B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
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"John S. Shinal" wrote:

My last Hustler flight must have been around December of 1970.

How fast was it to initiate an eject sequence ?

"Pretty fast" The slowest part was the actual encapsulation which occured
when the ejection handle levers were raised. It took .25 seconds to
contract the crewmember and then the doors closed. (Note: the decimal point
before 25= less than 1/2 second). The padded levers retracted the feet
inside the capsule, the chest strap gave you a bear hug and pulled you back
inside, and when everything was "proper" the doors slammed closed. The pilot
could fly the aircraft from inside the capsule because the control stick was
still functional while encapsulated. Only the pilot's capsule had a window
to view the instrument panel and multiple buttons on the control stick to
retard power, change CG, engage/disengage the autopilot, trim, give the
bailout warning, etc. If ejection was necessary after encapsulating you
then squeezed either ejection handle trigger.

The "More B-58 Pictures Annex" link on my Hustler home page includes a
section on both the pilot's control stick and the capsule operation.

How was the envelope for successful ejection during T/O and
landing ? It seems like they didn't have a lot of success getting out
of that thing in a hurry.

You had to be going at least 100 knots for a zero altitude ejection to be
satisfactory. It seems to provide for supersonic ejection protection there
was a minimum delay that required the 100 knots. They probably could have
made it zero-zero but that might have made it vulnerable to break up during
a supersonic ejection.