Valkyrie The North American XB-70

The first time anyone sees the sole surviving XB-70A Valkyrie it’s hard not to be struck dumb by the jaw-droppingly amazing shape of this totally futuristic otherworldly looking aircraft. Firstly, it’s huge. The aircraft is five times heavier and a whole lot larger than the MiG 25 fox bat or SR-71 Blackbird, the design’s nearest rivals. Secondly it looks fast. The first time I saw Air Vehicle One was outside the USAF Museum (as it then was) at Wright Field, near Dayton Ohio, in 1980-it looked as if it was about to go supersonic just parked there! At the time it was playing one of a pair of ‘bookends’ outside the main building to a later generation Rockwell B-1 ‘Bone’ and the Valkyrie still looked the more advanced! Thirdly, the aircraft was one very big leap-into-the-future design that pushed the envelope in terms of exotic materials used -such as stainless steel honeycomb, very large amounts of titanium, the use of tool steel for structural components and it would have used the chemical high energy ‘zip’ fuel if that had not been cancelled. At one stage-if all the plans and rhetoric had come to fruition -there would have been 250 Valkyries in the air-the pinnacle of General Curtis LeMay’s quest for the ultimate strategic bomber operated by his Strategic Air Command. It has been said that the beginning of the XB-70 story was the search for a nuclear-powered bomber -that started with a highly modified Consolidated B-36 Peacemaker, the design of which came from World War Two when it looked as if the USA would have to fight a two front war from bases only on the mainland. The B-36 was the first interim bomber, replaced almost as soon as it appeared by the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, itself the second interim design, albeit jet-powered, but it was still subsonic.