"Michael Huber" wrote in message
...
This may be a dumb question, but why the design with the pod? As I
understand it, the pod carried the bomb, effectivly, it was the bomb bay.
A
bomber with a bomb bay would not make sense, so one would expect few
Hustlers to depart on missions without a pod. If the preceding is true,
why
use pod at all? Wouldn't it be more aerodynamically efficient to integrate
the bomb bay into the fuselage?

Thanks for enlightenment,

Michael.

At the time the B-58 was designed the technology to cruise at mach 2
dictated a narrow fuselage using the Whitcomb area rule. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_rule To achieve this the decision was
made to use the pod design. As you can see in the referenced B-58 photo of
the armament laid out on the ramp they also had pylons under the wing just
outboard of the fuselage to carry 4 small nuclear weapons... 2 in tandem on
each side. The B-58 was designed from the start for nuclear bombs only.
They couldn't carry enough conventional weapons to be cost effective.

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler Web Site
http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
USAF Pilot Class 55-I Web Site
http://pilotclass55india.org/