The history of American military aviation was forever altered by the relentless pursuit of speed and altitude during the early decades of the Cold War. The Boeing B-47 Stratojet emerged as a revolutionary American long-range, six-engine, turbo-powered strategic bomber designed specifically to fly at high subsonic speeds and extreme altitudes to evade enemy interceptor aircraft. Cruising at 35,000 feet in the absolute freeze of the stratosphere, aviators operated this magnificent aircraft on a razor’s edge. They routinely flew in a perilous aerodynamic window known as coffin corner, where a mere five knots separated a high-speed Mach buffet from a catastrophic low-speed stall. This groundbreaking machine demanded absolute perfection from its three-man crews, serving as America’s first generation of swept-wing nuclear deterrents capable of penetrating deep into hostile airspace faster than

Source: Forged in the Cold War: America’s Swept – Wing Pioneer