When I was a kid, my Uncle Dennis recognized my aviation obsession and began feeding it with a steady stream of books. He would visit from New York on holidays and handoff the latest aircraft encyclopedia or a decades-old, out-of-print aviation reference guide packed with history, photos, and specifications.
One included a section about the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, a nuclear strike bomber prototype designed in the 1950s to fly long distances at Mach 3above 70,000 feet. I considered it the ultimate aircraft, and when I read that the single surviving example lives in the Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, along with other rarities like the Convair B-58 Hustler, I committed to a visit.
