Why the futuristic B-58 was useless before it even took to the sky... 

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Where does it say the B-58 carried 5 nuclear missiles like the video stated? hint, it doesn't. Let's try and do a better job with your research and yes, details really do matter.

​@@robertphelan1657Quite right. It could carry five bombs, not missiles.

I am fairly sure that the female voice was selected after a series of psych tests. It was not just a matter of the female voice and jock pilots, it was a fairly common response by male subjects - and that really should not be a surprising result. This came up when I was studying psychology. I still think the Hustler was the most dramatic-looking aircraft of it's time. If the USAF had stayed focused on the mission it was designed for, maybe it would have a better reputation. I recall a magazine telling that the Russians went through all their satellite footage _very_ carefully during the START negotiations - even demanding that one crashed but visually intact-looking B-58 hull was utterly destroyed. So, regardless of it's perceived vulnerability to the SA-2, they seem to have taken the type as a very serious threat. Yes, I would love to see a video on that SST version.

​@vitaliylomanoff1759 Ironically the B52 is still flying long after the B47 and B58 is still on active duty.

God Bless you sir. What an amazing experience that must have been.

Four J-79's.

now that's something I'd love to experience

@@debbiestimac5175 Yes Debbie - Two bombers, with four J-79 engines each, makes *_eight_* J-79 engines total.

​@@stickiedmin6508 doh!

Kinda different opinion from a work associate of mine who said the guidance computers were one of the most unreliable, nightmare-to-calibrate-and-then-KEEP-calibrated, dangerous bleeding edge tech he's ever been asked to service, and then be expected to work miracles with anyway, cuz 'Generals' Credibility at Risk'. That alone made it a hideously expensive prestige toy for the USAF.

According to the narrator's view the B-36 was also useless.

Looks like a Mig 21

can't besos or musk take their FU money and refurbish a fleet of these beauties?

@@brucewelty7684 - The B-36 did seem pretty useless. There are good reasons it never saw combat. It would not have survived.

Yes, deterrence is underrated ! Even active deterrence, like the Vietnam War, though costly (both in money, and lives), showed the Soviet Union, that the US wasn't going to idly sit by. If we had shown a little more teeth, the Russians would never have dared invade Ukraine.

​@@jbradley8659 Everyone assumes a nuclear WW3 would've begun suddenly and without warning. That is a highly suspect concept. International relations heat up over time. Wars don't occur overnight, especially nuclear Armageddon. In short, there would have been plenty of time to send B-58's to any number of NATO bases much closer to their Soviet targets. SAC regularly practiced this from its earliest days as a USAF command.

@@jbradley8659 Isn't it amusing how something can be groundbreaking, technologically stunning and yet barely be worth anything at the same time?

​@@jbradley8659 The correct answer is "the NUCLEAR TRIAD" of which the bomber force was a key component. The more the Soviets had to defend against the more it cost them and the eventual result vindicated the triad which is maintained to this day. In a nuclear exchange pilot lives don't matter, they're not even drama when millions are immolated. Bombers permit gestures that missiles do not. Instead of just considering hardware, read Herman Kahn and learn about how complex (and real) nuclear war theory and doctrine really are.

This is like saying the F-22 is useless because no one ever wanted to fight it

That’s amazing!

If your Uncle Ken is still around, ask him if he knew CDR Emerson Earl Moore. My late father flew combat for the Navy in the Pacific in WW2. He went on to lead the Navy contingent of the Airlift. In the 90s, the BAVA was formed, or became really active. Many of the Berlin vets were hosted on trips to Berlin, for some special occasions. Dad came to one of them, while my wife and I were stationed in Germany. Dad was voted president for life of the BAVA, Berlin Airlift Veterans Association, in the early 2000s. I think because he would do it and nobody else anted to. ;-) I got to be an honorary member of the group.

👍👍

PRESEDENT DONALD J TRUMP SUFFERS SLINGS AND AROWS TO SAVE US OUR LORD AND SAVIOR ONLY *HE* CAN SAVE AMERICA I LOVE U PRESEDENT DONALD J TRUMP U S A 🇺🇲❤️🇺🇲❤️👍​@@abaddon4823

That's awesome,. I. wish. I. could. have. seen. that,. My. Dad said a. B-58. took. off. from. around. Dallas. one. morning. early. 60,s. ,. about 10. minutes later,. it. crashed just outside Hattiesburg, Mississippi,. now. that's. moving.

