There are three really great aircraft museums in the US - in no particular order: Dayton, Smithsonian Air and Space on the Capital Mall, and Smithsonian Air and Space Udvar-Hazy (Dulles Airport).
First time I went to Dayton, I wondered around for hours when I realized I'd not seen the XB-70 - and it's big enough that it would have been pretty hard to miss. So I went to one of the help desks and asked where the XB-70 was. 'Oh, that's in the annex (glances at watch) - the last bus left 10 minutes ago'
. So when I went back several years later, the first thing I did after I arrived was asked how to get to the annex to see the XB-70
. And yes, it is huge! A 500,000 lb. aircraft that could go Mach 3,
years before the first 747 rolled out
.
I've not been back to Dayton for over 10 years - I heard the XB-70 has now been moved to the main museum (not sure about all the other stuff that was in the annex - including several former Air Force One aircraft).
The XB-70 demonstrated why it's a bad idea to have a common inlet for multiple engines - on one of the high speed flights, a chunk of structure in front of the inlet broke off and was ingested. It failed all three engines on one side, and did FOD damage to all three engines on the other side...
