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).

The first production aircraft with an escape crew capsule was the Mach 2 B-58 Hustler. It was developed by the Stanley Aviation Company for Convair. The capsule was pressurized, sheltered the pilot from the airstream, and contained food and survival supplies.

Convair B-58 Ejection Capsule Forward fuselage mock-up mounted on a 4.1 mile railroad test track in the Mojave Desert. The rocket powered sled was used to test high speed ejections before development of the capsule enclosure system.

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.

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 improved two-com­ponent pod is now being tested.

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 B-58 did not have a bomb bay but could carry one nuclear weapon externally with the centerline fuel pod fitting over it. Four weapons, whether nuclear or conventional, could be carried on external hard points if the fuel pod was eliminated, thus degrading the aircraft's range further.

Made first supersonic upper TCP (Two Component Pod) drop on 12/11/60; used by NASA for SST sonic boom test in 1962; converted to TB-58A and served with 305th BW; grounded in 1969 following fire caused by oxygen leak and electrical spark in cockpit area. Placed on static display. YB/RB-58 55-665/6. Nickname Snoopy.

Apr 4, 2015 · Convair's B-58 was the first operational supersonic jet bomber capable of Mach 2 flight, and that aspect posed a unique challenge for aircrew survival. The solution was a large crew capsule that would eliminate the effects of wind blast.

The supersonic B-58 Hustler derived from a new concept developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It took into account the greatly increased capability of ground defenses, including radar tracking and ground-to-air missiles.