Specialty Press

Valkyrie North American’s Mach 3 Superbomber

by  Dennis R. Jenkins & Tony R. Landis
Reviewed By  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

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MSRP: $26.95
ISBN: 1580071309

Softbound 246 pages, with over 500 black-and-white and 100 color photos.
Website: www.specialtypress.com Phone: 1-800-895-4585  


The first B-70 flew as I was graduating from high school. It was pretty well publicized at the time, but I had other things to do, and I was about 1500 miles away. It wasn’t until 1970 that I saw this behemoth. I was driving from Illinois to Maine for a summer vacation, and the route "just happened" to pass through Fairborn, Ohio, site of the Air Force Museum. At that time the new museum wasn’t finished, and the larger aircraft in the collection still sat outside.

And there it was. Huge, white, and standing head and shoulders above anything else in the collection. It wasn’t as big as the B-36, but it was taller and more spectacular.

I am working on Anigrand’s 1/144 B-70, and I need a lot of reference material, as the instructions on the kit are (ahem) minimal. You can see the review on this website.

The aircraft

[review image] Like the BAC TSR 2, the B-70 went through a long gestation period, never to be built. It was a big aircraft, 185 feet long with a wingspan of 105 feet. It was designed to be fast. No worries about maneuverability or low-altitude capability, the B-70 was going to fly at mach 3 at 85,000 feet and, in the mid-50s when the project started, there was nothing that could even think of touching it. Two prototypes DID fly at mach 3 and 70,000 feet. The problem was that ICBMs were cheaper and you could build and maintain whole fleet of missiles for what it cost to develop the B-70 past the prototype stage. Then in 1960, the Soviets proved that they could actually hit something with the Sa-2 SAM by shooting down a U-2. The high altitude, mach 3, manned bomber rapidly became obsolete.

There were two XB-70s built, AV-1 (20001) and AV-2 (20207). 20208 was supposed to be the YB-70, the operational prototype, but the program was terminated before 20208 was completed.

The name Valkyrie was chosen from a submission by North American employees. The Valkyries were Norse maiden goddesses who determined the victors in battles, and chose the most heroic for Valhalla, where they would form Odin’s army for the ultimate battle at the end of the world.

The book

With only two aircraft built, and no operational history, what is there to write about the XB-70? Well, a lot actually.

The chapters in this book cover:
  1. An Expensive Diversion – the Atomic Powered Airplane.
  2. Technical Voodoo – High Hopes for WS-110A.
  3. The Elusive Mach 3 Fighter – XF-103 and XF-108.
  4. Another Diversion – High Energy Fuels.
  5. Politics – And Continued Restructuring.
  6. The Flight Program – Half a Million Pounds at Mach 3.
  7. 1960s State-of-the-Art – Construction and Systems.
  8. No Apparent Threat – Military Systems.
I also found it enlightening to read Appendix A, 129 Flights of the Maidens. It is a quick tabular presentation of all the flights made by both AV-1 and AV-2, with flight duration, mach attained, time at speed, and max altitude given for each flight.

[review image] I also found a lot of useful things for modelers in this book. If you’re building the Anigrand kit (like me), it’s really necessary to have some sort of photo reference. I needed this picture to know how far out the engines protruded from the tail area. I did an image search on the internet, and couldn’t’ find anything like this one. There also a fair number of detail pictures of the landing gear, cockpit, rudders, wing fold mechanism, engines and exterior shots from all sorts of angles, both in flight and parked.

There’s a challenge in there. After 3 flights the original paint job began to peel off of 20001. Is there anyone out there who could manage this paint job. My hand’s not going up, that’s for sure. The photo from the book appears at the bottom of this review.

The chapter on the XF-103 and XF-108 will also be useful to me, as the Anigrand kit includes an XF-108. Of further use would be the drawings of the proposed use of the XB-70 as a launch aircraft for a redesigned, delta-winged X-15. The Anigrand kit also includes this X-15 version and the "piggy-back" launcher.

Overall Evaluation

Recommended. If you’re planning on building either of the XB-70 kits, either Anigrand or AMT/Ertl, this book will be of great use. Or, if you’re just interested in aircraft development in the late 50s/early 60s, this book has a lot of information on projects which just never got off the drawing board, often for really good reasons.

Many thanks to Marie Ray of Specialty Press, and IPMS/USA.

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