North American B-70




My dad has an old black and white photo of this somewhere. I need to find it!

I believe that was the Valkerie. They only built two.

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Stan

"Get off my lawn."

One got wiped out during a photo shoot of General Electric powered aircraft in formation. Opinions vary as to exactly what happened even though much of it is on film.

I WELL remember it! I seen it flying just before it crashed in 1966. I was flying a 1946 8A luscombe with no radio or starter. I was on my first cross country trip to qualify for my license. My route was from san fernando to quartz hill, landed and got my log book signed. Took off for helendale than on to phelan and back to san fernando. I had taken off from quartz hill (no longer a airport), headed east for helendale, at that time a old abanded army air force strip. I was green and got a lot of elevation. I seen the B-70 fly a huge circle around me with the lear?, on its tail. I lost it and tuned into my task. That day or the next morning I heard or read of the crash!
I know this sounds like BS, if challanged I will post a copy of that flight out of my 50 year old log book. I wish I had kept my eyes on those planes!

Don't doubt your report. After all there were two of them up until one crashed. The other is in a museum.

Dang, I'd love to sip a few cool ones with you and listen to your experiences..............Someday.........Got my Wheeler Feral. Going Boo and moose hunting Sunday afternoon for a few days.............

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Go big or stay home

Bummer when your engine quits in flight........

Yep, and I remember a fictional story in IIRC "Boy's Life" called Flight of the Valkyrie about a test flight in which the aircraft commander had to put the wingtips in the down position and drag them in the dirt to help stop the aircraft. I seem to remember they ended up landing on a highway or something. Don't know if that could actually be done but hey, the story was fiction.

CW

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μολὼν λαβέ

I remember seeing pictures of my favorite airplane being a chase plane for the Valkyrie.

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Miss Buddies crsides & fat tom

When you honestly think about it...before computers,CAD and all the gee whiz techno of today, we built some of the most fearsome aircraft in history.

As a certified Air Force brat I got to see up close and personal some of the most wonderful aircraft ever built in history. A memory that will never ever fade.

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Take your time..quickly.

unrealaircraft.com

The Soviets went nuts over the XB-70. Remember that "stealth" wasn't really viable at that time. Speed and altitude were key to survival. The SR-71 did have a lower profile but still was visible to standard radar.

I've seen the XB-70 at the Air and Space Museum at Wright-Patterson and was awed by it's size. You can walk underneath the A/C and can't touch the bottom of the fuselage.

If any of you visit Wright-Pat please stop by the memorial of the Heroes and give a thanks to those who gave all for their country. My uncle Jack Mathis is mentioned there. A Congressional MOH recipient from WW2(posthumous). We donated his medal to the museum. http://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part2/05_mathis.html

Hobie

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Laissez les bons temps roulez!

It was a beautiful aircraft, built along the lines of the old SuperSonic Transport (SST). The SST was the project that just about shut Boeing down in 1968 or so.

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Even older, even crankier....

Around 1967 lockheed had their version of the SST mockup in a hanger in burbank. I spent a lot of hours guarding that thing. Of course they didnt get the contract. I should look through my stuff and see if I can find a picture of it.

I found this on the net. As I recall the nose was always dropped down on the scale mockup.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Lockheed L-2000 SST - Blogs - Airlinebuzz - Commercial Aviation and Beyond! ™

Thanks, but really I always thought my life a little boreing. There was a lot of things I tried to do but was rejected by cause of high BP and overweight. I probley have flunked more physicals trying to get in the military or various LE jobs than I can remember.
I married late in life the first time so that left me a lot of oppurtunity to get in trouble the first half my life.
Truth is I got myself into a lot of situations out of stupidity and recklessness and Gods grace got me out of them, no thanks to me.
Good luck with that hunting. Its pointless for me to go as theresa wont eat anything that doesnt come from the butcher shop. Ex wife was that way too.

I remember the day of the crash (I was nine) and the sense of loss, then seeing the photos in LIFE magazine brought it all home. One of the chase pilots shadowing the XB-70 (Joe White, IIRC) apparently saw something odd, moved a little closer for a better look, and may have gotten caught up in the jetwash or the wake of the big sucker. His jet cartwheeled across the top rear of the Valkyrie, taking out both stabilizers, and both aircraft went down. What a sad waste of men and machines.

We have one (I hope still) in the museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.

