XB-70 Valkyrie

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting-looking bombers to ever fly, the XB-70 Valkyrie, designed by North American Aviation. It was intended to be a supersonic, nuclear- armed, deep penetration bomber. It was designed way back when military planners thought that the B-52 would be retired by the late 1960s. (They were way wrong and the common belief is that the last pilot of the B-52 has not yet been born.)

The Valkyrie was designed to fly at or above 70,000 feet and at speeds up to Mach 3 to avoid being targeted by interceptor fight aircraft, the only effective way of defending against high altitude bombers at the time of the XB-70's design. Only two were ever built and the program was canceled in 1961 when it became apparent that the new surface to air missiles made high altitude attack untenable. This was most evident when the U-2 "Dragon Lady" piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 by a volley of SA-2 Guideline missiles. The Valkyrie was later used for high speed and altitude testing, and some of their technology resurfaced in the B-1 Lancer and SR-71 Blackbird.

3 views of the XB-70

The Valkyrie was an advanced design, making use of honeycombed steel and titanium to combat the high temperatures that the airframe reached at supersonic speeds. The XB-70 was built around a large delta wing, common in designs of the time, and used supersonic technologies from the Mach 3 Navajo. One of its most interesting features is the use of compression lift. This created a shock wave below the aircraft that would increase the lift of the wing by 5%, giving the Valkyrie greater ceiling, range, and efficiency. The compression lift was generated by a wedge on the engine inlets. The design of the Valkyrie was different from almost every other aircraft in its time, in that the outer sections of the wing was hinged so that it could be pivoted down up to 65 degrees. The effect was to increase the directional stability of the the XB-70 when it was traveling at supersonic speeds and strengthen the effect of the compression lift. When the wingtips were pointed down, more of the shock wave would be trapped under the wings, increasing the lift.

General characteristics

Data from USAF XB-70 Fact sheet

• Crew: 2
• Length: 185 ft 10 in
  
• Wingspan: 105 ft 0 in
  
• Height: 30 ft 9 in
• Wing area: 6,296 ft²
  
• Airfoil: Hexagonal; 0.30 Hex modified root, 0.70 Hex modified tip
• Empty weight: 210,000 lb
  
• Loaded weight: 534,700 lb
  
• Max takeoff weight: 550,000 lb
  
• Powerplant: 6× General Electric YJ93-GE-3 afterburning turbojet
  • Dry thrust: 19,900 lbf each
  • Thrust with afterburner: 28,800 lbf each

Performance

• Maximum speed: Mach 3.1 (2,056 mph, 3,309 km/h)
• Cruise speed: Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph, 3,200 km/h)
• Range: 3,725 nmi (4,288 mi, 6,900 km) combat
• Service ceiling: 77,350 ft (23,600 m)
• Wing loading: 84.93 lb/ft² (414.7 kg/m²)
• lift-to-drag: about 6 at Mach 2
• Thrust/weight: 0.314

Early designs featured wing tip fuel tanks that could be jettisoned with the wing tips

Sadly, one of the XB-70s was lost in a terrible collision between the Valkyrie and a F-104 Starfighter in 1966. The F-104 pilot and the co-pilot of the XB-70 were killed and the pilot of the Valkyrie severely injured by the clamshell escape pod that closed on his left arm as he ejected.

XB-70 Valkyrie seconds after impact with a F-104 Starfighter

Nuclear Weapons

I came across these pictures of nuclear weapons and their delivery methods. I thought they were very interesting, so I decided to share them with you. Everything shown here is American-made.

B-29 Superfortress

B-36 Peacemaker

B-46 Stratojet

B-52 Stratofortress

B-1B Lancer

B-2 Spirit "Stealth Bomber"

Interior views of Atlas ICBM silos

Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

Conning tower of an Ohio-Class Ballistic Missile Submarine

"Little Boy"- The Hiroshima Bomb - 13-18 kiloton yield

"Fat Man" Nagasaki Bomb - 22 kiloton yield

Mk 6 Fission Bomb - variable yield 8, 26, 80, 154, or 160 kilotons

"Physics Packages" of implosion-type Fission Bombs

B-25 Mitchell Bomber, Warhawk Air Museum

This is a the Pacific Princess, a WWII B-25 Mitchell at the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa, Idaho. I recently took a trip across the country and was able to visit the museum, and I took a lot of pictures, so I will have more posts in the next few weeks with their many treasures.




The B-25 is named after General Billy Mitchell, a pioneer of American air power. It is the only aircraft ever flown by the United States military to be named after a specific person.
It was the aircraft used in the famous Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942. A force of 16 B-25s were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to make the first attack on the Japanese mainland of WWII.

The Mitchell was fast for a bomber, with a top speed of 275 mph and a cruising speed of 230.
It could carry up to 6,000 pounds of bombs, and had a hard point to carry a Mark 13 torpedo under the fuselage. Machine gun and canon armament were different in the various versions of the B-25, but the Pacific Princess was armed with 12 Browning .50 caliber HMGs, 2 in the nose, a turret up top with 2, 4 on cheek mounted blisters, 2 waist guns and 2 rear guns. The Mitchell was also an amazingly sturdy aircraft and could withstand tremendous punishment. A B-25C of the 321st Bomb Group was named Patches and its crew chief painted the aircraft's flak hole patches with high-visibility zinc chromate paint. They completed 300 missions in this aircraft, had 400 patched holes in the aircraft and belly landed six times.


Although the B-25 was originally designed to bomb from medium altitudes in level flight, it was used frequently in areas like Burma and New Guinea to perform treetop-level strafing and drop parachute-delayed fragmentation bombs missions against Japanese bases and airfields in Southwest Asia and the Pacific Rim. These later version Mitchells, often field-modified under Major Pappy Gunn, were also used on strafing and skip-bombing missions against Japanese shipping trying to re-supply their armies.

and it has the sweetest nose art ever.

they also tore the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy a new one, when they weren't thinking about hotties.

Nearly 10,000 B-25s were manufactured in Kansas City and Inglewood, CA and they saw service in every theater of the war. Fast, maneuverable, and versatile, they were used for more than 40 years in various other Air Forces, including Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union .


B-25 Mitchell

• Crew: six (two pilots, navigator/bombardier, turret gunner/engineer, radio operator/waist gunner, tail gunner
• Length: 52 ft 11 in
  
• Wingspan: 67 ft 6 in
  
• Height: 17 ft 7 in
  
• Powerplant: 2× Wright R-2600 "Cyclone" radials, 1,850 hp each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 275 mph
  
• Cruise speed: 230 mph
  
• Combat radius: 1,350 mi
  
• Service ceiling: 25,000 ft
  
• Power/mass: 0.110 hp/lb
  

Armament

• Guns: 12 × .50 in M2 HMG
• Hardpoints: 2,000 lb (900 kg) ventral shackles to hold one external Mark 13 torpedo
• Rockets:
• Bombs: 6,000 lb (2,700 kg)