B-58 going to sea...

[wixlova]

From a pal of mine "I was assigned to the 305th Bomb Wing at Bunker Hill AFB, Indiana in 1967. In the spring of that year we sent two of our B-58's to Texas for "iron bomb" testing. As I recall, the bombs were loaded on external racks, and the testing took place at Matagorda Island test range. The results of the trials were not that positive. The two aircraft involved were NMF - I never saw a camo B-58 while assigned to the 305th."

Interesting tidbits there.. anyone got any photos or leads possibly on a B-58 doing weapon tests with COVENTIONAL bombs LOL

[CAPFlyer]

I'm not sure of where any pictures are, but the B-58 was indeed tested for dropping conventional bombs from the racks that were installed originally to carry additional free-fall nuclear devices. My understanding was that the results were only "average" because the bombing computer wasn't updated for the ballistics of the conventional munitions and the computer wasn't designed for low-level laydown runs in the first place, making a major change in the computer's design and programming required to be able to do accurate runs like they were envisioning. The other problem they had was that they wanted to use the B-58 in a reconnaisance role as well, and the package they used was not producing good images with the speeds that the B-58 was flying at (they were taken off the B-57).

They were really just last-ditch efforts to keep the B-58 in the fleet instead of retiring them after only 10 years of service.