[Leica] Re: B-70 axing

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Aug 13, 2007, at 8:14 AM, Marc wrote:

>> I remember that issue quite well and there was
>> noting impractical about the XB-70 project.  It
>> was killed only because of "Liein' Lydon's"
>> concentration on guns and butter during his
>> fixation on the Viet-Nam War.


For a new and beyond the state of the art airplane, the B-70  
performed better than expected in its test flights. There were  
significant problems with the first of the two aircraft built but  
most of them had been corrected by the time the second took to the  
air. This plane performed splendidly until it was lost in an  
unfortunate collision with a F-104 chase plane during a photo shoot.

The reason the B-70 was cancelled had much more to do with our  
changing military strategy than with the aircraft's practicality. The  
B-70 was designed in the 50s as an extension of the strategic bombing  
role of the USAF. It was intended to deliver a high yield weapon  
(read atomic bomb) to a target several thousand miles away, flying in  
and out at three times the speed of sound. With a bit more  
development, it probably could have done so. What killed the B-70 was  
the rapid advance in missile technology, both ICBMs and ground to air  
anti-aircraft weapons, combined with a Mutually Assured Destruction  
(MAD) policy vs. the Soviet Union. To achieve a significant level of  
destruction, it was far more efficient to target every major Russian  
city with a nuclear warhead, either from a land launched ICBM,  
carried in an airborne SAC bomber or from a Polaris missile bearing  
submarine. They were already in place, the very expensive B-70 was not.

A B-70 attack on vital targets in the Russian interior would have  
required the airplane to fly for at least an hour over land. At  
speed, the skin friction heat on the B-70 was so high that it was an  
extremely efficient IR source, leading edges of wing surfaces almost  
glowing a deep red. Further, it had a radar cross section the size of  
Iowa. No stealth technology here. Simple IR guidance systems, such as  
used in the Sidewinder missile, affixed to SAMs that could reach the  
B-70s altitude, would have decimated a B-70 attacking fleet. I  
designed much of the B-70 electronic countermeasures system and it  
was a daunting task. After the Gary Powers U2 loss, we knew that  
Russian missiles could reach the B-70s altitude. There was a "fix"  
for IR radiation but it involved coating heat emitting surfaces on  
the B-70 with gold to change the radiation spectrum. Try explaining  
that to taxpayers in a guns AND butter economy.

The sole remaining B-70 was used for years as a high speed, high  
altitude research aircraft, paving the way for supersonic aircraft of  
the Concorde type. It is the plane in the Air Force museum at Wright  
Patterson field in Dayton.

Larry Z