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NRA Pistol/Rifle Inst. RSO

It's still there. The one at the Air Force Museum is the only XB-70 left in existence. One of my favorites, I alway try to see it when I visit the museum. I believe the GE engine used in the XB-70's sixpack ( six engines side by side ) were only used on that aircraft, but I may be mistaken on that.
I was lucky that I was able to see the last XB-70 making it's last flight. We were in class at the the Clark County Joint Vocational School in Springfield Ohio when it flew past with a fighter escort on it's wat to Wright Pat to be placed in the museum. This would have been between 1968 and 1970.

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Sceva
OGCA SWCA NRA

There are a couple of youtube videos of it in flight.
XB-70 Valkyrie - The Mach 3 bomber - YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLxtr...eature=related

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" I said, good DAY! "

Here is a video that explains how the crash happened:

XB-70 Valkyrie Mid-air collision June 8, 1966 - YouTube

I was working for a defence contractor at the time......We got a lot of inside dope on the AC.....It drove the ruskies nuts and they cobbled the Mig 25 together in an attempt to counter the potential treat to their paranoid country.....The xb70 had little or no stealth in it's design and would have been a big target.......At high sonic and sonic speeds it had poor range....

I think one reason this jet was cancelled was the A-12 (SR-71).

The A-12 was on the drawing boards in the late 50's. Amazing what engineers did with slide rules and no computers.

When I saw the title of this thread, the XB-70 was the first aircraft that came to my mind.

I don't recall it at the time of it's development, but I've always enjoyed seeing it when I've visited the Wright-Patterson museum. BTW, for any of you military aircraft enthusiasts, if you haven't yet been to Wright-Pat museum...you really must go!

Tim

I think it got cancelled because it cost a fortune to build a supersonic bomber. Compared to the cost of a satellite guided (cruise or other) missile. A non-stealth supersonic bomber could be taken out with a relatively cheap missile. So, though it was groundbreaking, I think the technology just took development in a different direction.

Neat plane though.

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But then, what do I know?

I thought I would open this thread and see a picture of Joe Namath

I do like looking at jets from the Korean War era.


Nice thread and thanks for starting it, we should see some nice pictures from the experts.

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Doesn't hasta call me Johnson

I had forgot all about the particular aircraft.

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Lt. Dan, what R U doing here?

That video explaining the XB-70 crash was more generous to the F104 jockey than other versions.

Kanewpadle, I had never heard about the A-12. You probley are right. When I started lockheed in 1965 we had the YF-12 that was the forerunner to the SR-71. It looked the same but was scaled down to about 2/3ds size. I think I can tell this one now. About 1975 when I was a guard at lockheed. I was on a day off but called a close friend that was my counterpart at work. While I was talking to him he got a call from the tower along with the pilot of a SR-71 telling him to open the fly way gate. The pilot or rather probley the backseat radioman was saying they were over salt lake and lost a engine. We will be landing plant 42 in 14 minutes! Salt lake is 540 miles from plant 42 palmdale! I timed it. I ran out of my house and here it come right on time!

Satellite technology was nowhere close enough to be a factor when the B-70 and the SR-71 were initially built. And yes the SR-71 could be seen on radar. But it was a much smaller signature. The SR was the first stealth aircraft.

North American built some great planes. But their engineering and innovation wasn't as good as Lockheed at the time.

Well, the Blackbird was mighy cool, but satellites were certainly also a factor at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)

I read somewhere that the SR-71 was initially the RS-71 but that LBJ got it backwards and everyone decided to just go with the flow rather than correct the Prez.

True. But did they enough satellites? No.

When I was a kid in the 70's, a relative visited the nearby USAF Museum at WPAFB and brought me a poster with this plane on it. It hung on my wall for a few years.

The XB-70 sat outside at the museum for a long time. After the museum added a new wing, there was a significant refurbishment effort that restored the aircraft to show quality, and it was moved inside. The last time I visited (which was at least 10 years ago) the XB-70 was next to an SR-71 and not far from an F-117A. Think about being able to simply pivot while standing and see all three of those!

I was employed at Lockheed Martin for 33 years and got to see a lot of interesting stuff up close....Upon retirement I was required to sigh a statement that said keep your mouth shut or else, so I won't say too much.........................................During the 67 Israeli/Arab conflict SR 71s and TR 2s did photo recon.......Two Mig 25s were clocked on Israeli radar at 3200 mph and couldn't get close to the 71s........NKorea routinely fired SAMs at SR 71s and the closest detonated 9 miles behind one.....The pilot simply floored the throttle and whistled away unharmed...........The stories go on and on.

