How Convair built the American Concorde a decade early...

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The B-58 Hustler was to be America's next generation of bomber aircraft - But convair saw beyond the military applications and was very excited to propose that its little B-58 supersonic bomber would be the gate way to civil operations - essentially become the American concord before those darstadly europeans!

COnvair knew that this task was daunting and that they would need to slowly approch the military and ease them into the idea of civians flying at mach 2.0

This video was based on an excellent book by Scott Lowther, I recommend you go to his site aerospaceprojectsreview to see many more crazy aircraft designs like this, and trust me you will spend all day looking.

Convair would propose a three stage plan.

The first was to simulate SST operations over a random american city - to test the impact of sonioc booms on the population

THe second was to modify an existing B-58 to carry passengers in a pod underneath

And the third was to build a prototype civil version of the hustler, called the B-58-9.

This first stage of the program was the easiest, and quickest to approve. Using a combined fleet of B-58s, F-104s, 101s and 106s, the US airforce flew waround 1200 missions over Oklahoma city consistently reaching supersonic speeds. They would then moniter the amount of complaints, which came in around 3% of the population.

Next, phase 2, Convair would need to test the public to flying onboard a supersonic transport.

Until this point, only military personal had actually ridden in supersonic aircraft - and during these flights they would be so involved in flying the plane or other operations they wouldn't notice the massive increase in G forces.

The average Harry and Jane on the other hand, had barely been up in the sky themselves, thus Convair had no real thought to how the average passenger would react to flying double the speed of sound.

Thus Convair proposed a "people pod", removing the fuel pod under the B-58 and replacing it with a pressusied container that could carry up to five passengers.

These passengers would be incouraged to read books, listen to their favourite music and even take naps - to see just how comfortable flying at those speeds would be.

The passengers would be in a single row of five seats with air conditioning and small windows, with the rear of the pod containing testing equipment.

As this replaced the fuel pod, it would only allow 30 minutes of supersonic flying, but enough for the test.

But its the third stage that kicks it up a notch!

The third phase of Convairs SST plan was to construct up to 12 supersonic transports. Dubbed the Convair Model 62, or the 58-9, it would use the B-58 Hustler as a base but be built differently for more efficent supersonic travel.

It would have four engines, but they would be posititoned differently, with the outboard ones moved from below the wing to the actual wing tips! Talk about wingtip vorticies!

Its long slim fuslage could easily hold 52 passengers in a 1-1 configuration, and have the crew in side by side positions.

Although COnvair also suggested that they could slightly expand the cabin to either have 1-2 seating or even 2 by 2 seating, easily doubling the capacity.

These seats specicifally would be taken from the highly successful air qoutes, being sarcastic here, Convair 880-600.

This jet would be able to cruise at Mach 2.4 for 2,525 nautical miles. Its a little shy of New York to London, but the jet could easily land in Ireland or Greenland to refuel, and keep going - still easily arriving before typical commercial aircraft.

The first four of these jets would start flyight testing by 1963 by Convair, with the remaining number handed out to the FAA, NASA and the USAF, for operational shakedowns.

This 18 month test period would have it fly around the world, in and out of airports of varous altitdues, temperatures and humidites, and test not only how well the aircraft performed, but what issues occured at airports and what economical factors needed to be considered for actual commerical operations.

Plus it would give all the locals in these wimsical localities real life experience with dealing with supersonic transports before the later expected arrival of commercial fleets in the 1970s.

But this would never happen... turns out that Washington saw one major flaw...