Even though I flew it, I never thought of the F4 as being in any way 'beautiful'. Even the Buccaneer looked better..
XB-70A was indeed an amazing aircraft and the fatal mid-air collision which detroyed one of them was totally avoidable. Back when I was at school we visited Chivenor and saw a copy of a film about testing the XB-70A - quite astonishing! Originally designed to run on some exotic 'zip fuel' and with huge wingtips which folded downwards to generate 'compression lift' at high Mach No. Much faster than Concorde, it was designed to cruise at Mach 3.0 at 72 000ft. And remember, all this was almost 40 years ago when aviation was far bolder and more cutting edge than today. The Valkyrie was flying at Mach 3 in 1965...
And what is BWoS' current contribution to modern aviation? The absurd Nimrod 2000, err, 2001, no 2002, err, make that 2003....or 2004?
Last edited by BEagle; 14th Feb 2004 at 15:56.