XB-70 Valkyrie

Added on July 9th, 2007 by grog | Report Post
Tags:Aerial, Military

This was to be a mach 3+ high altitude bomber developed around the same time as the Blackbird. 2 were built before the program cancellation, once crashed, 1 is at the USAF museum. Another beautiful plane.

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JoeCrow (#441)

18 years ago

yeah.. wed completely kick so much more ass if they didnt puss out on it

kn0xy (#623)

18 years ago

Takes a lot of likely towards the Concorde(s), which were they not built around the same time as this?

grog (#201)

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18 years ago

The Concorde came shortly after. The XB-70 started development in the late 50’s with the first flight being in 64. The Concorde started development around 62 with fist flight in 69, just a few months after the final flight of the XB-70.
But ya, they are fairly similar in size and design, even the tilting nose. The Concorde is around 20 feet longer with the XB-70 being a few feet wider. If you do a overlay of them, they look quite similar.
I got to see the XB-70 in 2000, right next to it was a SR-71, of the 5 Blackbirds I have seen, that was the only dwarfed in scale and general coolness by the planes around it. I’m 6’2″, when walking under it at the lowest point I could feel my hair just barely touching the bottom. And the 6 engines right next to each other are very impressive. The thing is massive.
If interested, check out labiker.org/xb70.html its a great resource for Valkyrie info.

Frznagn (#560)

18 years ago

This is one of the most amazing planes we’ve ever built! I saw it at Wright-Pat in the early 80’s. It had the lowest drag-ratio of any plane we’ve built. You’d think that we could take today’s technology and make it even better than it was. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to redesign this than build the B-1?