XB-70 Valkyrie

Constructed in the 50’s amidst the Cold War, The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, also known as “The Great White Bird”, was a pair of two fully capable prototypes of the canceled B-70 Triple Sonic Strategic Bomber.

While working on the XB-70, a lot of people searched through every research paper they could find and they eventually stumbled upon a paper that managed to fly under the radar for a pretty long time. It was on compression lift. The idea behind compression lift is that by folding the wingtips inwards you would force more air under the rest of the wings, generating significantly more lift without increasing the weight, drag or surface area of the wings.

The people working on it were given the requirements of cruising at Mach 3 at an altitude of 7,000 feet or 2,133.6 meters, a shirtsleeve environment for the crew, 50,000 pounds (22.7 metric tons), a range of 7,500 miles (12070.08 km), be small enough to be able to take off on pre-built runways and have flying characteristics suitable for use with average USAF line crewman.

The XB-70 fit these requirements perfectly and demonstrated them perfectly as well. It would be able to simply out run soviet interceptors, hit its target, and return.

However, sadly, the XB-70 was canceled when America found out the soviets and advanced their SAM technology and would be able to easily take down the XB-70 and the project was dedicated to research only until its last flight on the fourth of February, 1969.