Aircraft pics

[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

[427TJ]

I think the difference was that the XB-70 was only able to sustain high Mach numbers for relatively short periods whereas the SR-71 could do so for longer periods. Also, by the time the XB-70 first flew, ICBMs had taken over the prominent role in the U.S. Strategic Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) and thus the XB-70 was basically obsolete as it rolled out the factory doors. Just as with the battleships of the U.S. Navy, the idea of the XB-70 was overtaken by technology, at least as far as the Cold War was concerned. Battleships did have one last hurrah during the 1991 Gulf War as they lobbed "Volkswagens" (WWII-era 2,000 pound cannon shells) into Kuwait but otherwise they were long out of date. Perhaps the XB-70, had it been in use in 1991, could also have pummeled the Iraqi Republican Guard, free from the threat of Iraqi SAMs and interceptors.

[nuch_ss396]

I can't imagine the incredibly sick feeling that must ensue
following the destruction of such an expensive development
aircraft like the XB-70. If memory serves me right, I
believe that the XB-70 that crashed was actually the later
design varient ( articulating wings ). Makes you wonder
how a company could absorb such a loss. To put it in context,
how would an automaker today deal with an auto development
project that ended in failure?

Nuch