Originally Posted by
phol
Correct. It needed to be white to fly supersonic for any worthwhile period of time.
That's not true at all. It could fly supersonically at around M 1.5 IIRC for as long as it liked. It was even allowed to fly at M 2.0 for a limited amount of time. Because of the nature of the promotion (Being around Europe) this wasn't necessary, anyway - that's probably why people think it couldn't fly supersonically, when in fact it really could.