Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/02/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I was lucky enough to fly one Concorde return trip, half the time in the cockpit. It was cruising at Mach 2.2 Frank On Tuesday, February 17, 2004, at 01:24 am, LRZeitlin@aol.com wrote: > > In a message dated 2/16/04 7:08:36 PM, Greg writes: > > << The XB-70 Valkyrie was a truly spectacular looking and preforming > aircraft! Certainly in the same league as the Concorde and the SR-71 > Blackbird. You > should be very proud to have been involved in its development! >>> > > The XB-70 was intended to be a rapid response bomber during the Cold > War. It > was designed to fly at 3 times the speed of sound (twice the speed of > the > Concorde) for several thousand miles, penetrating the Russian air > space and > returning to a US base. However, before the plane was deployed, > missile technology > advanced to the point where it proved more cost effective than the > horrendously expensive XB-70 and the project was terminated. Only 3 of > the XB-70s were > built. One crashed during a photo op when the chase plane got too > close and > collided with the bomber. Another was used as a high altitude research > aircraft > for several years, then scrapped. The third, and only remaining XB-70 > is on > display at Wright-Patterson AFB in the Air Force museum. I got to fly > in the > research version of the airplane once. It was noisy, crowded in the > jump seats > provided, and an extreme rush. Naturally, I was not allowed to bring a > camera. Not > even my brand new Leica M3. > > Larry Z > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html