Billed as the fastest bomber in the free world, in the 1960s the Convair B-58 Hustler was always hitting the headlines. It set speed and performance records at a routine pace. As a Strategic Air Command (SAC) navigator, I was weaned on the B-47 Stratojet (see the panel on page 23). On June 17, 1964, our crew flew the last B-47 at Little Rock, Arkansas, to the 'Boneyard' at Davis-Monthan in Arizona. The next phase would be B-52s, or if I was lucky, the B-58. After some wait and worry, the stars aliened and I got selected for the B-58 programme. So, it was back to the 'schoolhouse'. After cruising along at a leisurely 430 knots for around 1,500 hours in the B-47, it was a real adjustment to the Mach 0.91 mission profile of the B-58 with supersonic bomb runs at Mach 1.65. A unit of time is still the same whether on the ground or in the air; but those minutes seemed to fly by a lot faster in the Hustler.
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