Monday, June 24, 2013

The skeeters sure get big 'round here...

Commenter Joseph said he has a soft spot for the Convair B-58 Hustler (which flew out of Grissom back in its days as a SAC base...)

Here you go, Joseph:

A photo of the museum's TB-58A from today's trip...

...and one from the last trip. Enjoy! :)

16 comments:

  1. Awe yeah! That baby is just engines and bombs! I heart the early supersonic jets, you know, before they all pretty much look alike. The F16 may as well be a Corrola to the F15's Camry.

    I definitely will be stopping by when I go to retrieve my model 13 from Dennis.

    Thanks for posting pics of her, she looks just as good as the last time I saw her.

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  2. I always loved that jet... looked like a sleek rocket with engines on steroids...

    Dann in Ohio

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  3. I love aircraft museums, but they do seem give me a real rollercoaster ride in the emotions department. A bit like seeing a long forgotten photo of a lost relative, you are surprised, happy to see them, then sad they are gone. Well for me, planes do the same. I love seeing them again, revel in the memories they bring back. Then I am sad that something that once was so well cared for with dutiful purpose, that once represented the cutting edge of aviation, now has a birds nest in the intake.

    Cheers- Rusty

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  4. As a former SAC troop, this is one of my all-time favorite jets!!

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  5. That thing is just sleek. It's the only word for it. Well, that and "bombs and engines" :)

    If I flew, it would be on my list for "daily driver". Take that puppy downtown. Especially if I could drop those bombs on...er, Iran. Yeah. Iran.

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  6. I've been reading this lately.

    B-58A Remembrances [Kindle Edition]

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091VIALA/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

    Pretty good for just a buck.

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  7. Sweeeeet.

    Of course, I'm the guy who thinks the only thing missing from the SLAM is a cockpit.

    (Yeah, yeah, I know, radiation, and lots of it. Party pooper.)

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  8. I second Rusty's sentiments. Felt the same feelings as he when I saw an SR-71 on display at the Space and Rocket Center in AL - such beautiful technology shackled to the ground, never to soar in the "long, delirious, burning blue" again.
    -JT

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  9. Is it me? or does the sign with the universal "no" symbol say no Captain Morgan posing?

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  10. If you look at tne bomb, you can see that the bottom is the extra fuel tank and the top is the bomb. The B-58 also caried four smaller bombs two on iach side, under the wing next to the fuselage. I worked on them a long time ago.

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  11. Ken:

    Project Pluto is a one way ride anyway.

    No one wants it to land in their continent.

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  12. Driving up Hw 101 one evening, passing Moffet Field in '77-'78(?), my '66 Ranchero started dancing and the night got loud. Looked out the passenger side to see the noisy ends of 4 separately mounted single engine pods under a delta wing. The AoA was enough to point the jetwash at the road as it went overhead. No mistaking what THAT aircraft was!

    I wonder if that might have been one of the Hustlers being moved to a final display, or storage, location?

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  13. I'm thinking we should donate all the still existing B-58's to Israel, so they have something that can carry the big bunker-buster bombs.

    The proposed later model (C,D?) would have been even better for them, if they had been built.

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  14. I saw a fair number of B-58s and B-52s in 1967 doing low level navigation training over central Saskatchewan. The B-58 was a very sleek bird.

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