{"id":2213,"date":"2014-08-27T12:15:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T12:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=2213"},"modified":"2018-11-16T16:03:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T15:03:27","slug":"xb-70-valkyrie-the-mach-3-1-bomber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/xb-70-valkyrie-the-mach-3-1-bomber\/","title":{"rendered":"Mach 3 Bomber Valkyrie"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have seen\u00a0many military aircraft (and a few civilians) capable of flying at supersonic speed. Few have flown faster than Mach 2 and even fewer have gone past the three-times-the-speed-of-sound level. But the aircraft that you will be reading about in this article was a part of an even smaller group of aircraft – Mach 3.0+ strategic bombers. This airplane, which is one of the very supersonic bombers ever built, was capable of flying at Mach 3.1, a speed level that only extremely few aircraft reached – from any group of airplanes.<\/p>\n

The idea of the Valkyrie<\/h1>\n
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XB-70 Valkyrie high in the sky<\/p><\/div>\n

This one of a kind aircraft – the North American XB-70 Valkyrie – was an American made bomber aircraft which a logic similar to the SR-71<\/a>‘s. Since there were not very\u00a0good SAMs in the 1950s, the only (almost) threat to enemy aircraft was interceptors. Therefore an airplane that could fly faster and higher than these interceptors was practically out of the \u201cdanger\u201d zone. But there was also another strategic meaning of the stunning speed. That was that if it was to deliver nuclear bombs then it would have to be able to get away fast enough not to get damaged by the explosion.<\/p>\n

The design\u00a0of the XB-70<\/h1>\n
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XB-70 using parachutes to stop after a flight<\/p><\/div>\n

Only two XB-70s were built, and these were mainly\u00a0used for research purposes as the Valkyrie never\u00a0reached production level. When designing and developing the aircraft, the engineers had some specifications that they had to fulfil:<\/p>\n