North American B-70

[Mr Ten]

Well, the beast is so big it 's hard to take pics !!!

This is the production version of the famous XB-70, as it could have appeared around 1972...
The kit is the old AMT/Italeri 1/72.
Not much details on it, and prepare yourself for sanding, sanding, and sanding more !
The finish is a silver painting (not natural metal).
Decals from various origins : pink panther form the 1/100 tamiya's B52, SAC badge thanks to an old monogram B-1,
air force letters and codes from a 1/72 B-36 microscale sheet, blacks walkways from xtradecals... and probably others...
I absolutely wanted to show the aircraft " in flight" , and at high speed, that is, with the outer wings down. It's so impressive !
The only way to do this was to build a big stand.
It was done in balsa wood : strong and light, even if cumbersome ! You can see the wood heated and whitened by temperature of the 8 engines on the bottom view  .
The aircraft is slightly modified as a production one : some RWR and a few electronic devices on wing fronts/ends/upper tail... IRST under the nose (à la B-52 G/H), and the best :
Two skybolt missiles underwings ! The various test made with these airborne ICBM's weren't very succesfull, and the idea finally abandoned.
My skybolts are resin kits from Freightdog, initially planned for an Avro Vulcan or a BAC TSR2... So the story can be different once more !
They donc have the exact shape for a B-70, Freightdog representing the earlier nose,  but who cares ??

[PR19_Kit]

That's GINORMOUS! 

And looks great in the SAC scheme too. 

Did you even try and modify the dihedral as per the 2nd prototype and what they planned for the porduction aircraft? If so I'd love to know how you did it!

[NARSES2]

Huge monster - as Kit says looks good in that scheme

[Mr Ten]

Did you even try and modify the dihedral as per the 2nd prototype and what they planned for the porduction aircraft? If so I'd love to know how you did it!

Eh... Eh... I've avoided a such complication.
According to an interview from a retired general of the USAF (O'Neal.. I think...  ) : " The positive dihedral gave an useful but awkward look to the aircraft... As if the plane needed to move wings like a bird to take-off... Pilots were appalled by a such modification, and would never accept to fly an ridiculous plane... Between you and me, this improvement would have certainly been discarded for production aircrafts (1). "
So goes the (un)official history, and... well... I didn't modify the dihedral...
Putting 2 normal pilots in the seats and closing the cockpit was enough to me !! (2)

(1) It seems that General O'neal was officially retired a few days after this sentence. Or maybe he was just transferred on a black program.
(2) Just try it to understand...

[PR19_Kit]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten Gen. O'Neal's opinions on radical changes to production aircraft.

He was quite against Boeing adopting the side by side cockpit for the production Buffs, saying 'How in hell is the goddam navigator going to know where he's going unless the aircraft captain is sitting right in front of him?' History tells us that there are Old Generals, and there are Bold Generals, but no Old Bold Generals and guess O'Neal's 'retirement' goes to prove the point.

[Devilfish]

Yes, I have the black "operational" version and I agree, unlees you stand a long way away, its hard to take pics of the whole thing...

[Ed S]

WOW!  That's big. It looks tremendous in that finish.

Ed

[ysi_maniac]

Top notch model and subject

[KJ_Lesnick]

Did you even try and modify the dihedral as per the 2nd prototype and what they planned for the porduction aircraft? If so I'd love to know how you did it!

Was the dihedral figures different for A/V-2 and the proposed production models? 

I do remember something regarding the B-70 which had to do with stealth modifications.  The idea was to fit the aircraft with RAM on the inlets, as well as add some dihedral to the plane (10-20 degrees initially) with the tailfins canted inward 10-20 degrees and the walls of the lower-fuseage angled outwards (from the top to the bottom) a little bit.  Ultimately they realized the 5-degree dihedral used for A/V-2 was adequate but I am left puzzled by somethings.

Firstly, when did North American realize the XB-70 would have poor roll stability at high speed?

Secondly, when did they realize that 5-degrees of dihedral would be necessary to fix this roll-stability issue

Thirdly, when did the RCS reduction study begin and finish?

[KJ_Lesnick]

Nobody?