The MB-1C pod was the standard free-falling unit that was carried underneath the B-58 fuselage on the centerline. It was basically a finned aerodynamic shell for a pair of fuel tanks plus a variable-yield thermonuclear bomb. The pod was 75 feet long with a diameter of about 5 feet.

The Convair B-58 Hustler, designed and produced by American aircraft manufacturer Convair, was the first operational bomber capable of Mach 2 flight. [1] The B-58 was developed during the 1950s for the United States Air Force (USAF) Strategic Air Command (SAC).

First flight 3/20/58; used as the GE J79-GE-5 engine test aircraft using a special centerline pod - on 11/8/58 flew 32 minutes at sustained Mach 2 with the YJ79-GE-5s; made longest B-58 early test program flight of 11 hours 15 minutes on 8/16/62.

The disposable pod is an important element of the B-58 concept. It provides broad mission flexibility. Fuel and payload are stored in the pod. After an actual attack, the B-58 would drop its pod and return home “clean” without waste volume contained in an empty bomb bay and without waste weight and vol­ume in an empty fuel tank. An ...

As originally conceived, the B-58 Hustler would have a large centerline pod that would contain both fuel for the outbound portion of the mission and a single large nuclear warhead. Numerous variations on this pod were planned, including rocket-boosted versions to …

2024年5月28日 · The main weapon of the water-based B-58 remained a pod located under the centreline. Unlike the conventional B-58, though, here the pod would need to be designed so that the weapon could be safely submerged for extended periods of time. The basic weapon was a single large missile with a range of 300 miles.

One particularly impressive test configuration involved the fit of the huge YJ93 engine for the North American XB-70 bomber to the third B-58 built, replacing the aircraft's weapons pod. This...

1 天前 · A “mission pod” was then attached to the underside of the plane. This pod contained the atomic weapon and the fuel needed for the inbound flight. The entire mission pod would be dropped when bombing the enemy.

B-58 "Weapons Pod" ... one of the many striking features about the B-58 "Hustler" supersonic bomber built by Convair was it's external method of carrying weapons. Instead of the conventional approach of housing bombs inside of it's fuselage, the "Hustler" carried them in an external streamlined 'pod'.

The Convair B-58 was the first supersonic bomber built in the West. The Boeing B-47 and its bigger brother, the B-52 Stratofortress, developed in the early years after World War II, represented the application of jet power to conventional bombing concepts of the day.