Convair B-58 Hustler

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K'Tesh said:
Here's a 28 minute documentary on the B-58 hosted by Brig. General James "Jimmy" Stewart (Yes, THAT Jimmy Stewart):

[video=youtube;IYvsjGroa78]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYvsjGroa78[/video]
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No, no it can't be! Not the nice Jimmy Stewart I loved so much in “Its a Wonderful Life.” It breaks my heart to think he would have anything to do with nasty deterrence or bombing the godless Red menace back to the Stone Age. Promoted to Major General by Ronald Regan? NO! Making propaganda movies for big defense contractors? NO! My lovely, kinder gentler world is crushed. Next thing someone will say is that my beloved John Denver has ties to the B 58. NO! Think PC, think of Peace, Flowers and cute Bunnies!
 
FastCargo said:
I was a Bone driver in the early 90s, before they started getting all the cool PGM stuff. She was an absolute machine down low...effortlessly fast, smooth, and agile. And very few aircraft could keep up with us for any length of time without afterburner.

FC
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That's a beautiful aircraft, too. I was going to ask if anyone had done a scale/semi-scale SRAM here and I see that you did:

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?21784-Semi-scale-AGM-69A-SRAM-build&highlight=SRAM

I initially painted a Mad Cow Super DX3 in semi-gloss white to make it SRAM-ish, but later went with all matte nickel with a phenolic-color nose tip "radome" to make it B61-ish.
 
Surrealistic High Dynamic Range photo found in Flickr searching on the keyword B-58:

4751348679_28e6338f88_o.jpg


All of the B-58 search results at Flikr:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=b-58

A fantastic collection of photos of the USAF Museum that I think I've posted a link to previously:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rocbolt/sets/72157631351292122

And many other cool military aircraft and nuclear weapons related photo collections from the same individual:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rocbolt/sets/
 
Daddyisabar said:
Next thing someone will say is that my beloved John Denver has ties to the B 58.
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Daddyisabar, are you having Daddy Issues? Hmmm Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (A.K.A. John Denver) having any ties to Major Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr. (holder of 6 world speed records and B-58 pilot)... Naw... Not a Chance, other than they were both pilots... Right?

I should add that I attended a high school assembly (Ashland Oregon) where Jr's organization demonstrated the potential area that could be devastated by every nuke on the planet at the time being used. Didn't stop me from joining the USAF, and working on nukes myself.

Now that I'm out the the service, I should say, I still blow things up on weekends whenever possible...



Peace!
Jim
 
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K'Tesh said:
Daddyisabar, are you having Daddy Issues? Hmmm Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (A.K.A. John Denver) having any ties to Major Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr. (holder of 6 world speed records and B-58 pilot)... Naw... Not a Chance, other than they were both pilots... Right?

I should add that I attended a high school assembly (Ashland Oregon) where Jr's organization demonstrated the potential area that could be devastated by every nuke on the planet at the time being used. Didn't stop me from joining the USAF, and working on nukes myself.

Now that I'm out the the service, I should say, I still blow things up on weekends whenever possible...



Peace!
Jim
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Thanks for the pictures of the balloons, it calms all the visions of SAC and Curtis LeMay, of Henry John Deutschendorf Sr. having to fly out to California to pick up the run away Jr., of Jr. trying to switch fuel tanks in his experimental plane and crashing.
 
Winston said:
.... the internal capacity limitations were one of the many reasons for its downfall....
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When I hired in to GD/FW back in the 70s, some of the guys who designed the Hustler were still working there. They said that the reason for its short service life was....money. Too much complexity made for an airplane that sucked up too many resources. Way too many maint hrs per flight hr, way too high on $$$$/flight hr.

If you remember how the USAF had a blank check in the days after WW II to go after new airframes, then you probably have heard the phrase "performance at any expense." Except once the govt found out how good the USAF was at spending money, they started back-tracking on that deal. The Hustler was one of those aircraft that got caught in the middle of the re-think about expenses.

