The Convair B-58 Hustler is one of those peculiar airplanes that works both as an engineering marvel and as a warning against the excesses of military policy. It was sleek, very fast, and unlike anything else out there in the skies—setting records left and right—but never saw normal service with America’s nuclear umbrella.
Shaped out of Cold War anxieties of the 1950s, the Hustler was the U.S. Air Force’s high-tech answer to a new Soviet threat. The world’s first operational bomber to reach Mach 2 speeds, the achievement thrilled military strategists and aeronautical engineers. Convair’s design was revolutionary: the delta wing was clipped short, the fuselage was a thin “wasp-waist,” and there was a state-of-the-art honeycomb skin to drain off the heat of supersonic flight.
Four General Electric J79-GE-5A afterburning turbojets, generating 15,000 pounds of thrust each, propelled it to a top speed of 1,319 mph. Inertial guidance and bomb gear provided it with a precision that bordered on the supernatural for the era, and its 19,450-pound payload capacity allowed it to drop nuclear weapons as well as defensive fire in the form of a 20mm tail gun.
When it flew in 1960, the B-58 was breathtaking. It set 19 world records, earning coveted aviation accolades along the way. In 1962, the “Cowtown Hustler” completed the round trip from Los Angeles to New York in record-breaking time, earning the Bendix and Mackay Trophies.
A second aircraft, “Greased Lightning,” flew from Tokyo to London in a record eight hours and 1 minute—averaging over 1,080 mph. These accomplishments demonstrate that the Hustler was as quick and efficient as advertised.
But only speed was not enough to make it viable. The introduction of advanced Soviet surface-to-air missiles later revealed the vulnerable link in the B-58’s design—its dependency on high-speed, high-altitude penetration. As an aviation journalist and former Italian Air Force officer, David Cenciotti has pointed out that, with the advent of SAMs into the equation, speed was no longer a guarantee for survival.
Its extremely high accident rate, combined with the cost to operate and maintain it, made the numbers impossible to add up. Its operators determined that for the money, they could fly six wings of B-52s for the cost of two wings of Hustlers—a fiscal reality that doomed the program to obscurity.
Others within the Pentagon envisioned a rebuild of the Hustler for even more lofty objectives. One proposal would have converted it into an air-launched launcher for a Minuteman ICBM, in effect a supersonic “flying missile silo.”
But the 68,000-pound missile payload was far outside the design envelope of the B-58, and suggested modifications—longer fuselage, strengthened wings, and elimination of the tail gun—were too radical to be feasible. Satellite launching from the bomber was another idea that was kicked around, but once more, weight constraints shelved the proposal.
Although it never engaged in combat, the B-58 etched a niche for itself in aviation history. Only 116 were produced, and only eight exist today, on display in museums. The record-breaking “Cowtown Hustler” is on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The first still-extant TB-58A trainer is located at Grissom Air Museum, and the last-ever Hustler produced is at the Pima Air & Space Museum.
The B-58 Hustler was an emblem of Cold War hubris and the relentless pace of aerospace development. It was no long-haul workhorse, but a brief, shining experiment—a bomber that scorched the horizon to ashes, incinerated the world with its speed, and retired in silence. Its claim to fame is not in awards for valor in combat, but in the wonder it continues to evoke among those who examine its brief, glittering career.