NORTH AMERICAN XB-70 VALKYRIE

Graduating to a new school, lot of homeworks, and dozens of cancelled projects, I've returned (again)

After I found out of how to get access into data folder on Android 13 and above I can use edited thumbnail again.

Origins

In the late 1940's and mid 50's, there were programs to develop nuclear powered aircrafts which expected to have airborne time more than a week (like the Convair NB-36H for an Example), and another concept, not exactly impressive as nuclear powered aircraft, but it was also amazing, at least on paper: And it's the Zip Fuel, where a standard fuel is mixed with some boron which creating 40% more energy dense than conventional fuel. Thus the Strategic Air Command (SAC) asked an aircraft to be fueled with Zip Fuel, had top speed like the Convair B-58 Hustler which is Mach 2.0, payload capabilities and intercontinental range like the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress which is 20 tons (I am referring to the older variants, not the current ones) and atleast 7,000+ km operational range respectively.

There were 2 contractors taking bet of which one of them will get the contract. The first one is Boeing who was already known to be the provider of heavy bomber for more than 3 decades, and our today's hero, the North American Aviation who known for their high speed aircrafts.

The North American proposal, called the WS-110A had 2 ejectable external fuel tanks at each tips of the wings which ejected when the plane gonna go from subsonic to supersonic, had canards, twin vertical stabilizers, and intakes placed on the side of the fuselage. (Boeing proposal did also looks smiliar to NAA's only in difference it had a single horizontal stabilizer and engines under each wings) The plane promised to have speed of Mach 2.0, 23 tons of payload capacity, and combat range of 7.400 km.

The WS-110A

A few months later, a phenomenon was found where shockwaves created at supersonic speed travels below wings, which has potential to increase an aircraft's lift when its directed under the plane. So the NAA team going back to the drawing board and reworking the WS-110A design, and theoretically, the phenomenon increases the aircraft lift atleast by 30%, then the XB-70 (or the B-70 if we dont include the designation for experimental aircraft) was born.

In Game features, systems and controls

The complexity of the plane in real life is also reflected to the game when I made this, which is pain even for a simple things.

Activation Groups

1. Engines

The 6 engines produced around 230 kN (in real life it is around 120 kN) each, giving the aircraft its .70 TWR at full fuel. I know I know its overkill... in low altitude, but that power really needed at high altitude and speed, because the game's jet engine acts weird at high speed (it stopped changing performance beyond mach 1.5 so I need power), also at 21 km ASL it provides around .20 TWR at 80% fuel.

Stats of the plane at mach 3.0 at 20 km ASL

2. Wingtips

Ah yes, the icon of the XB-70. The wingtips was record breaking where it was the largest control surfaces ever moved in flight. Its the wingtips that pushes down the shockwaves to produces lift. Sadly, the game doesnt have shockwave yet, so its just worsening the performance of the aircraft if its moved down (I mean by worsening is reducing lift and move the CoL forward). The wingtips has dihedral of 5° of angle, and they were designed to be able to angled down by 25° and 65° of angle. Due to the dihedral, visually they are just angled down by 20° and 60° respectively. Dont angle your wingtips down to 65° when on ground, because the wingtips will go down below the landing gear.

0°, 25°, and 65° respectively
To change wingtips angle, click AG one time, then your wingtips angle are changed, click AG again and changed, etc. When started at 0° angle, click AG one time and it angled to 25°, click again and it angled to 65°, click again once more it'll angled back to 0°, this is repeated over and over (credit to Boco at JSC for the funk). Anyway, when the wingtips are angled down to 65°, it makes the plane really shaky, banking to here, banking to there etc etc. This phenomenon isnt applied at low altitide, but at high altitude this is a nightmare. Read the instructions below to take handle this.

3. B43 nuclear bombs

Out there in the land of uncertainity called internet, there are a lot of drawings of what weapons it carried, but most of them are WRONG. There are depictions that the XB-70 carrying a GAM-87 Skybolt inside a weapon bay, but this is false, because the bomb bay are separated into 3 pieces, the rearmost of them is smaller than the other 2. Those bomb bays able to carry standard nukes that used by the USAF, like the B43. In game, the larger 2 bomb bays carry 3 nukes, while the smaller one carry 2 (8 nukes in total). Instead of standard bomb bay doors where they are separated into 2 pieces and opened by angled down, this one have sliding doors which pushes backwards. So this means it only be able to open one bomb bays at a time.

Bomb bays loaded with guided weapons that looks like B43 layout.

In game XB-70 weapon loadouts.
Although its impossible to load a GAM-87 Skybolt into the bomb bays, its possible to load the weapons under the wings. Since it designed to have smiliar weapon load as the B-52, its possible to load 4 missiles per aircraft.
To launch bombs from the plane, activate the AG one time, then bomb bay door will opened, then bombs dropped, then the door closed again automatically, when all the procedures done, the AG will automatically turned off, this is where you cam launch bombs 2 more times. Also the bombs are launched from the rearmost, then middle, then at the very front bomb bay.