Carswell was where I was born. Dad spent much of his career in SAC. He spent 3 years in SE Asia during Vietnam supporting B-58 operations out of Thailand. He was in avionics, but worked ECM/ECCM when he was in Thailand. Years from now we are going to find out that a lot of those accidents actually occurred over Vietnam. My Dad said that the Hustler was a great plane and that the USAF destroyed the airframes during the war from low altitude high speed flight. Dad passed away this year so I can't ask him any more questions, but I don't think he lied about that stuff.

Hi ben, I lived over in Dallas at that time so I heard the Hustlers, but never got to see one. Envy you!

​@@colerapeI'm a retired aviation writer, and would not want to contradict your late father. However, given many factors, including its limited bomb load, I can't imagine the B-58 having any value as a conventional bomber. In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen a photograph of a B-58 with a load of iron bombs. But, again, that's not to say such a picture isn't out there somewhere. Nobody expected to see the F-104 Starfighter hung with "trash" either, and it spent two years hauling bombs in Vietnam.

@@thomasbell7033 I understand what you are saying. However, one question. How many operational B-58 units were around post Vietnam and how long before they were decommissioned?

But the Mirage IV eventually got a stand-off missile (ASMP) that made the plane more survivable because with ASMP, the plane didn't need to fly over the target. That's why the B-52 first got the SRAM missile and eventually the ALCM missile so the plane didn't need to overfly the target with all the issues of survivability.

Looks like a Mig 21

The B58 could have easily been adapted to do any one of other jobs, but the pentagon had enough money to just have other aircraft developed specifically for other roles.

Right…”deterrence”. The myth of mutually assured destruction… as formidable an aircraft it is, if its role was deterrence, it didn’t do too hot, since more weapons were developed to combat and compete

@air-headedaviator1805, very much deterrence! You are too young to have participated in Nuclear Warfare drills in school. They would sound the air raid sirens and we would go into the hall and practice something called "duck and cover". The proof that deterrence worked is that know-nothings are able to write ignorant screeds about it not working.

I wonder if it's what inspired John Denver to write "I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again".

Nah.. don't know if I'd ever be back again😢

That is an interesting way of putting it, it may be true that the last B-52 pilot hasn't been born yet, despite its 50+ years of service.

@@hinzuzufugen7358 I wonder if people get my John Denver reference to the B58 or his connection to it. John Denver was his stage name, his real name was Henry John Deutschendorf Jr, his father Henry John Deutschendorf Sr was a US Air Force B58 pilot that set a record in one that I believe still stands to this day.

@@dukecraig2402 I found out myself, meanwhile. I thought, what a coincidence OR just a reference to his father. Wonder how Americans pronounce the "eu" in that most German name - "oyi" as in German?

I caught that too. Very likely it should have been 'fat man'.

@@dmillhoff If you look at the guppy shape of the pod beneath the B58 its way more then likely

@@obelic71 I doubt they would have re-instigated production of an obsolete design for a new bomber.

​@@dmillhoffyou're likely correct: "Bombs: 1× Mark 39 or B53 or 4× B43 or B61 nuclear bombs..." None of these are identical to Fat Man or Little Boy.

Since the design of American nuclear weapons is still classified (although much is available in open-source documents) it isn't clear what exactly these bombs were. The Mark 39s and B53s are described as using "Oralloy" in their fission primaries, which is highly enriched uranium. Would this have been the crude Little Boy gun-type assembly? or implosion which for Nagasaki (Fat Man) used plutonium? The gun-type assembly requires a lot of linear space because you have to keep the two sub-critical components far enough apart that no chain reaction can start before the gun shot slams them together...and then somehow you have to arrange to fit in the lithium deuteride secondary to be fused by the X-rays from the primary. Also, implosion, compared to gun assembly, causes more of the fuel to undergo fission before the rapidly developing fireball blows the whole mess apart. So I'm guessing that all bombs after Fat Man itself used implosion of a convenient sphere of either Pu or U. All this from Richard Rhodes's two books on the making of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. I join everyone here in being a great fan of the B-58. Never saw one "alive" but it is nice to see the one the USAF Museum in Dayton has.

The B-52 was just far superior in the two areas that mattered: Bomb load and loitering time. Neither the B-58 nor the B-52 would dare go into areas with intact heavy air defenses so the speed of the B-58 was largely useless. Even the more agile F4 almost never did supersonic attacks cause it made the plane far too cumbersome and an easy target for Mig 21's and ground AA fire. Even so high speed bombing runs were somewhat successful mostly because the US had far more resources to throw at it so it could afford to lose a few planes. The B-58 was an awkward middle ground. It wasn't agile or cheap enough to be a fighter-bomber, not resiliant enough to be a ground attack plane but it also didn't have the loitering time and bomb load to be a bomb dumb truck.

