Way back when I had a friend whose sister was married to what was in effect the XO to the President of Boeing Aircraft.  He was an interesting guy, smooth, suave, smart as anyone had a right to be with the ability to put one at ease immediately.  Knowing the US never turned down a challenge I asked him what had happened to the US SST.  The public face was that it was ecologically a disaster and it wouldn’t be economical.  I knew BS when I saw it on that scale.

The guy told me what sounded like the truth.  He told us, not for publication, one booze fueled evening, with just he, his wife, my friend, her husband and me, after dinner.

Apparently the Air Force and Boeing together had spend a fortune on flight and design data.  There were wind tunnel experiments, computer runs with primitive computers, real aircraft data, the works.  All repeat all that data was stored in bomb-proof, water-proof, fire-proof underground vaults in Bellevue, Washington, just east of Seattle.  It was so secure that apparently it was relatively unmanned if not unmanned during weekends.

Well, one weekend there was a fire which got away from the small crew on duty.  As Boeing and the Air Force surveyed the damage they realized that not only would there be enormous costs in regenerating it, they were hopelessly behind Europe and the USSR and there was no way to cover up being beaten that badly.

So they did the only thing reasonable to them.  They all conspired to cancel the project based upon noble premises, leaving the field to the other guy.

I thought that sounded fishy at the time, but didn’t know the story.  And neither did the American people.