i said it's just a beautiful bit of kit in there it is just stunning i can't i didn't realize it was that old god you must think i'm really thoughtless but i've never known that welcome back to a another article i'm afraid you're just putting up with me today however mrs h and baby h will be returning in the next article any who this article looks like a firecracker it's another u.s military article and it's entitled xb 70 valkyrie america's mach 3 super bomber ever built this looks like a badass a piece of kit looks like it's got some really good views so i'm going to check it out your reaction,
And if you guys know anything about this magnificent piece of engineering please let me know in the comments below right i think that's enough of my jibber-jabber let's get on with it see this plane it's america's mach 3 super bomber that you never heard about what the north american xb70 valkyrie was the largest and fastest bomber ever built by the united states that looks badass it kind of reminds me of the british stroke american it was a passenger plane called concorde sure a lot of you may have remembered that it was decommissioned a few years ago,
Look at that beautiful bitter kit there that max 3 super bomber but the massive six engine mach 3 capable jet never entered production oh only one surviving prototype sits in a museum in dayton ohio even as the boeing b-52 it was supposed to one day replace continues to soldier on wow [Music] named valkyrie after the female battle spirits of norse mythology the bomber was built to penetrate soviet air defenses in a nuclear war and deliver thermonuclear bombs on target wow i didn't realize it was it was not that old but i thought it was quite a new bit of kit it's it's yeah it looks so futuristic but yeah the xb70 was 196 feet long 31 feet tall at the tail and had a maximum gross weight of 521 thousand pounds,
The valkyrie was fabricated using stainless steel honeycomb sandwich panels and titanium it was designed to make use of a phenomenon called compression lift achieved when the shock wave generated by the airplane flying at supersonic speeds supports part of the airplane's weight now the concorde went supersonic i'm sure it did i'm sure it was super sonic because you could get from uk to new york and it was something stupid like three hours it was that quick this yeah why did they not keep producing this this is awesome this unique characteristic reduced drag and was one of the secrets of the xb70s performance,
Idea behind the xb70 originated in the 1950s when it was assumed even greater speeds and then anti-aircraft guns were only marginally effective and interceptors were increasingly challenged by ever improving bomber performance but the introduction of the first soviet surface-to-air missiles in the late 1950s changed that picture dramatically suddenly the xb70 were much more vulnerable and even its mach 3 speeds could not guarantee its survival wow to cope with the rising these lower altitudes the xb70 valkyrie would be much less effective so much in fact that it would not perform better than the b-52 it was meant to replace mission range,
Fuel economy would also suffer when flying lower another nail in the cop i didn't realize that that's probably a really dumb thing to say i thought yeah i need to kind of maybe do some research to find out why you'd be using more fuel lower down than you would be further up often for the xb70 project was the development of icbm missiles in the late 1950s the valkyrie was specifically designed to carry the heavy nuclear weapons but now the icbms threatened the role of the aircraft president eisenhower was not a big believer in the valkyrie project as he saw no real need for the aircraft his main points against it were the same as the above mentioned ones i mean it looks a badass bitter kit,
Even by today's standard i genuinely thought this was new i mean if this was to come out i'd be like like now i'll be like that's an awesome bit of kit and it's yes quite old now isn't it wow rockets and missiles were a threat and icbms were a cheaper more effective way of doing the same thing he said he also pointed out that the aircraft that was still in development would kennedy however endorsed the xb70 and it actually became part of his election campaign to do so but at the time he became president the xb70 valkyrie project had already cost equal to almost seven billion dollars today wow and there was a space race wasn't it was it the space race back then kennedy didn't he make a quite a bold claim,
Saying we're going to beat the russians because obviously the russians were the first country to put a man into space and obviously america was the first person to put man on the moon pretty sure that's right a hefty sum for a bomber so in 1961 he canceled the project it had become too expensive and unnecessary instead kennedy changed the xb70 program to a research project the valkyrie was perfect for exploring the effects of supersonic flight and propulsion north american aviation completed the first prototype called av-1 in may 1964 in palmdale california all you 80s kids out there this this is just screaming to me transformer uh one of the transformers it's just screaming at me saying you know you could turn it into a robot it's like it's that kind of cool plane that you could change and it would transform into a robot so it's my little inner child coming out now,
But 80s kids people from the 80s and that well um yeah i look very fondly at the 80s and all the little toys and stuff but yes this looks like a potential transformer robots in disguise i'll shut up and get back to the article a second prototype the ev2 quickly followed in october the same year a third prototype was planned but got cancelled in september 1964 the first xb70 embarked on its first flight the valkyrie first went supersonic when it reached mach 1.1 on the third test flight on october 12 1964. it first surpassed mach 3 on october 14 1965 where the av-1 reached mach 3.02 at 70 000 feet wow the av-2 followed its sister's footsteps and became the month later the ev2 flew at mach 3.06 for 32 minutes,
And covered a distance of 3 900 kilometers or 2400 miles in the 91 minutes flight time tragedy struck on june 8th 1966 when the second xb70 prototype was destroyed in a crash after a mid-air collision with its f-104n chase plane two people were killed and one was severely injured during the accident the loss of the second aircraft which was much more capable than the first was a huge setback testing however continued until february 4th 1969 ultimately the first xb70 logged 83 flights totaling 160 hours in 16 minutes while the second xb70 logged 46 flights totaling 92 hours in 22 minutes according to nasa the xb70 valkyrie last went supersonic in december 1968.
In february the following year the valkyrie av-1 took its final flight to the national museum of the united states air force near dayton ohio wow it's still on display there oh wow i'd like to go and visit that has any of you guys been to see this i don't i would really like to go see that because i just can't quite appreciate the obviously the speeds it's going but the size of it and it's just a beautiful plane beautiful the xb70 valkyrie was indeed ahead of its time despite a turbulent life from development to retirement the futuristic supersonic bomber amazes with its looks performance and history it was a product of the cold war where experts thought that mach 3 speeds,
And higher altitudes could protect a bomber carrying nuclear weapons but development costs and advances in technology eventually made the xb70 valkyrie military aircraft the crash in 1966 became a darker chapter in the history of the aircraft but the remaining valkyrie continued its work in research and eventually went on display in 1969 in a museum in ohio the xb70 while a technological wonder at the time was the wrong plane for the wrong time it came at a time when sufficient protection against surface-to-air missiles or the next generation of soviet fighters though its intended role as a strategic bomber was unsuccessful the valkyrie project contributed to later projects like the b-1b lancer bomber the sr-71 blackbird spy plane,
Other projects moore's the pity it would likely have been the fastest bomber ever i'd say it's just a beautiful bit of kit in it it is just stunning i can't i didn't realize it was that old god you must think i'm really stupid but i've i've never known that now wow oh just the jets in the back just look badass i mean the whole thing looks amazing i didn't even know such a plane existed obama oh what's that [Applause] oh my god that was bloody amazing really enjoyed that article really really enjoyed that article if you've got any suggestions for other articles i can react to please let me know in the comments below or you can reach out to me on other social media platforms guys that was bloody amazing if you've got any stories about this if you've seen this valkyrie plane or bomber please let me know guys thank you so so very much for watching and what leaves me to say mr h you're my friends is take care god bless see y'all in the next article.
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