​@@MrMarinus18 ...more negativity ("so the speed of the B-58 was useless). NASA was the big winner from development of the B-58 and helped develop the future pilot corps that helped plant the astronaut program in coming years. Plus it scared the Russians during the very peak of Cold War fear between both powers. Lots of the tech developed on The Hustler matriculated to future projects, by solving current issues and/or proving some tech was not the best alternative for new platforms.

@@stuartkidney3257 While that is all true I think the real winners were the plane producers. America has always had a level of corruption and the B-58 was in many ways designed to get as much money from the government as possible. A big reason why it filled so many niches is because that meant it was applicable to many different streams of funding. The F4 had a similar issue as did several other planes. That's why later on the department of defense changed their methodology.

@@stuartkidney3257 The standard US fighter bomber could drop nuclear bombs. It never did nor were there ever any plans for it to do so. But because it could in theory the program got more funding. This let to major issues cause it ended up being too big, too cumbersome and had far too high a stallspeed.

​@@MrMarinus18 LOL ; I know crew that flew the platform and fixed 'em; they loved it and it put the Russians on their heels for ten years. Nothing in the World had the capability to project power, speed with nuke capability. Lots of aircraft platforms had huge issues during development, but the B-58 tackled speed, distance and altitude all in one platform. Brave, smart men designed, maintained and flew her. I'm grateful for their hard work and bravery.

agreed....a beatiful plane, fast as hell. A bit difficult to fly, but if I was an airplane I would want to be a B-58 hustler.

The B-1's daddy.

It’s only purpose was to get nukes on Soviet cities super fast. They were essentially manned ballistic missiles. In all reality they were designed to make one way nuclear strike missions.

Idiotic analysis, this thing was criminal in al respects.

@@johnsmith1474, is that what you got from Chinese propaganda?

Down Gripes and Up Gripes. Down Gripes you aren't supposed to fly... but it was the Cold War. The biggest problem with B-58 was that it was before the integrated circuit was invented/in use. Vacuum tubes don't like vibration or high mach G loads. Can you imagine the pile of busted and blown out ones, outside the Instrument Shops at Hustler Bases?

Insane how many American aircraft, vehicles, equipment and weapons are such failures

@chaosXP3RT, and yet we are "the Joneses" that so many nations bust their hump to keep up with! The Hustler was not a failure; it was a magnificent success. It was a triumph of American know-how and sheet engineering creativity. The rest of the world should have such "failures"!

@@chaosXP3RT Meh... tons and tons of stuff designed all over the world in the decade following WW2 could be deemed a 'failure'. Technology was advancing at a ridiculous rate... America, Britain, USSR, France... they all dropped tons of time and money into stuff that barely had a front line service life. Fighters went from 400-450mph up to 1,200-1,400mph in a little over a decade. Realistic engagement altitudes of anti aircraft weapons went from 30-40k feet up to well over 100k in a little over a decade. What seemed like a good mission profile in 1953 was borderline suicidal by 1960. As a standalone nuclear weapon delivery system, the B-58 was largely useless by the time they reached legitimate service strength... it was not going to have a good time against mid 60s SAMs that simply didn't exist when the design was approved... But as a stepping stone to future technological advancement? It was probably money well spent.

VERY INTERESTING point.....indeed....what a nightmare@@debbiestimac5175

I'd like to see this film. Also, rotating parts shooting through engine nacelles happens on all jet aircraft.

B-1 Lancer/Bone is the sleek spiritual successor. F-111 was also legendary and a workhorse. Amazing aircraft.

Now that's what I call leavin' on a jet plane.

Wow I did not know that!

His dad's brother John was my pastor. Really cool people.

Fact of the day! No snark!

Well if he were alive o the time, not sure what he'd have made of John Denver's very strange death - sad and unnecessary.

LOL! No you did not.

Wait until you try to land it, you won't like it for sure

Aircraft and designed to perform a mission not look good haha

Please make video of tornado fighter jets

Idc if 38 people died and 3 billion dollars were lost, it still looks beautiful

This.

The Vindicator was ficticious as it could cruise at 2,000 mph for 5,000 miles. But they did use a B-58 for the footage.

Do you mean the Sea Vixen?

