Hustling B-58

Standing on the runway on insectlike legs, the plane had a hunched, tense look. Its nose was a sharp metal spike, and the leading edges of its delta wing curled downward a little, suggesting a cobra's hood. But even when it was standing still, it seemed to be moving, and when its engines opened wide, it snapped forward like a toy on a rubber cord and leaped into the air at a sharp angle. The plane was the new B58 Hustler, a bomber made by Convair.

Showing it off last week at Fort Worth, Texas, Air Force officers happily hinted that the Hustler's performance was forcing a flurry of tactical recalculations. It has flown at Mach 2--twice the speed of sound (Mach 2 at 40,000 ft. is 1,300 m.p.h.). A few ultramodern U.S. fighters may be faster in short spurts, but they would have trouble climbing from the ground in time to catch a Hustler at high altitude. Supersonic F-102 fighters must use their afterburners, at heavy cost in fuel, to stay anywhere near it. Even many rocket-pushed missiles may be too slow to deal with the B-58.

The speed of the Hustler, unapproached in other large bombers, is partly due to its peculiar "conical camber" delta wing, partly to the concentrated power of its four great General Electric J79 engines (more than 15,000 lbs. thrust each). Another important factor is the "pod" that can be hung below its fuselage. Almost ideally streamlined, the pod has comparatively little drag, but it can carry a large thermonuclear bomb and fuel for the outgoing leg of a long flight. At the target, the pod can be dropped. In effect, the use of the pod eliminates empty bomb bays and fuel tanks that other bombers must bring home with them at high cost in air resistance.

The range of the Hustler is secret, but is estimated to be in the order of 5,000 miles. New "exotic" fuels (TIME, April 1) containing high-energy Boron will also lengthen the range. But the Hustler's speed cannot be increased merely by reducing drag or adding to the thrust of its engines. It already flies so fast that the limiting factor on its speed is the amount of friction-generated heat that its metal skin and its three-man crew (pilot, navigator-bombardier and defensive-systems operator) can stand.

The pod offers a solution to a critical problem: how to keep the bomber from being destroyed by the effects of its own thermonuclear bomb. The toss-bombing technique (TIME, Sept. 24), which projects the bomb forward and upward while the bomber turns on its back and gets away, does not give a big margin of safety in the case of high-yield bombs. But if the pod is engineered as an air-to-ground missile with rocket propulsion of its own, it can be launched while the Hustler is many miles away from the target. While it is still curving through the air, the Hustler will streak for home, safe from enemy close-in defenses and from the gigantic fireball that will spring up from the ground behind it.

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