XB-70 Valkyrie Emergency Landing and fire
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Channel: Amazing Info TV
Views: 643,798
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Aviation, Aircrash, plane, NASA, Landing, Fire, Airport, Airplane, XB-70, Emergency, Accident, Crash, Mach, Supersonic, Bomber, Flying, Jet, Jet Engine (Invention), Fly, Planes, Pilot, North American XB-70 Valkyrie (Aircraft Model), Emergency Landing (Film Subject), Helicopter
Id: TFhned9man8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 2min 5sec (125 seconds)
Published: Sun Jan 27 2013
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WTF. I'm a pilot with about 2000 landings in my logbook. The landing looked perfect from where I sit. Was the parking brake on or something?
At the point when the flames turn orange you can release the drift button and you get a boost.
If you're a military aircraft nerd, do yourself a favor and watch this episode of Great Planes. While not really catastrophic failure material, it was before the time of flashy factoid list countdown shows with annoying announcers and is very informative, calming, and presents a lot of information in a short episode. It focuses on one aircraft, but touches on the aircraft and history that preceded it. Really, every episode of Great Planes is awesome in this way.
This nigh-insane machine was designed to be a mach 3 heavy nuclear penetration bomber whose use was rendered obsolete by the end of the cold war and the advent of mach 3+ speed missiles, and by its expense. On its maiden supersonic flight, the flexible skin of the aircraft got so hot and buffeted by the air that much of the paint had flaked off. It went so fast the paint came off. After the program was ended, it was discovered that the Soviets had hastily commissioned and produced the enormously expensive MiG-25 Foxbat specifically in response to the feared XB-70 program.
Sadly during testing, the second prototype was destroyed in a freak collision with a chase plane and the chase plane pilot as well as one of two pilots in the Valkyrie were killed. Considering the scope and size of the Valkyrie program, it's incredible that this landing gear fire was only one of a few mishaps during development.
That same aircraft tail number 20207 crashed on June 8, 1966 when an f-104 flying in formation struck it left wing tip, flipped over and sheared off both vertical stabilizers. It actually flew straight and lever for a while with the pilots oblivious to the event/damage.
This is what happens when you touch down at 88mph, that plane really does look like it's from the future, in the past.
New meaning to the term "coming in hot"!
Yeah, it blew 6 of the main tires and one of the anterior - they all burst in flames and one bogie was badly damaged.
In my opinion: So the hands down greatest aircraft ever is the XB-70 Valkyrie (also the most expensive, at 7 billion US $ including R&D). Many, many of our aircraft today and in history borrowed Heavily from the research and results of the XB-70 program, including the Concorde, A-12 Oxcart, etc. So here are some facts taken from a wonderful book. Valkyrie: North American’s Mach 3 SuperBomber, and a very rare and difficult to find website by a formef cia employee operating out of a Radar range in Idaho. The Valkyrie was found that the YJ-GE-3 jet engines (each having beyond 30,000lbs of thrust (the true capabilities have never been declassified just like the capabilities of the A-12 Oxcart), and could do Mach 3.2 at 95,000 ft) were much, much more fuel efficient above Mach 3 - maximum attained velocity reported in the book was Mach 3.08, but that radar operator out of Idaho tracked the Valkyrie doing Mach 3.15 at 85,000 ft, and could maintain this speed indefinitely for up to 30+ hours of continuous operation as the Valkyrie could hold 47,000 gallons of JP-6 fuel with an unaired refuel distance of 5,250 nm (and had air refueling capabilities planned for future production models). It was the FIRST aircraft with a rotary launcher (standard on bombers today like the B-2), it weighed 534,000 lbs and this is VERY significant because it could indefinitely maintain Mach 3+ flight, again that’s how the engines were specifically designed to operate, for reference the A-12 could do Mach 3.5 at over 100,000 ft (one Oxcart Pilot said he saw the Sun rise and set 5 times in one flight) but only weighed 91,000 lbs…. The Valkyrie could hold two 20 Megaton Hydrogen bombs in its two bomb bays (up to 50,000 lb payload capacity). The USSR Mig-25 was designed to counter this (it could do above mach 3 for VERY limited times but would irreparablely damage the massive engines, safe operation was Mach 2,85, it could “zoom” clim to 139,000 ft in 5 min but was then “exhausted” and immediately had to descend - so all that to say this would have practically useless against the Valkyrie as an interceptor because the Valkyrie (once identified on Radar - and the Valkyrie was one of the first aircraft designed specifically with aft doors above the engines to reduce Infrared Radar Heat Signatures, although this function was useless because the Valkyre had 180,000 lbf of thrust and for reference the safe distance aft of the engines was over 750 ft…). The Valkyrie’s air intakes for the engines are pretty much the biggest ever designed on any aircraft Ever - they were so huge an average height individual could easily