Anybody remember this airplane? I don’t know why, but I was just working on a bike and for some reason it envkoed images of the XB-70 Valkerie.
Anyone have recollections or experiences with it? A long shot I know… Sorry to waste forum space.
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what, are you working on Airbornes again?
Of course, http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html.
60’s Mach 3 bomber. 2 prototypes were built. One crashed in a mid-air with a t-38. Cut because ICBM’s superseeded its design.
Wicked fast looking.
I thought it collided with an F-104 chase plane as I recalled. I do remember that crash though- and that bizarre escape capsule that facilitated ejection. I don;t recall if all the crew escaped.
It was an incredible aircraft. An icon of a by-gone era, or maybe not when you look at a B-2 Spirit.
Let me guess - the bike was an Airborne?
Yes, I remeber the Valkerie - here are some good links to sites with information o the aircraft: http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight/mf37.htm
Is that the plane they built two of, and one got taken down by a chase plane that got sucked into it’s tail? Back in the days when they knew how to build real planes (see YF-12A).
No, it was another brand.
I frequently equate working on bikes in here to working on aircraft. The checklist procedures we have adopted are similar to an air crew checklists. I like that.
Yup, I think an F-104 Strfighter piloted by a guy named Walker plowed into the starboard vertical stabilizer and just detonated. The '104 pilot did not get out. Some of the Valkyrie crew did I recall.
I believe this is on display now at the Dayton Air Force museum, if you want to see it up close.
I may be getting my history mixed up, but I think the Soviets built a copycat plane (or maybe we copied theirs… I don’t know), but it crashed at the Paris Air show on its debut flight.
Update: Duh… I just saw at the WPAFB link above.
Hello there,
I saw the only remaining prototype at Wright Patterson Air Force Base along about 25 years ago. It was so big that our tour bus drove under the body of the airplane with plenty of clearance. It’s pretty incredible that an aircraft that large could fly Mach 3.
Last summer I took my family through Dayton and the XB-70 was no longer outside. They have it in a special hangar that you need a special ticket for, so we didn’t get to see it.
Chad
A guy I work with is obsessed with this machine. He even travelled to the crash site and found a piece of the instrument panel - very small one. He uses it as a keychain.
Nice photos.
For those of you who really live retro, what about the B-58 Hustler?
The plane that crashed at the paris airshow was the TU-144 “concordeski”. It was trying to avoid a French fighter that it was not aware of that was taking spy photos of it.
The Hustler was an impressive aircraft. It’s low wing-loading delta configuration provided an unprecedented ride at low altitude in the Mach 1.5+ regime. That gigantic centerline tank was impressive also.
The B-58 Hustler went a long way toward inspiring the French Mirage series aircraft. It was an enormous leap forward over the B-47 Stratojet and even the YB-52 Stratofortress which went on to become the current, old B-52G.
Another aircraft that went down in somewhat spectacular fashion was a Russina MIG-29 Fulcrum piloted by Russian test pilot Anatoly Kovachur, one of the finset Soviet pilots and recipient of the “Hero of the Soviet Union” award. Kovachur exprienced a FOD- induced rotor stall while flying at very high AOA and very slow. The aircraft turned into the dead engine (a '29 uses two Tumansky RD-34 jet engines) and augered in. It just disappeared into the ground, diggin its own grave. The '29 is equipped with the self-stabilizing K-36 ejection seat that deploys two miniature drogue parachutes upon deplyment. The seat saved Kovachur’s life. He parachute was still deploying when he hit the ground, and survived. Amazing.
And the venerable XF-5U4 Flying Flapjack… Pinnacle of US aerospace engineering:
It’s pretty incredible that an aircraft that large could fly Mach 3.
Built by whom …??? And I work where …???
Tom, are you writing a book on aviation history? It seems right up your alley. Here’s an idea for you: over my career, many folks have mentioned to me the seemingly many historical and human connections between cycling and flying, with the obvious beginning of the Wrights and perhaps culminating with the feats Gossamer Albatross (wing span wider than a DC-9, yet weighed only 60 lbs.) and its channel crossing…
I have seen the one at the Dayton Air Museum, back in the 1980’s. The story, as I recall from the museum, was that the chase plane got sucked into the wing tip vortices created by the XB-70, which were quite substantial. I think that the crash was enough for Congress to kill the project as it was quite expensive. All-in-all, I think the SR-71 (Blackbird?) is a more amazing aircraft, given that it was designed in the late '50s and was capable of speeds of over 2000 mph. I don’t think its true top end speed was ever publicized.