Five minutes with some basic data will show that shooting down a 3000mph airplane at 70k ft or more is not an easy task. It took several salvos of missiles to bring down Gary Powers in his hotrodded glider.

I find it intriguing that the drive seems to be for hypersonic platforms, be they weapons or able to carry men. It strikes me that if the physics problem of skin heating has been fixed well enough to go ahead with such projects, why not stretch the envelope a little less and build some Mach 4 fighters and bombers at much less cost.

There are always rumors in the defence industry of strange things.....The SR 71 was retired reputedly because satellite technology was so good and much cheaper than maintaining the 71s.....The in house rumors were of a follow up to the 71....

I suspect that some where there is one or more TAVs (trans atmospheric vehicles)...Take off, leave the atmosphere, conduct a mission, and land back at it's base........There have been numerous sightings of odd contrails above the California coast.

Who knows what is next.........I did not realize that the large black composite things we made would go on the F117.

I think satelittes and the cost of flying the SR were the major factors.

Everytime it flew, the cost was at least 0ne million!

Did you just write "... at much less cost" when talking about building government aircraft? Haaaahahahahahaha. I needed a good laugh and I thank you kindly for this one.

Having worked on SR's and U-2s, I heard some of the same stories.

Kanewpadle....Did you ever hear about the mystery hanger on Guam?

Nope. Never did.

I see that this thread has wandered from the Valkyrie to the Black Bird, but did you all know that the Valk was slated to be powered by a nuclear reactor? The principle was to spin the GE turbines with gas superheated in the reactor core. The difficult part was to keep the crew from getting irradiated in the process.... My dad was a Turbine Engineer for Generous Electric at the time and I remember him talking about it...

Not long ago there was a Discovery show about nuclear powered flight and they discussed something called Project Pluto, a nuke powered supersonic ramjet. It was tested in the Nevada Test Site and the scary thing is that it actually worked. As this was meant to power a Mach 3 low altitude cruise missile, crew shielding was not an issue.

there was a B-36 that had a nuclear reactor on board but it was not used for propulsion and was for testing only. the idea wasn't very practical considering the amount of shielding required to protect the air crew and ground crew.

We were at Plattsburgh AFB from 1957 to 1965. The old man was the deputy wing commander of the 380th Bombardment Wing.

Good times growing up there and some sadness too, with a couple of fatal accidents the wing suffered during those years.

Almost as good as watching the B-58 take off was the B-47 JATO take offs!

The 47's engines didn't spool up quite fast enough so the JATO setup did the trick...

Alcohol/water injection was added to help thrust of the GE-47 turbojets also.

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Take your time..quickly.

The B-36 was the first bomber that carried a working reactor - I think it was a test version. That reactor was still in use in the Nuclear Lab at Lockheed Ft Worth as late as 2005.

Be on the road at the north end of the runway on your Schwinn when that went over your head. Or be in the same place when when the B-52 squadron did a training scramble rolling three down the runway at the same time. May be part of the reason I still have tinnitus 40 some years later.

Huh ??????? Whattdasay?????



I used to lay in the grass off the middle marker(it was just outside the boundary fence) and they would be climbing out under full power....what a rush!

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Take your time..quickly.

they had the reactor on the B-36 but never powered the plane with it. it was just a test to see if the reactor would work aboard the aircraft. The XB-70 never got to the full B-70 status, it stayed an X-plane for all of its 181 flights. The project actually was cancelled because of a new series of anti-aircraft missiles that Russia produced that could reach up and touch the plane no matter how high it flew and then came our own missile systems. They just had it on "Great Planes" on the "Military Channel" and I have it recorded on my DVR, watched it twice this week, she was such an awesome bird, much like the original B1, not the B1b that we fly nowadays. They originally wanted a big bomber that could fly as fast as the B48 Hustler but could carry a bomb load of the B52. According to the pilots they interviewed you never took it out of afterburner, you may throttle it back to minburn but never took it completely out of afterburner and it wasnt until they got the wing tips to where they would fold down that it hit Mach 3. Number 1's wingtips would go to 70 degrees and number 2 would only go to 65 degrees. They had major problems with the hydraulics because they never installed accumulators in the hydraulic systems. yeah I love this bird.

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Grover Oathkeeper

That "jet jockey" was Joe Walker, one of the best pilots in the world at the time.

He made 24 flights in the X-15 and twice flew over an altitude of 60+ miles.

PR people wanted that formation tighter and tighter for photo purposes, and it got him killed.

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Professional Trainer

That would be the XB-70.