wolit@rabbit.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky) (09/14/84)
> The B-58 had an interesting bombing approach. > It would fly over its target, pull up into a vertical climb, release its > single bomb (carried externally) and get the hell out. This technique has been used for many aircraft for nuclear device delivery (love those euphemisms!). My grad school advisor described it as the method for dropping nukes from Navy F9F Panthers, which he'd flown, and Richard ("Jonathan Livingston Seagull") Bach described it as being used for the F-86 Sabre in "Stranger to the Ground," one of the most beautiful books about flying ever written (long before Bach started getting flaky). I hadn't heard of it being used by the B-58, and if it was, this contradicts the earlier statement that the B-58 was intended to be a high-altitude bomber, since this technique was used for low-level bombing. It's essentially a low-altitude Immelmann (sp?) turn, half an inside loop followed by a half roll (which gets you going in the opposite direction), with the bomb release coming on the way up. The nuke follows a nice, lazy ballistic trajectory up and down, while the pilot pulls as many G's as he can to, as you say, get the hell out of there. I've never heard any estimates of expected pilot survival statistics, but I'll bet they're none too good. Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