"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/11/2015 at 10:43 • Filed to: planelopnik
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"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/11/2015 at 10:43 • Filed to: planelopnik | 7
| 3 |
The second XB-70 prototype suffered this fiery landing in April 1966 after an electrical malfunction prevented the nose gear from lowering. Despite all attempts to get it to come down, the pilots, Al White and Joe Cotton, were faced with having to eject and lose the multi-million dollar bomber. But after a couple hours of flying, engineers on the ground radioed up a simple, yet radical, solution. It turned out that the problem was caused by a circuit breaker malfunction, and short-circuiting the unit would solve the landing gear problem. But with no tool kit on hand, Cotton rummaged through his briefcase and found a binder clip which he used to short circuit the breaker. That solved the nose gear problem, but it also caused a problem with the finicky hydraulic system, and even though all the wheels came down, the brakes remained locked on three of the four main wheels. As the Valkyrie touched down at 173 knots, the locked wheels quickly burst into flames, though they were quickly extinguished by the fire crews at Edwards AFB and the XB-70 suffered minimal damage.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> ttyymmnn
12/11/2015 at 11:09 |
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Didn’t one of those pilots later die in a Valkyrie accident?
That airplane looked cool, but in the final analysis, it might be considered a dud.
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ttyymmnn
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
12/11/2015 at 11:13 |
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Once they got the bugs out, it worked exactly as they wanted it to. The problem was that it came too late. The XB-70 was designed in a time before anti-aircraft missiles, and the idea was to fly high and fast, out of reach of contemporary fighters. It certainly did that, but by the time it was done the AAM made it vulnerable, and its mission was gone. Everything switched to low-level incursion, before the days of look-down radars.
You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
12/11/2015 at 13:23 |
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I wouldn’t consider it a dud at all. They built two and they were essentially prototypes, not production airframes. Prototypes are built for the purpose of working out the bugs.