" The B-70 was indeed an amazing device. It flew around forty years ago, but by then was little more than a research vehicle. Here in the UK we were eagerly waiting for the TSR2...."
A colleague, Clay Lacy, was the LearJet camera pilot for the General Electric photo shoot including the B-70 Valkyrie, that turned into tragedy. Nasa pilot Joe Walker flying an F-104 Starfighter, got too close to the B-70 wing and to the formations horror the drooped wingtip vortices rolled the fighter and smashed or took the two fins off. The B-70 flew on but inevitably spun with absolutely no fin or rudder control. Pilots were probably trapped by excessive g-forces.
Ah! The TSR2. Would still be in service wouldn't it? There would have been a number of variants. Another Labour governmant cock-up as well as total ignorance of aviation matters by Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Clay Lacy and I were doing some other filming from a Lear Jet, years later, when he had to drop me off at Van Nuys while he carried on with my film crew to shoot something to which a Brit could not be party. It was the first in-flight photos of the Stealth F-117a. Very hush-hush at the time.
B J