@@drjamespotter www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Sea+Vixen%3F nope

The B-1a was the first attempt at the B-1, not the B-58. The two designs could not be any less alike.

Planes and ships are not women...

@@ace9xx Traditionally, they are. Have been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Get over it.

​@@benn454 True that. Our boy here Prolly thinks that a dude with tits, wearing a dress is a woman though...

@@gort8203 I don't think so. "The MA-1C pod was a proposed rocket-propelled version of the MB-1 free-fall pod, designed to give the B-58 a stand-off capability. The pod was to be powered by a Bell Aerospace LR81-BA-1 rocket engine, fueled by a combination of JP-4 and red fuming nitric acid. The maximum range was expected to be 160 miles. During the flight to target, a maximum altitude of 108,000 feet and a maximum speed of Mach 4 was to be obtained. A Sperry guidance system was to control the pod during its flight to the target. The MA-1C pod was cancelled before it could be deployed." - The _B-58 Hustler Page_

@@gort8203 I don't think so "there were early versions of the B-58 weapon pod that were actually propelled by a rocket motor after release." But with your reply, " it was cancelled," you confirmed what I wrote.

Right tool at the wrong time.

Accurate reply. It was not useless but overtaken by nuclear weapon strategy and infrastructure.

@@mvjoshi The Hustler broke a lot of ground tech wise, and that knowledge and experience likely matriculated to making future supersonic platforms better and safer.

Also the development of cruise missles launched from a b52

@@Sitzenleben Not Cruise Missiles in the modern sense. Skybolt was designed for the B-52 from the late 1950s, but that was a Hypersonic missile. It was scrapped as being impractical in 1962

It's more to do with almost maxing out jet technology. There is no alternative to jets.

The improvements are more under the hood and less obvious on the outside, but totally get your point.

@@JohnFrumFromAmericathe next step is getting scramjets to work at low velocities, imo.

the software progressed massively in the last 15 years.

Aside from top speed this aircraft has nothing on modern strike aircraft. Nothing. The remarkable evolution in avionics since then is something of which some people are apparently ignorant.

Yep. They were called 'Vindicator' bombers. The Movie had a chilling ending.

“What’s there to go back to”

@@MultiMustafa7 I believe you're right. And that ending is chilling indeed.

@@Sherwoody That one line highlighted the tragedy of the whole situation.

"The Matador... is me!"

Soviet aircraft are better looking

​@@chaosXP3RT not really, theyre just more rugged and rough around the edges, the Myasichev M-50 comes pretty close though

@@spazzey0 Except they're not more "rugged" than their American competitors. The Kill/Death rates prove that

@@chaosXP3RT No they're not

I was in the Air Force c. 1980 at a state-side base in Kansas. A B-52's took off once in a while there. In the office I was working (ok, reading) late at night, a B-52 went to full power presumably for take off. No windows in the office, I knew this because every wall shook, even the floor, the roar was ear-splitting, you felt it in your bones, as the power was obscene. I had to be at least half a mile away no less and I marvelled how something man made could be so powerful.

Damn.

'Area Rule' in the design is hardly a 'design influence'. That's like calling 'landing gear' a design influence'.

What design influence? These two aircraft have very little in common. Delta wing vs swing wing. No horizontal tail vs a big tail, separately podded engines vs grouped engines. No bomb bay vs multiple bomb bays. Separate tandem crew positions vs conventional multi-place cockpit.

@@gort8203 same mission: low level supersonic penetration. Same thin, long fuselage, same windscreen sweep, same dorsal hump, and realistically a swing wing is just a Delta wing in its high speed configuration

@@GrantvsMaximvs Long thin fuselage describes most high-speed aircraft, as it is a basic aerodynamic principle rather than a styling cue. What you call a dorsal hump is not an actual dorsal hump like aircraft such as the A-4M have, it is simply the cockpit being elevated to provide view over the nose as in most aircraft, such as the B-17. Realistically speaking the swing wing is fundamentally and dramatically different in appearance, function, and performance compared to the delta wing of the B-58. Sorry, but the B-58 did not influence the design of the B-1 any more than any other previous aircraft did.

That ICBM-launcher, with the extended tail, started looking like a B-1 from the side.

It's a bit bigger than that. A good 50% bigger than an Eagle. There's a 50,000lb difference in max take off weight. Still a good looking plane 👌

Almost... unbelievable.

That’s a DCS video from iceman_fox1, it’s pretty cool, nonetheless

Did they takeoff from carriers? I never heard of that.

@@dannydaw59 No. They never did. It does look convincing. Look at the tail numbers. Every actual tail number is unique.