stand in the front of them, the interior of them was like the literal size of a small room. The aircraft used something I can’t find any other aircraft using: a rare NACA report of compression lift. So the front of the massive delta wings (not the equally massive relatively speaking Canards which are the biggest canards ever used) had a special convergence which cause a shock front with only a loss of Mach 0.3 in speed reduction, caused an overpressure that went under the delta wings and created an increase of 34% lift [the XB-70 has the highest Lift-to-Drag ratio of any aircraft ever to this day except for the D-21 drone designed for the A-12 & SR-71], and this pressure also went under the fuselage adding to the compression lift. 40% of the delta wing area (which was over 6,400 ft2) could fold down to 25 degrees superiorly, or 65 degrees when above Mach 3 for increased directional stability; many people contribute the compression lift to this amazing design feature but it only added directional stability at higher Mach numbers. The Valkyrie had one of the loudest engines ever of any aircraft and and my favorite “loud” sound is the equally; if not surpassingly impressive Apollo 4 Saturn V - 5 F-1 engines which produced 212–220 dB at the launchpad, which the sound over pressure from this was so loud it Literally set grass on fire a mile away and melted concrete NOT the massive fire plume which was 1200ft long, but the actual sound waves…. The Valkyrie is EASILY the greatest and most innovate/creative/engineering masterpieces of all time, surpassed only by the Saturn V. So many, many aircraft borrowed heavily from the groundbreaking (and highly secretive) design features of the Valkyrie.
Was was this aircraft not developed? Why happened in the crash?
So that is true. It got canceled because MacNamara didn’t think strategic bombers were the best nuclear delivery devices as ICBMs were a cheaper and more viable option (each Valkyrie protype cost 7 billion$ in todays value - way more expensive than the next closest aircraft the B-2 which cost 2 billion, and that is including R&D),and ICBMs were a more viable (cheaper easier to maintain and quicker to respond) option: what is so repulsive about this is they didnt think the same thing about the A-12 oxcart as it’s main defense was to simply speed up when a Surface launch was detected as the countermeasure which totally worked, they didnt rely on electronic counter measures; so the XB-70 could sustain Mach 3.15, the A-12 could do Mach 3.5 (the X-15, A-12, XB-70, and Saturn V were all designed and developed in the 1950s & 60s and they are still to this day the most advanced aircraft ever constructed) so the XB-70 would have been literally GONE before the missile had even completed it’s zoom climb (sam’s had a general top speed of about Mach 3–4) so by the time the missile reached that altitude and velocity the aircraft would be way out of range based on sam’s limited fuel supply - but the XB-70 would have been able to indefinitely continue that velocity up to Mach 3.2 at 95,000 ft. We should have produced the XB-70 in mass quantities, I have never seen it in person but every person who has all hands down agreed it was the most massive impressing looking aircraft ever, especially at Mach 3+ with its wings all the way down - even way more than the YF-12 which Literally sits underneath the nose of the XB-70 at Wright-Patterson AFB. As for the crash, the pilot (I think Joseph Walker) F-104 starfighter on the starboard side I think could not see the wingtip of the 70 from his perspective in the cockpit and the air vortices eddys created by the massive delta wings “caught” the 104 and forced a roll the starfighter could not escape with its aerodynamics and thrust and the starfighter rolled onto its back (top) and sweeped across the AV-2 Valkyrie (had a 5% dihedral added to the wings which greatly increased aerodynamic stability) and cut one vertical stabilizer off and 85% of the other down to the pivot hinge (which interestingly enough was a 45 degree pivot diagonal, not 180 like almost all aircraft). The 104 burst into flames, the accident board agreed that Walker could neither see nor predict the vortices and where his wingtip was in relation to the Valkyrie’s delta wingtip, he was agreed to have been knocked unconscious and killed in the ensuing madness. As for the AV-2 it continued in level flight for I believe somewhere between 10s - 5min and began to have a heavy uncontrollable roll into a flat spin (which is literally THE most deadly thing that can happen to aircraft aerodynamicly) luckily the 70 had Capsules that slammed shut and ejected the pilots/bomber/etc. vertically; one pilot survived and I think Cotton was the one who could not eject because of the g-forces experienced during the flat spin and went down with the aircraft. That flight was like flight-65 I believe and was a publicity stunt as all 5 aircraft involved had GE engines. No one thought to ask engineers of all aircraft involved if it was a safe idea, and they kept telling the aircraft to draw in closer and closer to capture them all in a V-formation unable to predict the catastrophic consequences. They destroyed one of only two of the greatest most expensive aircraft ever made, and killed 2 Amazing pilots in the process.
if you have any questions/qualms/counter points please post them. Thank you for reading.
Cheers!