The Convair B-58 Hustler was one of the most daring airplanes to come into being in the Cold War era. Sleek, space-age, and incredibly speedy, it was meant to outrun hostile fighters, sail above interceptor altitudes, and bring America’s nuclear weapons into the midst of danger. But behind the glow of its speed record was a tale of high expectations crashing headlong into reality. The Hustler’s flight would be a cautionary story of technology racing ahead of strategy, and of ambition being too steep a price to pay.
In the late 1940s, the concept of the B-58 was born. Picked up following its victory in World War II, the U.S. Air Force commissioned a study called GEBO II—Generalized Bomber. Its intent was ambitious: design a bomber as quick and high-flying as any Soviet fighter or missile could be outdistanced. On paper, it was invincible, but its costs were prohibitive even before the plane ever touched the runway. However, the Air Force waited it out, and in 1952 Convair took the contract with a radical delta-wing design which took advantage of leading-edge aerodynamic research carried over from the war years.
From the first time it was unveiled, the B-58 looked virtually extraterrestrial. Its swooping fuselage, angular, triangular wings, and quartet of GE J79 turbojet engines formed a shape unlike any bomber yet built. Those J79S were monsters, designed for hours of supersonic flight. The body of the aircraft was made up of advanced honeycomb composite panels, carefully selected to survive Mach 2 runs. Even its engineering was a gamble, prioritizing speed over everything else.
One of its most striking features was the huge external pod hanging under the fuselage. This removable pod contained fuel and a nuclear bomb, as there was no room inside the bomber’s long, thin body. External hardpoints on later models delivered other loads, but the Hustler’s design imposed a lot of its strange shape.
Internally, there was no less oddness. The three-man crew—pilot, bombardier-navigator, and defensive systems operator—sat in a row of seats, each compartmented cockpit a separate one. Communication was so poor that sometimes crews wrote notes back and forth.
Rather than the usual ejection seat, each crew member had his own escape capsule to deal with high-speed bailouts and even flotation if he found himself bailing out over water. These devices were so experimentally advanced that they were first tested on animals, such as chimpanzees and bears, before being sanctioned for use.
Performance, of course, was where the B-58 truly excelled. It established at least nineteen world records, ranging from a coast-to-coast run across America in less than five hours to a supersonic flight from Tokyo to London. Aviation enthusiasts lavished it with admiration, and its J79 engines became legends in their own right, establishing standards for jet propulsion that would be emulated by designs for years to come.
These successes came at a high cost, however. The Hustler was spectacularly costly to produce and operate. In comparison to workhorses such as the B-47 or B-52, its operating cost per hour was staggering. To put the final insult upon it, the aircraft had a heart-stopping accident record. Over one-quarter of all B-58s produced were lost in crashes, 36 aircrewmen killed by mechanical failures and structural issues. Of 116 constructed, 26 were lost—appalling statistics for a nuclear bomber.
The plane’s biggest weakness, though, was not technical. It was strategic. In WhIn960, a U-2 spy plane was hit by a Soviet surface-to-air missile; the illusion that height and speed would provide security was wiped out in an instant. The Air Force attempted to modify by flying the Hustler at low altitude to avoid radar, but it was not designed for such a purpose. The use of fuel skyrocketed, range declined, and maneuverability was sacrificed. What had previously been the Hustler’s strong points were now a weakness.
By 1970, only a decade after it had been put into service, the B-58 had already been retired and substituted by no less than the FB-111A, a multi-purpose aircraft remodeled for the new realities of nuclear warfare. Today, nothing is left of the Hustlers but eight airframes which remain on display in museums around the United States, quiet testaments to a time when speed was considered the ultimate defense.
At last, the legacy of Hustler is cautionary and inspirational. It demonstrated what happened when technology and design were stretched by engineers to their limits, and it demonstrated how dangerous it was to proceed too quickly without bringing innovation in step with utilitarian requirements. Although its flight duration was short-lived, the B-58 left a lasting lesson behind: flight progress has nothing to do with flying higher or flying faster—it’s flying smarter in an evolving environment.