Lost!

 

1. Eielson AFB, AK.

   Posted by Sarge       04/27/2007  at  03:19 PM  



2. The team must be napping today. It took over an hour for Sarge to wake up and grab the Golden Compass Trophy today.

    

   45 degrees and snow! No, thanks! You can keep Fairbanks, Alaska for my money.

   

   Posted by The Skipper       04/27/2007  at  03:24 PM  



3. Yep, anon. I was indeed referring to the forward-deployed units during the height of the cold war. The B-58 was a really strange airplane and way ahead of its time. SAC chose only the best pilots to fly that bird. It does have a lot of history. Strange that I have never seen it on Discovery Channel or some of the other cool history channels.

   My dad was an aircraft mechanic up until he retired in 1972. I still recall seeing him poring over the massive maintenance manuals for those delta wing jets. I just thought they looked so COOL, like big darts.

   

   Posted by The Skipper       04/27/2007  at  04:50 PM  



4. Well, I do have to work sometimes

   Posted by Sarge       04/27/2007  at  06:35 PM  



5. The B-58 was a supersonic bomber.  I’ve heard that the reason they ended the B-58 program was because the aircraft was unstable at supersonic speeds.  Is this true?

   Posted by BobF       04/27/2007  at  07:31 PM  



6. Man I love that plane! I’m racking my brains for the name of the movie from the 60’s where a flight of bombers got their fail safe mechanism tripped by the Soviets and attacked. They filmed Hustlers, but as I recall they called them avengers. I believe Fonda played the president. “Fail Safe”!
   They were a bomber that inspired fear and awe.
   Part of the reason for their removal was that they carried the ordinance externally vs the B-2 which can be readily adapted for multiple roles. Just another victim of mindless liberal handling of the military.

   Posted by Jeremy       04/28/2007  at  09:34 AM  



7. Vindicator! Damn, I remembered it was one of the old WW2 era names. Gimme a little credit.
   Treivia, what other planes are featured in that movie?

   Posted by Jeremy       04/28/2007  at  10:18 AM  



8. The B-58 was a maintenance hog.  Air conditioning was first for the equipment (think tubes here) then for the crew.  That resulted in the crew often being in a sweat box.  The in cabin communication link was crappy as well.  They had a third seater punch out over Alaska once because he thought the plane was going down.  Seems all that happened was his comm link crapped out, the plane hit some turbulence so out he went.  They didn’t know the guy punched out until returning to home base.  Also there were some issues with the aircraft becoming unstable after dropping munitions pod - something about difficulty landing.

   Posted by Kirk       04/28/2007  at  02:53 PM  



9. Fellers,

   The B-58 was indeed far ahead of it’s time, but it scared the holy crap outta the Rooskies.

   It wasn’t very unstable at all, but it did take some getting used to at high speed. I speak not from flying one but from interviewing pilots who did. The B-58 and the B-47 were the most beautiful planes that the Airforce ever had built for them. they looked like they were in mostion, even when sitting on the tarmac.

   The most interesting thing to my mind is the escape capsules they used. Rather than a regular seat, the crew used a “pod” that fully encapsulated the crewman prior to ejection, inorder to protect him at both high altitude and high speed. It’s the only way a crewman could survive an ejection.

   Anyway, for a time the delta wings were the cat’s meow. We had not only the B-58, but the F-102 and F-106 in service together, all with nukes and afterburners!

   I love that old girl, but my flying time was with the Navy..

   Respects,

   Posted by Gwedd       04/28/2007  at  07:47 PM  

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