B-58 Hustler: Why Did This Beautiful Plane Fail

[Gnomey]

Good one!

 

[mike cunningham]

as a boy in ft worth these planes flew everyday out of dthe base there they were beautiful and loud

 

[Zipper730]

To reduce heat, Convair designed the B-58's skin out of honeycombed fiberglass

Actually if I recall the skin included honeycomb steal in the leading and trailing edge, honeycomb aluminum (aluminum cores and composite or fibreglass cores) in other areas to reduce weight.

Unfortunately the Hustler's small size created one of its biggest shortcomings for a jet designed to penetrate Soviet airspace, i.e. an unrefueled combat radius of only 1,740 miles.

This range is supersonic, correct?

While speed had been the number one concern it also created problems. Because the bomber traveled so fast, the Air Force needed a new navigation and bombing system — the Sperry AN/ASQ-42 — which proved most troublesome of all to develop.

From what I remember hearing, it was actually more accurate than the early B-47 and B-52 systems.

I'm not sure how agile the plane is, but I do remember a case where a pilot, eager to show that the B-58 could do stuff that fighter planes could do, ended up doing a climbing series of aileron rolls and tumbled the navigation system's gyros. Either the navigator or DSO had to spend a couple minutes resetting them all: I'm not sure if the 'Push to Cage' buttons weren't hit because they didn't expect the pilot to execute such a maneuver, or some other reason.

Ultimately two factors doomed the Hustler. The first was the development of better Soviet surface-to-air missiles in the 1950s culminating in the May 1960 shoot down of a high-flying U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The . . . SA-2 Guideline — could reach thousands of feet higher than the B-58's maximum operating altitude.

True, but I'm not sure how well they'd have done against a plane with the B-58's speed and jamming capability: I have a hunch that the odds wouldn't be so good. There were plans to penetrate, to some extent, the USSR all the way up to 1962 (some planes would go in high, others would go in at low altitudes).