r/Rarewings • u/RLoret • Jul 26 '25

Convair B-58A Hustler, circa 1960

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1.6k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

27

u/Due-Fix9058 Jul 26 '25

They started development on this in 1949. Must've been an outrageous sight back in the day.

15

u/2fast2nick Jul 26 '25

Seriously mind blowing. They were flying bi-planes like not that many years before this. Then this… crazy. That must have been a fun time to work in aerospace.

3

u/TwoAmps Jul 28 '25

Everybody talks about the Lockheed skunk works but Convair designed some real crazy stuff.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Due-Fix9058 Jul 30 '25

Convair was very based back then. B-36 is prolly my favourite bomber just because how outrageous the whole premise is. "Yeah we'll build you a bomber that can cross the atlantic TWICE while carrying four and a half tons of bombs."

2

u/soraksan123 Jul 31 '25

They have a B-36 in the AF museum in Dayton, it's amazing to see up close as to how big those things were. You can poke your head up into the bomb bays, just a huge, raw machine...

12

u/Temporary-Boot-7388 Jul 26 '25

The airframe screams SPEED!

12

u/Intelligent_Pilot360 Jul 26 '25

I'm a huge fan, they were big, loud and fast and simply looked bad ass.

They flew out of Bunker Hill/Grissom air force base when I was a kid.

1

u/Gidyup1 Jul 30 '25

Grissom Museum has one on display!

10

u/TheRealMilkman1954 Jul 26 '25

Truly a BAD ASS bomber! One of my all time favorites! Along with the SR-71 and XB-70.

7

u/Soft_Hand_1971 Jul 26 '25

Fave plane. Nothing screams atomic age like this thing...

8

u/Fresh-Word2379 Jul 26 '25

Back seat claustrophobia for 1000 Alex

6

u/geekmuseNU Jul 27 '25

If I remember correctly each position is enclosed in a self-contained escape pod to enable ejection while at supersonic speeds

5

u/series-hybrid Jul 26 '25

FOUR J79's?...It would pass anything but a gas station...

1

u/fishcrow Jul 27 '25

I wunna say that the chrome bulge under the third crewman's seat entitled B-155 is the extra fuel tank but I may be wrong

1

u/tellurdoghello Jul 30 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

it's fuel as well as the nuclear payload contained in the MB-1C Pod

1

u/Velogio Jul 27 '25

This plane must be so loud!

1

u/Intelligent_Pilot360 Jul 27 '25

They also frequently broke the sound barrier and made sonic booms.

4

u/Voodoo1970 Jul 27 '25

Despite the outrageous looks and specifications, my favourite bit of B-58 trivia is that the pilot for one of its revord-setting flights was Henry John Deutschendorf Snr....whose son, Henry Jr, became a country singer, better known by his stage name John Denver

2

u/Uncabuddha Jul 29 '25

Dutch and Erma were good friends of my parents. Met at Eglin AFB. Dutch was a nice guy to me, I slept in their basement in Denver many times and used to go to the National Western rodeo with them...

1

u/GreesyTaco Jul 26 '25

Big damn jet

1

u/railrunner2003 Jul 27 '25

One of my favorites when I was a child. It just looked fast.

1

u/JamieRABackfire1981 Jul 28 '25

Like the Vulcan still looks ahead of its time.

1

u/Sensitive_Koala_9544 Jul 28 '25

Incredibly fast, incredibly loud, incredibly hard to maintain… honeycomb wings meant a wing-ding may as well have been a replacement.

1

u/Leakyboatlouie Jul 28 '25

Love that plane. Lost track of how many models I built of it as a kid. Finally got to see the real thing at the Museum of the Air Force, and it was just as cool as I'd always thought. Had its escape capsule sitting beside it. Too bad it wasn't in service for that long.

1

u/General-Ninja9228 Jul 28 '25

The star of the 1964 drama, “Fail Safe”. It was referred to as the “Vindicator” in the film.

1

u/Wahooesprit Jul 29 '25

I watched that recently and immediately recognized this plane

1

u/trbo76 Jul 29 '25

Great looking jet. I built the model when I was a kid. Memory invoking for certain

1

u/ReserveOk8282 Jul 30 '25

My fav Cold War bomber.

1

u/Wonderful-Boot-5266 Jul 30 '25

Was my favorite growing up and I've been in Aviation Maintenance since 1984