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I just love many airplane and jet designs; but my favorite of all time would be the XB-70 Valkyrie..........with the F-22 Raptor as a close runner up. Honorable mention would go to the F-117 Nighthawk.
The Valkyrie was a 6 engine Mach 3+ Heavy Bomber with only 2 prototypes ever built. The program was cancelled for political and cost issues...... One plane did crash during testing, but that's not really unusual with any radically new plane design.
IMHO......there is just something sexy, elegant and powerful about the design of this unique and obscure jet bomber, I'm sure many posters may not even be familiar with it's radical late 1950's design.
Location: Finally escaped The People's Republic of California
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I've always thought that the SR-71 was just a beauty of an aircraft
as well as a P-51 Mustang
and yes the Valkrie was a beauty as well and one can't help but notice the resemblance to the SST....
Those are the only ones I've ever flown on, so I can't really compare them.
Well, not exactly true. I flew on a leg of the last successful flight on Japan Airlines flight 471, in 1972. The following week, the same flight (presumably the same plane) crashed on landing at New Delhi. There were four plane crashes that week which killed 80 or more passengers each. Quaintly called, in investigator-talk, "descent into terrain".
I flew a couple of times in DC-3 aircraft when they were still used on scheduled airlines. They were fun.
Apart from it obviously being a gorgeous machine, it was a damn effective aircraft - over 20,000 were built, and it was produced before, during and after the war, a testament to the outstanding quality of Reginald Mitchell's design.
As if that wasn't enough, the plane is now pretty much the iconic symbol of the victors of the Battle of Britain, named "the few" by no less an authority than Churchill.
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