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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1609.PDF
MERICAN AVIATION, INC. <J On the morning of Monday, May 11, 1964, the doors opened on Building 301A at Palmdale, California, and a big white aeroplane was towed out into the sunshine. The roll-out took longer than usual, because the length of the XB-70A is 184ft; and it is doubtful if any of Man's previous creations has possessed quite such awe-inspiring beauty as this 550,0001b research aeroplane (former bomber), which can fly for hours at 2,000 m.p.h. Several hundred employees of North American Aviation Inc, the company which built it, and many special guests, inspected the dormant monster and discussed it in the shade of its enormous delta wing. If they had been asked to pay for the aircraft it would have cost them about three million dollars a head. Hardware like the B-70 is expensive by any yardstick, and although this particular programme has not strengthened America's defence it has made a massive contribution to aircraft aerodynamics, structures, propulsion and systems. From its reptile-like nose (with folding vizor in front of seats for Al White and^Col Joe Cotton) and slender body (largely of titanium) across the 14,000-odd sq ft of stainless-steel honeycomb wing skins (the downward-folding tips are the largest movable structures on any aircraft) to the row of six 31,000lb-thrust General Electric YJ93-3 engines (with the hottest turbines in the world) the X B-70 A is the biggest, the heaviest, the fastest, the mostest. Fuller details will appear in an early issue.
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