When I saw a picture of this plane at a little museum near Edwards Air Force Base, I thought I was looking at a Concorde. What is that thing?
It's an XB-70 Valkyrie. Two of these prototypes were made. They were supposed to be hypersonic (Mach 3+) bombers. The planes needed to be fast not only to escape from Soviet interceptor jets, but needed to escape the nuclear blast once they released their deadly cargo.
The folding wing tips and cannards made this plane truly strange looking.
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Advancing Soviet surface-to-air missile technology changed the game. High flying bombers like the Valkyrie were no longer effective. Low-flying planes were favored instead. That, the high expense, and other technical issues (fires, pieces of wing falling off) meant the Valkyrie would not go into service for the USAF.
The story gets sadder. In 1966, an XB-70 and four other jets were on a photo shoot for GE, which made the engines for all five aircraft. At the end of the shoot, an F-104 drifted into the XB-70. The F-104 pilot and XB-70's co-pilot died. The XB-70's pilot sustained serious injuries.
Pretty interesting piece on the XB-70. The Soviet Union actually produced an experimental commercial counterpart to the Concorde for civilian use. The USSR was showing it at a French airshow. (The French sent one of their fighters behind it for recon and inadventently flew dangerously close to the aircraft//The Soviet aircraft leveled off quickly to avoid hitting the fighter and in the process "bunted" the engines causing them to flame out and the plane crashed into the ground)Both the French and the USSR had to quietly downplay the accident and work discontinued on their SST. A shame really, because by all acounts theie SST was as technically proficient as the Concorde.
ReplyDeleteI think you will find that the Tu-144 could not fly supersonic without afterburners, what we call supercruise today. From the original design it had to be totally rebuilt. There is a picture somewhere on the internet which shows two prototypes side by side. You can see the difference between them. Now, because of bloody minded politicians here in UK, Concorde has gone the same way. They hated the thought of Richard Branson making them pay.
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