Not really a nitpick from my point of view, since I thought it was the former too. I just figured it was the heat from the air molecules hitting the skin, but I never felt satisfied with this being the mechanism that could, for example, melt a streamlined inconel structure at high mach numbers - especially in high altitude, rarefied air. The compression rationale makes so much more sense, I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it. But when things happen outside one’s realm of experience, and one isn’t taught…. Thnx, brother

Hot tip!

*Joe Rogan liked this comment*

Even more so, imagine how confused the bear would be when you opened his pod and found he wasn't flying anymore. Until, that is, he realized that he was hungry after the excitement of his ejection and proceeds to eat you!

Make it four, and add the F-104.

@@Hattonbank Good point! I'll go as far as saying all the "Century" fighters as well.

Agree, but for style, F-104/105/106 really had it.

Oh don’t tell me that I’ll be sad all day….

avro 730? the 740 was a passenger jet if I recall correctly

Uhh the AVRO 730 was cancelled in 1957. Powers was shot down 1960

It wasn't "Useless" but was made for an emergency that never occurred, thank God.

Looks like a Mig 21

Little known fact: a confirmed 14 missles were shot at him and other soviet sources from times past said it was 14 from that SINGLE missile battion group and that around 32-33 were shot on the entire flight at Powers....shooting down one of their own jets in the process.(just happened again in October 2023 in Ukrainian 'Special Operation' which translates exactly, not roughly, in English to INVASION)

You can see a real one at the Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton Ohio. I enjoyed walking around it but the B-58 was dwarfed by the XB-70 nearby.

There is one preserved in the desert at the Pima Aviation Museum. It is in such good condition it looks as though it could be serviced and flown. I saw them occasionally, but my most memorable experience was when one went howling over my house at perhaps 1000 ft. This was about 1967. I was five years old. I did not see another one until I saw the one at Pima in 1999. It is still there.

Like the fact you mention the B-47. Went to tech school at Chanute AFB in 1964. Came from a small rural town and the first time I saw a B-47 it was just huge. Enjoyed every minute on the plane. Got to run engines take flight controls and put them back on and all that stuff. Out of tech school went to Edwards AFB and was a mechanic on the TB-58 6515 OMS 43151E chase for the XB-70 1964-1966.

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First reply! 😁

It was actually a much better plane than this video would indicate.

Which Paris Air show? Who was the pilot?

Incorrect. In fact, according to a number of B58 pilots, the B58 could actually outperform the B52 at subsonic speed and outmaneuver the B52 because of its delta wing. The B52s wings proved too flimsy for such maneuvering, and several B52 crashes happened because of this.

​@@RMSTitanicWSL Except that isn't actually relevant. The B-58 was retired as SAC was accepting its first F-111s, which was a much more capable low level penetrator and much cheaper to maintain.

@@control_the_pet_population It's highly relevant. The B58 was actually still cheaper on a plane-by-plane basis than the B52, despite it's maintenance costs.

@@RMSTitanicWSL I think you are missing the point. The debate in DoD and USAF was never B-58 vs B-52. It was B-58 vs F-111. The F-111 could carry a comparable amount of warheads a longer distance in the low level penetration role and do it for much cheaper than the B-58. (Granted, the F-111 had it's own teething issues but they were largely worked out by 1971/72 and it was a premier low level penetrator for the next 25 years) Sure, the B-52 was more expensive per plane then the Hustler, but it could fly four times farther with four times the warheads. These weren't remotely comparable weapon systems and had different roles. The comparison you need to worry about is the F-111, which is what replaced it in service.

@@control_the_pet_population It was very much about the B52 vs the B58. The B52 people put great effort into killing off the B58 program. Nuclear war was very much about reaction time. Several studies proved the B52s couldn't even deploy fast enough in the event of a surprise strike--which made it useless even though it could carry more, simply because they couldn't get off the ground quick enough to avoid being destroyed. Nor could the B52 fly four times further, especially at that point in time. The B52's current range is 8,800 miles, and the B58's range was 4,700 miles, but the B52 has undergone many improvements over the decades, and one of them was range. The earliest variants had a much shorter range than the current planes.

Dude, the video literally explains why it was useless, by the time they built the thing and got it into service it was already redundant.

Bravo! Three of the aircraft you mentioned are my favorites in terms of design: The XB-70, the B-58 and the LearJet 25 (Tip Tanks are a must).

@@bobcastro9386 Oh yeah, I added the LJ25 tip tanks as well