Dont make sudden movement in pitch axis when a bomb bay is opened, because it can disconnect its bomb bay door

4. Nose Ramp

Some of you may call this droop snoot, but this feature doesn't even resembles a droop snoot since it doesnt move its entire nose downward or upward. The windshield and upper part of the nose are the parts that moved. This was added for streamlining the aircraft at supersonic speed, just like the Tupolev Tu-144 or smiliar aircrafts, it provides the pilots good visibility at take off and landing when the windshield are angled down, then the windshield is raised up to streamlining the nose section to reduce drag.

You can clearly see the visibility difference. Notice the blue line circling the nose, its a distinction to differs aircrafts that operated by SAC from non SAC-operated bombers. You can remove the line if you want, it doesnt give anything but aestethics.

I meant not to add some fuel tanks with some transparency for windshield, but at mach 3 the crews will be deepfried if they dont have some kind of barriers to protect them from heat

5. Parachutes

Like the Tu-144, this aircraft also have a set of parachutes to slowing the aircraft faster when landing. The 3 parachutes stored at the rear part of the fuselage.

This is how the parachutes would look like when you inflate them while not moving.
To activate parachutes, just activate the AG then a few seconds later all 3 parachutes are deployed.

8. Landing gear

XB-70's landing gear is truly the part that makes me insane making this project. The landing gear's retracting mechanism is truly following the pharse "uncomplicated things makes complicated".

XB-70 nose (?) and main landing gear

Due to the unique landing gear retraction mechanism, I need to use 3 rotators and it makes the main landing gear shaky and wobbly. But we are getting worse, the landing gear sound is VERY ANNOYING, because even if the plane not moving, it still produces sound, even I tried to set the wheels sound to 0%, but it still doesnt give any effects to stop the sound (I dont know anymore how to fix this). Other than those problems, you can see the nice looking landing gear retraction mechanism. I use this video as reference for the mechanism.
At some point around mach 2.5+ the main landing gear wheels are prone to get heat damage when retracted for some reason

make sure when activating AG 3, 5 and 8 you are controlling the chip not drood. Its because the vizzy lines are placed in the chip.

Slider

Slider 1: its for the canards' control surface angle. You can angle down to 25°, and you can use this to help you take off, reduce speed, or even stabilize the plane's pitch at low altitude.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. How to reach Mach 3.0

1. Take off at full afterburner, take off speed is around 160m/s (the high speed take off is caused by the main landing gear placed far behind the center of mass)
2. Climb higher and make sure to reach mach 1.0 before 3 km AGL (it's pretty easy to do) then angle the wingtips down to 25°.
3. Climb higher, when reaching mach 1.4, angle the wingtips down to 65°.
4. You'll reach mach 2 in a few minutes.
5. Steadily and slowly climb so you dont lose speed.
6. At around 850 m/s and 8 km ASL, the acceleration is slowed down. But continue climb higher. At this point move to your desired course in a straight path, because at higher altitude its hard to roll.
7. Above 12 km ASL, you will experience of how hard its to make the the plane stable because a sudden roll movement makes the plane turbulent so much.
8. At this point you need to reach a quite high angle of attack so you dont lose altitude.
   Tip: you can lose some of altitude slowly to get more speed, then climb slowly so you dont lose speed that you just got.
9. Mach 3.0 is reached when your fuel is around 80% and altitude of 16 to 18 Km ASL. You will have a burn time more than an hour and a half.
10. To get back to the point where you started, slowly descending to altitude below 12 km then you can bank your plane.

2. How to recover from a turbulence

1. Make the wingtips angled to 0° so your plane will be experiencing less turbulence.
2. Try to control your plane using all your 3 axes.
3. It's quite difficult tho, so you will need a long time to do this movement.
4. When its back to normal, you can angle back your wingtips to 65° and continue flight as usual.

Gallery

Commander's and pilot's section of the interior

Bombardier's and defense system operator's section of the interior.

Sources

North American XB-70 Valkyrie (Wikipedia)
XB-70 Valkyrie Gear Animation Sequence
North American XB-70 Valkyrie (Secret Projects Forum)

Honourable mentions

The Airplane That Looked Fake, But Was 100% Real: XB-70 Valkyrie
XB-70 Valkyrie Super Sonic Bomber Flight Test Program Restored Color-1966
The World's Fastest Bomber: The XB-70 Valkyrie

I have no anime girl XB-70 this time, but at least I drew a real XB-70:

FOR MORE EXPLANATIONS, HELPS AND/OR INFOS COMMENT DOWN BELOW.