Radio War Nerd #284 — The XB-70 Valkyrie, Part I (with Annibale)
Guest: Annibale
Recorded: June 18, 2021
RWN's highly decorated guest Annibale joins us for a two-part mondo hardware series on the American XB-70 supersonic bomber, an astonishing feat of mid-century aerospace engineering that was scrapped. In part one, we discuss the background of the XB-70 and prevailing nuclear war strategy of the 1950s and 60s.
Follow Annibale on Twitter.
Listen to Annibale's RWN series: Italy's Years Of Lead (#134, #135,#136, #139); Italian Resistance in WW2 (#131); Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII (#226, #227, #228, #231, #236); Venetian Empire (#207, #208, #209, #214); The Hundred Years War (#175, #176, #177, #180, #182, #183), The 1970 Borghese Coup (#264, #265).
Buy John Dolan's book "The War Nerd Iliad" and his audiobook "Pleasant Hell".
Interlude music by Brendon Anderegg. Check out his group Mountains here.
Total time: 1:35:32
Comments (21)
I, for one, think the B-1 looks great.
Strange game The only winning move is not to play
btw for people who want to know more about the early history of IBCMs there's this book called Ignition! by John Dury Clark that traces the struggle to invent and handle hypergolic rocket fuel and it sheds a lot of light on why ppl in the 50's didn't take ICBMs seriously and also is super hilarious. The caveat is that it's out of print so you're unfortunately under the obligation of acquiring a copy in an illegal fashion which is very easy and that I recommend you do
This was an amazing episode. Like you said: Put up a picture of the XB-70 before listening on. It looks like a mashup of Thunderbirds, Fallout, Concorde and The Jetsons. Amazing that such a thing flew. Also funny to see if you read further that the Soviets build the Mig-25 interceptor as a response to the XB-70 and SR-71. And that actually went into production with up to 1100 units built. It reminds me of the US building the first electric car, the EV-1 and then scrapping it. In the mean while Toyota starting with the Prius in order to counter the US electric vehicle invasion. A Twitter-pal of mine, Vinay Gupta (@leashless on Twitter) once developed a card game to simulate strategic nuclear conflict for the DOD. Because the new officers coming along in the 00's didn't get that feel for what was at stake. He later developed it into a the card game 'Nuclear Poker' Unfortunately nobody wants to think about nuclear annihilation, so no one will play the game. But it was really fun to see kids of 11 figure out MAD via a card game. https://twitter.com/leashless/status/896447533144313856
Thunderbirds—good call!
The B36 is such a horrorshow lol
All this talk about the air force makes me think you should do an episode with Annibale about the 1998 Cavalese Cable Car disaster. Pretty recent, but it says a lot both about how the US military behaves overseas and US/Italy relations.
I recommend James Carrol, House of War (2006). a personal and polical history. Maybe in my all-time top 10.
I feel your pain Mark. May I suggest Olive Leaf Extract as a safe, affordable, ancient method to avoid such gymnastics in the future. It's an antibiotic that only kills "bad" bacteria and viruses and you can take it every day. Check it out.
I got it now, thank you!
Is anybody else not getting this episode on the Apple podcast app?
Check now, should be updated
ahh yes the B70, or as I like to call it, the US's Avro Arrow
mark you should debut your metal career before you heal
Goes ape
And by truly interesting coincidence, I was describing this plane and the mission and the utter insanity of nuclear-powered aircraft with my son less than a week ago. This should be fun!
As a (fairly) new subscriber I was worried I was gonna run out of Annibale EPs. Thanks RWN for putting me at ease for at least another week.
I was just about to listen to his Jean d’Arc episode again, Annibale is the war nerd version of Santa.
This is where Annibale seperated himself from all other RWN guests. He's an elite storyteller.
Now this is what we mean when people talk about summer blockbusters 💥💥
Oh shit here we go