The massive North American XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber prototype recently saw daylight for the first time in many years as staff at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio moved the massive beast into her newly-constructed hangar. WarbirdsNews recently posted a piece on some of the other aircraft from the museum’s Research & Development Collection as they made the journey to their new home (click HERE), but nothing could be as impressive as seeing this formidable piece of technology in the open air again. Museum photographers and videographers were on the scene to record the move….

Museum staff and volunteers orchestrated the move shortly after dawn on October 27th, which also provided a great opportunity to give the vintage Mach 3 jet a good clean, so the procession paused for a period while a team hosed the Valkyrie down.

Once the Valkyrie was sparkling again, there was another pause for a few photographs before the aircraft tug slowly backed the behemoth Valkyrie into the newly-constructed building four.

The XB-70 will become a feature exhibit in the Research & Development Gallery within the fourth building at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Three other galleries will fill out the 224,000 square foot facility; these being: Space, Global Reach and Presidential. Three Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Nodes will also feature in the hangar as part of the museum’s education out-reach program. More airframes will be moving in over the coming weeks. There is a public viewing area for people interested in watching the transitions take place, and the museum regularly updates the move schedule HERE. The new building is scheduled to open in June, 2016, and the layout is planned as shown in the image below.

The National Museum of the US Air Force also released a short video of the XB-70’s move, and we thought our readers would enjoy seeing this too. Many thanks to the National Museum of the US Air Force and their photographers/videographers for providing these images for us all to share.