The XB-70 Valkyrie was born from a simple Cold War idea: fly so high and fast that nothing could touch you. North American’s Mach 3 giant pushed materials, aerodynamics, and engines to their limits ...

Designed to cruise at Mach 3 and outrun any Soviet defense, the XB-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the future of America's ...

Five years before Concorde’s first flight, another majestic supersonic aircraft took to the skies — and almost became the inspiration for an even faster passenger plane. It was the XB-70 Valkyrie, an ...

During the Cold War era from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, the skies above Southern California’s Mojave Desert served as a testbed for the newest, biggest, fastest and deadliest military aircraft ...

A Total Failure: The XB-70 Valkyrie was an experimental U.S. nuclear bomber developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a potential replacement for the B-52. Designed to fly at Mach 3 speeds and altitudes of ...

With the growing realization that Soviet SAMs posed an increasing threat to American bombers, the Pentagon started to explore low-level penetration as an alternative. Low-level penetration involved ...

From the first of the 95 flights made by the Air Force’s two XB-70 Valkyrie bombers since 1964, the mighty, 2,000-m.p.h. experimental craft has been gremlin plagued. On Valkyrie 1’s maiden flight, a ...

It took just three seconds last June for the U.S. to lose two ace test pilots and more than $700 million worth of aircraft when the Air Force’s XB-70 Valkyrie, a supersonic flying laboratory, collided ...