Aircraft pics

[sixbrl440]

[ QUOTE ]
how did the pilot screw up in that crash?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ran out of altitude and airspeed at the same time.

[nuch_ss396]

Here's one from the experimental category. This is the XB-70
Valkryie program. A multi-mach bomber project. A few
things of note here are the articulating main landing gear,
movable wing tips amd six engines. This particular plane
later crashed and sadly killed it's pilots. If you look
closely as the Valkryie is landing, you will see a B-58 Hustler
chase plane . Also, if memory serves me correctly,
the plane flexed so buch during sustained mach flight that
the white paint peeled off. You can see the missing paint
in the final shots of the video.

Steve

XB-70 Valkryie

[427TJ]

A neat airplane doomed by the advancement in Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) development. That, plus its incredible appetite for fuel. The crash occurred when test pilot Joe Walker got too close to the XB-70s down-turned wingtips and his F-104 entered the XB's wingtip vorticies. The F-104 quickly rolled across the top of the XB-70, knocking off most of the XB's two vertical fins and then the F-104 fell away in flames, killing Walker. The XB flew on for a short time until it finally went out of control. One pilot safely ejected (Al White) but the copilot's (Carl Cross) ejection capsule malfunctioned, trapping him inside the falling XB-70 and he died on impact. The remaining XB-70 (there were only two) is on display at the USAF Museum.

[nuch_ss396]

Bill,

The USAF Museum is one of the places I hope to visit one day.
Tons of neat stuff there.......

Steve

[nuch_ss396]

Bill,

There was a very informative cable series on several years ago called WINGS.
I think it was on The Discovery Channel at the time. I haven't seen it for some
time, but I was always impressed with the breath of information and
detailed manufacturing and in-flight footage they gathered.
Do you know the where-abouts of this series?

Steve

[427TJ]

They still play Wings on the Discovery Wings channel. The early episodes with the British narration are getting rare and the XB-70 was one of those episodes. I saw it in 1988 but not since. Here's a Googled photo of the ill-fated XB-70 just before the collision. Joe Walker's orange-tailed F-104 is on the B-70's right wing and you can see Walker getting in close to the right wing of the XB. Walker, a highly-experienced test pilot to include flights in the X-15, surely knew about wingtip vorticies (basically horizontal tornadoes that trail aft from the wingtip of every aircraft) but he may have underestimated the strength of the massive XB-70's wingtip vorticies.

[JRSully]

That thing looks like a praying mantis

[427TJ]

Here's a link to a series of photos of the collision and then the spin/crash of the XB-70. Text is French but the photos tell the story.

http://www.xb70.free.fr/mono/Texte/crash/crash.htm

[nuch_ss396]

[ QUOTE ]
That thing looks like a praying mantis

[/ QUOTE ]

Good eye! I think that was the intent Scare the
hell out of the prey ( Russians in this case ).

BTW Bill, I would have thought that at mach 3+ this B-70
would have been able to outrun SAMs. I know that the SR-71
can outrun them, but that is reported to run faster than
mach 4.

Steve