B-58

Aha! The good old Scorpion. We were part of a huge simulated invasion of
the West Coast of the U.S. one night. B-47s, B-52s, and B-58s went up into
Canada, then West to the Pacific Ocean, about 500 miles off shore. Then we
all headed inbound. Only ADC "Trusted Agents" were aware we were really
"friendlies" and just testing ADC capability to detect and intercept. We
were at sub-sonic optimum altitude and about 50 miles from our planned point
to accelerate to mach 2 and climb to 50,000' when my DSO (Defensive Systems
Officer) detected a fighter interceptor's radar pinging from our forward
left position. We had enough fuel to start mach 2 early so I quickly
started to accelerate and climb. The fighter wasn't ready for our more than
doubled speed and fell well behind us. We coasted inland just south of San
Francisco and turned south down the San Joaquin (sp) valley to Yuma, AZ
where we came out of supersonic speeds and altitudes. Never saw hide nor
hair of any fighters.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: (see below)
http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/


"Big John" wrote in message
...
Darrell

We couldn't catch you but in a front quarter attack we ran a Pk of
about 98%. F-89J and MB-1 Atomic Air to Air Rocket.

Big John
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On Wed, 5 Jul 2006 10:03:39 -0700, "Darrell S"
wrote:

You are correct. By the time the B-58 became operational the Russian
radar
and missile defense systems improved to the point that high altitude, mach
2, attacks would have been suicide. The operational tactics changed to
high
subsonic low altitude attack which made the mach 2 capability of the B-58
relatively unusable for combat. All the design features necessary for
mach
2 flight such as the narrow fuselage made it impractical to add terrain
avoidance radar for IFR low altitude.

We practiced our low altitude high speed tactics in Oil Burner routes (now
Olive Branch) at 600 knots on the deck. Great sport.