tbutler | Greased Lightning

The Convair B-58 Hustler was a cool, intriguing, but ultimately failed attempt to create a supersonic bomber in the late '50s. It looks like a big fighter, and the family resemblance to Convair's F-102 and F-106 is apparent when you see them in close succession - which you can at the SAC Museum, where I took this. This made for high performance -

- the museum's B-58, Greased Lightning, set a Tokyo-to-London flight record in 1963. (This record still stands today.)

Unfortunately, the design led to several compromises. There was no room for a bomb bay, so the (very limited) bomb load had to be carried in an external pod, seen in the first picture. The very large delta wing caused some tricky handling characteristics. Worst of all, the plane's reason for existing - high-altitude, high-speed bombing runs - was negated when the Soviets developed high-altitude, high-speed surface-to-air missiles that could shoot it down. So after a long and expensive development process, the B-58 was in service for less than 10 years... when even the B-2 has served almost 20. Sad.

(Something interesting - if you look closely in the second picture, you can see the discolored patch where a band-and-shield SAC insignia: