pictures. I thought it was wonderful "true" flight. Not quite like being a bird, but as close as I'm going to get without trying one of those crazy wing suits, and tempting as it is, I'm too old for that!

My buddy's flight time is all in closed cockpit planes- props and jets, so all that openness just wasn't going to work for him. I have a lot of experience in doorless helicopters as well as the closed up aircraft, so being in the wind is pretty natural to me. That, and the thought of going from the tightly enclosed jet to a powered parachute was highly entertaining.

Attached are pictures of the L-29 we flew to the show, for comparison. I like that second one, even if its a bit fuzzy, it just embodies "jetness". My daughter took that with a zoom lens just into the takeoff roll one hot afternoon.

Cheers

 

[camoyj7]

They used a copy of that in the movie Fire Fox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film)
The film was based on the creation of a "mythical" super fighter: the MiG-31 Firefox. The original Firefox from the novel was, cosmetically, nearly identical to the MiG-25.[SUP][4][/SUP] The more intimidating version seen in the movie was created specifically for the film, and takes many of its design cues from the North American XB-70 Valkyrie.

 

[Guyfang]

The thing we flew was like a tandem tricycle with a big fan at the back. Had proper stick, pedals and throttle, even a couple of instruments up front. But that was it. All slung under a big rectangle parachute that was about 15 or so feet above you in flight. Looked a lot like the ones in the attached pictures. I thought it was wonderful "true" flight. Not quite like being a bird, but as close as I'm going to get without trying one of those crazy wing suits, and tempting as it is, I'm too old for that!

My buddy's flight time is all in closed cockpit planes- props and jets, so all that openness just wasn't going to work for him. I have a lot of experience in doorless helicopters as well as the closed up aircraft, so being in the wind is pretty natural to me. That, and the thought of going from the tightly enclosed jet to a powered parachute was highly entertaining.

Attached are pictures of the L-29 we flew to the show, for comparison. I like that second one, even if its a bit fuzzy, it just embodies "jetness". My daughter took that with a zoom lens just into the takeoff roll one hot afternoon.

Cheers

If this thing had a flimsy little wing and a little bitty tail, it could be the brother to the ultralight we flew in.