Oh yes, somewhere down the list was the little deal about how the Hustler's mission went away. It was designed for high-and-fast and became operational about the same time the Soviets started fielding some capable SAM weapons. The Hustler lost LOTS of range capability if it tried to go low (as in, down-in-the-weeds low). So, not much purpose left in keeping it flying.
 
I am pretty proud of my Dad. He was a Nav Bombardier in the B58 test program. he will be 89 this year, still goes to gym 6 days a week and lives by himself in his own house. He still loves to talk about flying in that bird!
 
"Fail Safe" is on TMC this afternoon. It shows stoch USAF exterior shots of the B-58. They call it the "Vindicator". According to IMDB, the interior shots were " shot inside of a commercial airline simulator then under repair at a a New York airport. The three crew members sit within feet of each other, in an open cockpit layout. In an actual B-58, the world's first supersonic bomber (and capable of twice the speed of sound), the three-man crew of pilot, bombardier/navigator, and defense systems specialist were separated by banks of equipment, and had no physical contact with one another."
 
I watched that movie today also. I like how the US president (Henry Fonda) gave up New York for Moscow.:facepalm:
 
Plastic models are getting expensive but are also getting better in detail and quality. I would like to see if scale model company will release a new-tool B-58 scale kit maybe in 1/144 scale.
 
Love the B-58, looks like it's doing Mach 2+ while sitting on the tarmac.

Incidentally, at some point in the design stage, they mounted free-flight models of the Hustler to rockets and launched them at Wallops. The intent was to get some supersonic test data, before the advent of supersonic wind tunnels.
 
Not sure if I posted this before, here is my profile B-58 hustler pusher, I mixed in the take-off shots of the "vindicator bombers" in failsafe... with the music from dr. strangelove....seemed to fit...:)

[video=youtube;FtQOyqGxhr8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtQOyqGxhr8&list=PLGfbV-lUmA_1fNOLloZOPqhpDTWvq4dSc[/video]

It's funny, this was the second one I had built, first one was lost in a tree due to my stupidity....It had been a while since I had flown rc and I put my pusher prop on backwards...so it had about 70% of the normal thrust, still flew ok, but climb was not as good as I remembered:) I love this plane, it will really haul and will fly extremely slow.


Here's more of it flying with the prop on the right direction:)

[video=youtube;MF8bdcef4Pk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF8bdcef4Pk&list=UUmToWCQ4okdIYb848HJn_sQ[/video]

Frank
 
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An interesting comparison on the acquisition cost of the B-58 versus the F-22 and the B-2 in constant FY 2013 Dollars.

B-58 (116 planes) @ $33.621 M (FY 1967) x 6.97 (FY 2013/FY 1967) = $234.3 M each versus F-22 (181 planes) @ $412 M each in FY 2013

That's even small compared to the B-2 (21 planes) @ $2.1 B (FY 2004) 1.23 (FY 2013/FY 2004) = $2.6 B (FY 2013)!

https://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1980/sep-oct/cargill.html A very interesting read on the history and cost of manned bombers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit

Bob
 
FastCargo said:
I was a Bone driver in the early 90s, before they started getting all the cool PGM stuff. She was an absolute machine down low...effortlessly fast, smooth, and agile. And very few aircraft could keep up with us for any length of time without afterburner.

FC
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Fast, what else did ya fly?


Launching rockets (or missiles in my case) is so easy a chimp could do it. Read a step, do a step, eat a banana.

Sent from my iPad Air using Rocketry Forum.
 
Coming into this one pretty late. I really liked the look of the B-58. Had a plastic model kit of it when I was around 10 or so.

Anyway, I want to pick up on the Jimmy Stewart comments. I'm surprised nobody brought up that he was an actual World War-II bomber pilot who among other things flew missions over Germany, and commanded a bomb group.

In the 1950's he made "Strategic Air Command"

strategic_air_command_movie.jpg


Trailer for the movie, in all its 1950's glory, in VistaVision, and TECHNICOLOR

[youtube][video=youtube;t-ItBbwKFTQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ItBbwKFTQ[/video][/youtube

Kinda lame movie, as a motion picture. But some neat scenes with Stewart and his three co-stars: B-38, B-47, and oh yeah June Allyson.

