The Convair B-58 Hustler was the U.S. Air Force’s first operational supersonic bomber, capable of flying more than twice the speed of sound. Developed during the Cold War, it was designed to carry nuclear weapons deep into Soviet territory while flying at very high altitude and at speeds that made interception extremely difficult.
Compared with the bombers that came before it, the B-58 had some very unusual design features. It used a large delta wing, a long, narrow fuselage, and four powerful turbojet engines mounted in separate nacelles beneath the wings, each with a variable-geometry inlet. With no room for a conventional bomb bay, its nuclear weapon and additional fuel were carried in a large pod beneath the aircraft. Its three crew members also sat in separate compartments, later equipped with individual escape capsules designed to make ejection at high altitude and supersonic speed safer.
In this Airspeed video, we take a close look at the B-58 Hustler to see how it was designed to reach Mach 2, how its unusual weapon pod and escape capsules worked, and why such an advanced aircraft was retired after only about a decade in service.
This video was created entirely by humans.
Chapters
00:00 – 00:48 The B-58 Hustler
00:48 – 02:30 Supersonic Design
02:30 – 04:06 Pod, Nuclear Weapons & Tail Gun
04:06 – 06:20 Crew Compartments & Escape Capsules
06:20 – 07:00 Development & Operations
07:00 – 09:09 Why the B-58 Was Retired
Credits
🎬Special thanks to our team
-Hubert M, Stefan Z and Edin S: 3D Animation
-Liam S: Editing & Sound Design
-Sydney O: Research & Script
-Ben S: Narration
-Lion & Louis: Direction
🧩 3D Assets
Third-party 3D assets used in this video have been purchased under royalty-free licenses.
🎵 Music and Sound
Sound design in this video is original work, created with fully licensed music and audio material.
📚 Photo and Video Sources
Images and video used in this video are part of the public domain and sourced from:
-Internet Archive:
-Wikimedia Commons:
#B58Hustler #SupersonicBomber #AviationHistory
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What do you think was the most interesting aspect of the B-58’s design?
All our videos are entirely made by real people who put a lot of time and effort into creating them, including research, scriptwriting, narration, 3D modeling, animation, editing, and sound design.
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It was a high workload plane.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I was another kid who built the Revell model of this beautiful plane. Now I know the truth about the Cold War and these horrifyingly wasteful machines and programs. God forgive us humans for our sins upon the Creation and each other.
Great video, very informative.
This is why videos like this are sad…you side step the Real Reason it was built…so sad. Also it's obvious all you do is gather "INFO" from the common web sources and make a dumb video .
The use of si units for an america thing, then to measure elevation in feet within 5 seconds of each other is either diabolical or a power move.
man that ejection pod mechanism looks like a nightmare
that's nice
Should do a video on the XB-70 Valkyrie
A new Mustard has arrived
@ConvairB58Hustler
Это невозможно слушать ! За ИИ озвучку – ДИЗ !
It was a specialized aircraft meant for a war we thankfully never have had to deal with. But, I would argue it did its job well as a deterrent.
Thanks for human created content!
I appreciate a lot the B-58. The hustler is my favourite bomber of all time.
Its design is just outstanding!
The B-58's safety record is usually misinterpreted. Of the 26 losses, 7 were during flight testing, TWO (not just one) crashed at Paris Air Shows, and two were destroyed on the ground by fire. Operational flight safety and accident rates (losses per 100k hours) were similar to the Hustler's Convair cousin, the F-106 Delta Dart.
This was really interesting to watch.
And then Marcel Dassault showed that He could do that with an even more Compact package. And the Convair engineers were seething with rage !
Convair straight up hustled the US government fair play
Convair built, in my opinion, three of the sexiest and aggressive looking aircraft during the late 50's and early 60's with the B-58 Hustler, the F-102 Delta Dagger and the F-106 Delta Dart. Right up there with the Hustler was the Hawker Vulcan.
They truly were caught in a rapid time of change that saw their service life shortened. Between reliable ICBMs and the early satellite development their careers were short but outstanding aircraft.
Kind of ties into the whole Century Series aircraft of the era. Wickedly beautiful aircraft that were ahead of their time, but other technology quickly made them obsolete.
The B58 was an awesome aircraft. The real problem was that it was too advanced for the period maintenance.
The first real husser
There is an interesting video on YouTube by a B-58 pilot later working at the Pentagon who counters, point by point the standard arguments as to why it was retired. It was retired in many ways because they built a limited number of them initially 116 to be exact. Per plane it had roughly the same cost as a B-52. The 1962 B-52H had turbo fans, retrofitted turbo fans on the 58 would have solved any range issues. As another poster said, excluding the test program for a super advanced design and Paris Airshow the accident rate was normal. It was often undetectable on the deck, per the B-58 pilot. I saw the radar cross section of a B-52 on the deck on my Navy ship’s bridge navigational radar screen, it looked like a fast moving destroyer. It scrambled and got to altitude much faster than a B-52, which is an overlooked aspect of survival ability when SLBMs are being employed. The pod program never exploited how versatile the weapons load could have been. Avionics of the plane were improving throughout its operational life. Delta wings are better at low level. B-52s airframes were often rebuilt or reskinned.It was an easy 🎯 at budget time because of the small procurement of planes.
Looks like an early B-1
Hussler
It's gonna be the SA-2 isn't it.
Hustled on over from the factory floor to the scrap yard
At least it got to bomb Moscow before it went into moth balls.
Very well done. I did not know that the pod was two part until seeing your video. Thanks!
Why was the B-58 retired? The Air Force wanted the F-111/FB-111.
everyday, it was hustling
That's interesting.
I guess I can understand why however it still seems a bit odd that the B52 which first flew about four years before the B58 flew is still flying and the B58 is not.
The B-58 and the F-16 are rather interesting aircraft, somehow both aircraft are designed to fly optimally by carrying equipment outside of the main fuselage.
I did not know they added external hardpoints. Good video!
Muy buen documental
My goat
In Cub Scouts, our Pack toured Carswell AFB in Fort Worth. A lesson-learned from Pearl Harbor, I suppose, the four-plane groups of the B-58s were widely dispersed, and we visited a couple of those groups — being allowed to sit in the cockpits (the instrument panels etc had been totally disabled… including the ejection seats!).
The B-58 was a beautiful aircraft, the engineering was phenomenal. Stock footage of the B-58 in flight stood in for the "Vindicator Bombers" in the 1960s film "Fail-Safe."
As a kid in the 1950s, I had a toy B-58, maybe about 18 inches long. It was made of some rubbery type of material. It had a detachable pod that shot out from the toy.
As a kid in the 60s it was exciting watching the Ohio National Guard fly these over town and break the sound barrier, shaking our windows.
PLEASE get rid of the OBNOXIOUS audio sibilance in this video.
For my opinion, the B-58 is one of the most beautyful, iconic and futuristic airplanes ever (The YF-12A in black/silver could be a match!!!). In the late 80´s I built her as a model kit in 1/72 and was very excited. After decades I still admire this model according shape, colours and design in my collection in the same way like in your video😀🤩🥰.
This was the first of hundreds of model airplanes I built as a kid, this one with my dad. It was an awesome looking aircraft!
had a model 58 or 59 B58 & F100 2 favorites
👍👍👍💗💗💗