Convair B-58 Hustler: cold war nuclear bomber (Lanasta - Warplane)

Ein gutes und vor allem noch erhältliches Buch über die B 58. Das Buch holt das beste aus dem eher bescheidenen Format. Ich kann es für Interessierte nur empfehlen.

je donne cette note car les livres sur cet avion sont peu nombreux.j'aime les photos. j'aime moins celles en noir et blanc. Je recommande ce livre à tous les amateurs d'aviation des années 1960.

Conceived in the early 1950s to fly into Russia very fast, and very high (making it nearly impossible to intercept, it was hoped, so it could drop its thermonuclear payload on a city of choice), the B-58 is arguably the coolest bomber the U.S. ever had. It is a pure delta plane, and very distinctive because of a few features: the enormous 'pod' underneath the fuselage which was so aerodynamically shaped that it barely affected performance and contained the nuke(s) the B-58 was meant to drop as well as extra fuel, the four rather large engines (J79 engines, of which a mere one sufficed to give the F-104 Starfighter its stellar performance) and of course the cockpit shape. With a top speed of around Mach 2 and a ceiling of almost 20 km, this plane must have seemed a real winner when still on the drawing board. Sadly, the development of two kind of missiles effectively wiped out the Hustler's future. On the one hand, ballistic missiles with sufficient size and range to drop a nuclear weapon on an enemy city made the existence of strategic bombers like the B-58 somewhat redundant. On the other hand, as would dramatically be shown by the shooting down of Gary Powers's U-2, radar-guided surface-to-air missiles had quickly become so capable that no amount of speed and altitude provided sufficient protection (as little protection indeed as the rather cute 20 mm Gatling gun located in the tail). As a result, barely 100 B-58's were ever operational, and that for only a decade (the 1960s). Incidentally, during this one decade the plane was able to not only rack up an impressive number of world records of speed and distance, but also a pretty horrendous accident record (a quick count using figures from the book suggests a 1-in-6 loss rate). An intriguing question is why lumbering giants like the B-52 (whose sister plane, the B-47, Hustler was specifically designed to replace) kept flying around for decades after the whine of the last flying B-58's J79 engine had died down. This may seem surprising but it is not. Whereas the behemoth B-52 turned out to be surprisingly adept and excelled in a tactical role, dumping unbelievable amounts of bombs on low-tech opponents (as many dead Vietcong, Iraqis and Afghans would be able to testify if they still could), the B-58 was very much a one-trick pony. The Hustler may have been extremely fast, but only carried a small payload. Also, it allegedly was not able to change habitat to low levels (to fly under the radar). The book does not say why it could not; based on what I read about the British V-bombers (suffering from similar problems) I speculate it was too lightly built to take the bumping of the dense air turbulence at low levels. Back to the book itself now: I really loved it. The photos are great, and when I compare it to the Osprey series, the text is so much more to the point. Nico Braas cuts to the chase and tells you just what you want to know, leaving out the endless listings of (in my view) useless and boring details in which Osprey seems to excel - and which in fact often obscure the essence. This is subjective, I know. If you want a very good overview, go for this 'Warplane' series. If you want to drill down to the very details, including in exactly which Air Wing the F series of the plane flew and for exactly how long (and which of this series got the uprated radar in exactly which year), go for Osprey instead. On a final note (getting a bit sentimental here): there is something deeply sad about the fact that today's planes have lower performance than those conceived in the early 1950s, now two generations ago! Sure, there are good and objective reasons why the B-58's successor, the superlative Mach 3 B-70 Valkyrie bomber was never developed beyond prototype, why there was no real need for the Mach 3 interceptor the F-108, and indeed why Concorde eventually stopped service. And yet, what a shame, what a pity. If you are skeptical, buy this book and check out the picture where a B-58 acts as tail plane of a B-70 prototype and you'll know what I mean...