B-58 Hustler Awesomeness
- Thread starter SurferLucas
- Start date
SurferLucas
Southern Gentleman
FlyingAccountant
Well-Known Member
Yeah, the real tragedy was that he wasn't even supposed to be there. He was based out of Guam and was due to return to the states a week before it happened, but his relief crew got held up in Arkansas because of a snowstorm so he went on the mission instead of returning home.
Three of the guys in his plane survived. One of them wrote a manuscript about the whole ordeal that got published. There are pieces of the actual aircraft itself at a military museum in Hanoi. The co-pilot, who also died, turned out to be the father of a future NFL Hall of Famer. I find the whole story fascinating even though I wasn't alive when it happened.
Bandit_Driver
Gold Member
I saw the Bendix trophy winning Hustler at the Museum of the Air Force last year. It boggles my mind that airplanes from this era were engineered without computers.
I think our designers were smarter and more creative back then. Kelly Johnson was a freaking genius to design the black bird without a computer.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Kelly Johnson was an alien trying to increase our technology so he could fix his ship and get home...
Seriously. That guy was designing stuff 10 years before groups of engineers even thought of going down a theoretical road. I can just imagine some group of smart guys at Lockheed all standing around some crappy drawing of an aircraft with little to no innovation from the last thing they designed and Kelly just going, "that's cool... I've also got this idea for a plane that goes 3 times the speed of sound using two engines nobody has ever even thought of in a shape that's never been tried... Anybody want to see it?"
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mr Ben Rich certainly deserves a seat at the same table with Mr Kelly Johnson. Smart as hell men.
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
I'd add Ed Swearingen to that list. He may have built the bane of many a freight pilot, but he was also largely responsible for the King Air as well.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
Ed Heinemann.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Agreed. Kelly Johnson personally engineered the P-38 (in parts) and the P/F-80, and undoubtedly personally laid the groundwork for the skunkworks line, but by the time oxcart/blackbird rolled around, he had younger brilliance amongst his crew who did the lions share. I'm sure he was the final signature, but like many visionaries who stood the test of time, he made sure he wasn't irreplaceable.
