I've talked about the B-58 before. It figures prominently in the movie Fail Safe, a Dom DeLuise vehicle. And you might recognize the narrator as a small town Build & Loan manager
Since a kid, I always found the Hustler kinda ugly. No style. Personal taste. Some planes' lines appealed to me, other left me cold. My dad worked on F-100s. I didn't like em otherwise. Most everything in the Navy inventory since WWII except maybe the Corsair I never warmed to. Not until the F-14. And even that...
Now the F-86, that was a handsome looking airframe.
The Mustang and Lightning I like. Who doesn't?
The only radial I really liked was the FW190. The Milk Jug was rugged but ugly. I like that one better now.
The F-4 Phantom grew on my eventually. The empannage did it.
Few bombers appealed. Maybe the B1? The B-36 just for the monstrosity of it. But this is the B-58
Automotif DLXX...
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These straight-out-of-camera monochrome JPEGs of a droptop BMW M4 make it
look pretty butch, I think. Shot with the Nikon D800.
33 minutes ago
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If you have a spare 40 minutes, watch this training film on how to uncrate and assemble a P-47.
Back in my youth I talked with an Air Force Pilot that was certified on the BUFF and the Hustler. He told me that with the BUFF, you turned the yoke and about 10 minutes later the plane would start to turn. (Remember, he was talking 60's, before the upgrades to the BUFF.) The Hustler, he said, you could turn with pressure from a pinky. He loved flying the Hustler, said flying the BUFF was like flying a truck. But the B-58 could not carry a iron bomb load whereas the B-52 could. With Vietnam ramping up the Buff won out!
Oh...and I remember the booms from B-58's breaking the sound barrier. Me dad said they had a training corridor that passed over our area.
In '77 or maybe '78, one of those landed at Moffett Naval Air Station in MtView, CA. I was just cresting the overpass outside the main gate on Hiway 101, going north one summer evening, when it went overhead and bounced my '66 Ranchero around. Wiki says they stopped flying those several years earlier, but there is no mistaking that 4 engine delta planform.
I saw one this summer at the SAC museum outside Omaha - it was neat and had proportions like nothing else with a teeny little cockpit way up on top.
I think it's the oversized nacelles that throw it off for some people aesthetically. I always liked its look. Appears to be hitting Mach 2 while sitting on the tarmac.
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