VEHICLES > Les's Aviation

Aviation theme Zippo lighters

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DeadNutz:
I don't know if I ever showed this Zippo I acquired about 25 years ago. It was carried on the first flight of the triple-sonic XB-70 bomber built by North American Aircraft. An example of the plane resides at the Air Force Museum in Dayton OH. I bought the lighter from the widow of an airline captain who had been best friends with aviation fiction writer John Ball who had been presented with the lighter. Ball also wrote Heat of the Night which most of us have heard of.

jabberwoki:
Wow that really is cool.

jabberwoki:
Had to loo it up....looks like Clint Eastwood's FIREFOX.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAWfFJqaQc

DeadNutz:
Yes the fictional Firefox looked similar to the XB-70 but was a fraction of the size. At Westinghouse in the late 70's I worked with guys who had worked for NAA and helped build the bomber. They said the honeycomb construction was new and took some time to master. It also took them some time to solve the problem of the fuel tanks leaking.

stokester:
If I remember right one of the two XB-70 aircraft crashed when an F104 chase plane got caught in the wake and rolled into it.  The other is on display at the AF Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB OH, it's quite a site to look at the exhaust of those six massive engines.

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