Stewart wki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart

He became a pilot before WWII. He enlisted, and had to overcome some issues (being under the weight requirements, then being far older than combat pilots, then overcoming attempts to use him mainly for at-home recruiting and War Bond drives instead of letting him actually fly missions overseas).

Excerpt from the Wik:

"In August 1943, Stewart was assigned to the 445th Bomb Group as operations officer of the 703d Bombardment Squadron, but after three weeks became its commander. On October 12, 1943, judged ready for overseas movement, the 445th Bomb Group staged to Lincoln Army Airfield, Nebraska. Flying individually, the aircraft first flew to Morrison Army Airfield, Florida, and then on the circuitous Southern Route along the coasts of South America and Africa to RAF Tibenham, Norfolk, England. After several weeks of training missions, in which Stewart flew with most of his combat crews, the group flew its first combat mission on December 13, 1943, to bomb the U-boat facilities at Kiel, Germany, followed three days later by a mission to Bremen. Stewart led the high squadron of the group formation on the first mission, and the entire group on the second.[45] Following a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on January 7, 1944, Stewart was promoted to major.[45][N 5] Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing on the first day of "Big Week" operations in February and flew two other missions that week.[47]
On March 22, 1944, Stewart flew his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin. On March 30, 1944, he was sent to RAF Old Buckenham to become group operations officer of the 453rd Bombardment Group, a new B-24 unit that had just lost both its commander and operations officer on missions.[48] As a means to inspire the unit, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on several missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. As a staff officer, Stewart was assigned to the 453rd "for the duration" and thus not subject to a quota of missions of a combat tour. He nevertheless assigned himself as a combat crewman on the group's missions until his promotion to lieutenant colonel on June 3[41] and reassignment on July 1, 1944, to the 2nd Bomb Wing, assigned as executive officer to Brigadier General Edward J. Timberlake. His official tally of mission credits while assigned to the 445th and 453rd Bomb Groups totaled 20 sorties."

- George Gassaway


1943
459px-Maj._Jimmy_Stewart.jpg


receiving a medal, for real, the French Croix de Guerre with Palm in 1944:
482px-Jimmy_Stewart_getting_medal.jpg
 
USAFmissileer said:
Fast, what else did ya fly?
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Well, besides the Bone, and the standard UFT lineup (T-41C/T-37A/T-38A), I flew T-38s for the other part of my career. Got LOTS of hours in the A and C models as a full and part timer. Scammed a few rides in a Viper and EA-6B during a Flag out at Nellis.

FC
 
burkefj said:
Not sure if I posted this before, here is my profile B-58 hustler pusher, I mixed in the take-off shots of the "vindicator bombers" in failsafe... with the music from dr. strangelove....seemed to fit...:)
Click to expand...

I want plans... That is SO COOL!!!!
 
FastCargo said:
Well, besides the Bone, and the standard UFT lineup (T-41C/T-37A/T-38A), I flew T-38s for the other part of my career. Got LOTS of hours in the A and C models as a full and part timer. Scammed a few rides in a Viper and EA-6B during a Flag out at Nellis.

FC
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Cool! Happy Vets Day!


Launching rockets (or missiles in my case) is so easy a chimp could do it. Read a step, do a step, eat a banana.

Sent from my iPad Air using Rocketry Forum.
 
burkefj said:
Here you go....

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showatt.php?attachmentid=6196162&d=1382370081

pdf, you have to print with no page scaling and no margins...otherwise things won't align..


the first page of the original build thread shows some assembly pics so you can sort of see how it is put together....

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=805347&highlight=profil
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First link came up as "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator"
 
Fast...looking at that B-24 above with Jimmy Stewart.....if you had a choice as a bomber pilot...B-24 or B-17?

FastCargo said:
Well, besides the Bone, and the standard UFT lineup (T-41C/T-37A/T-38A), I flew T-38s for the other part of my career. Got LOTS of hours in the A and C models as a full and part timer. Scammed a few rides in a Viper and EA-6B during a Flag out at Nellis.

FC
Click to expand...
 

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