I need to find that and watch it. I've been to the museum at
Wright-Patterson, and have stood next to both the SR-71 and the XB-70.
Aircraft don't get much sexier than that.
What still blows my mind, to this day, is that those starships are FIFTY
years old. FIFTY. Look at those designs! Those are not 50-year-old-looking
jets.
On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Jim Nichols <jhnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Ed - I just found the Discovery Channel video on-line, and watched it.
> Thanks for the reminder of this piece of history. As to the accident, one
> comment on a different coverage of the event shed some light on the reason
> that Joe Walker got in so close to the XB-70 tip. The commenter said his
> father worked in telemetry at Edwards at the time, and that the photo plane
> had asked him to move in closer for another shot. It seems they
> underestimated the strength of the wing tip vortices, which flipped the
> F-104 on its back and over the top of the XB-70, damaging the vertical fins
> and the left wing tip, leading to its loss of control.
>
> Jim Nichols
> Tullahoma, TN USA
>
> On 6/2/2015 11:19 AM, Sawyer, Edward wrote:
>
>> Very cool that you got to work on that. It was a tragedy one of them was
>> lost in that accident. At least one still survives at WP. I will have to
>> get out there to see that one day. Definitely an impressive plane, ahead
>> of it¹s time really.
>>
>> Anyone who is interested in planes should definitely read up on the XB-70
>> Valkyrie.
>>
>> Those were different times, no doubt.
>>
>> -Ed
>>
>>
>>
>>> Yes, what finally ended up as the XB-70. It was fun, in those days,
>>> because the USAF was funded well enough to maintain expensive facilities
>>> and carry out intensive ground test programs. Things are much different
>>> now. :-(
>>>
>>> Jim Nichols
>>> Tullahoma, TN USA
>>>
>>
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--
Paul Braun WD9GCO
Certified Music Junkie
"Music washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." -- Berthold Auerbach
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