With its imposing delta wings spanning over a hundred feet merged seamlessly with a streamlined fuselage into a sleek and daunting celestial arrow, the XB-70 Valkyrie, a two hundred forty-three-ton, one hundred ninety-six-foot-long superbomber, was decades ahead of its time in the 1950s when it was brought to life by North American Aviation.

The Valkyrie’s wingtips, ingeniously designed to fold downwards in flight, lent it a predatory grace. And it was meant to be a predator: a supersonic nuclear-armed harbinger of destruction. It was designed to glide across continents to the very heart of Moscow and rain down atomic annihilation.

Soaring at Mach 3, with an operational ceiling that broke into the stratosphere at seventy-seven thousand three hundred fifty feet, the Valkyrie was untouchable. No enemy plane or defensive system could intercept it at such speeds and altitudes… In the grip of the Cold War, it stood as the ultimate trump card, an unassailable warplane.

But creating such epic aviation engineering soon spiraled into a labyrinth of challenges: technical nightmares, exploding budgets, and a relentless Soviet Union hell-bent on outpacing the United States at every turn.

As the Valkyrie stepped up to claim its destiny, however, the Soviets unveiled an unforeseen and revolutionary countermeasure that threatened to turn the entire program upside down.