Air University Review , September-October 1980

To Acquire Strategic Bombers

The B-58 Hustler is a museum piece. This first bomber ever to fly at velocities faster than sound has 'long been recognized as a major achievement of aeronautical technology. But the Hustler is of special interest for other, even more persuasive, reasons. It was the first major weapon system procured under the Air Force weapon system management concept. It was also the only strategic bomber ever rejected by the organization it would serve. It remains the last strategic bomber ever to reach serial production in the United States.¹ Conceived in the late 1940s, the B-58 entered production in the late 1950s, became a part of the operational force in the early 1960s, and by 1970 had been retired from the inventory. In its day the Hustler set numerous speed records; it also set precedents in aircraft acquisition that cost the Air Force dearly. Hidden in that cost, the evidence suggests, was a mortgage on future options for manned strategic bombers.

At a time of demobilization and declining defense budgets in 1946-47, a newly appointed Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Brigadier General Curtis E. LeMay, directed improvements in the administration of aeronautical research and development. With General of the Air Force Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, he believed firmly that the nation's security depended on an Air Force equipped with and trained in the use of modern weapons superior to any held by a potential adversary. At Headquarters Army Air Forces in Washington, General LeMay established a Weapons Board (later renamed the Aircraft and Weapons Board) to evaluate advances in science and technology and recommend new weapon systems, and he assigned subjects for operations research to a recently formed consultant group, Project Rand. He planned new research facilities and obtained more funds for Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, the focal point of the Army Air Forces' research and development program. And, as an officer keenly interested in strategic warfare, he also encouraged the development of new intercontinental bombers.²

The Air Materiel Command (AMC) located at Patterson Field directed weapon system research and development at nearby Wright Field. In October 1946, the command awarded a contract for the study of advanced bomber configurations to the Convair Division of General Dynamics³ in Fort Worth, Texas. A few months later, in 1947, the Boeing Company in Seattle also received a contract for a similar study.⁴ As work progressed, Air Force interest focused increasingly on a medium bomber capable of very high speeds. To achieve such speeds, the delta wing plan form had been examined and tested for use in supersonic fighters; it also appeared suited to bombers. By early 1949, the Aircraft Projects Section in the Air Materiel Command's Engineering Division could report that studies of bomber-sized delta wing aircraft had proved extremely encouraging. Moreover, the trend in bombardment aircraft toward an appreciable increase in speeds and operating altitudes also made urgent the "need for aerodynamic power plant considerations [of] aircraft operating between 50,000 and 60,000 feet" altitude.⁵

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) supported both of these studies by conducting wind tunnel and, later, free-flight model tests at its facilities. However, the bomber designs that emerged in 1950-51, and the approaches taken to reach them, varied markedly. The Boeing machine incorporated incremental steps in technology to achieve supersonic velocity. It featured low aspect wings swept at 47 degrees, four turbojet engines, and an internal bomb bay. The aircraft was projected to cruise at high subsonic speeds at 45,000 feet altitude over a 2000 nautical mile radius unrefueled and dash at mach 1.3 to 1.5 for 200 nautical miles in the target zone. If the Boeing design could be termed conventional, the General Dynamics design, which counted on more advances in technology and a change in tactics, had to be considered unconventional. The smaller General Dynamics bomber was to be carried as a "parasite" beneath a B-36 part of the way to its target. The design featured a delta wing plan form swept at 65 degrees and a nuclear weapon carried externally in a novel, droppable pod that contained the bomb itself, fuel, and one turbojet engine. An additional turbojet on each wing would propel the aircraft at high subsonic speeds and at 45,000 feet altitude over a 1500 nautical-mile radius unrefueled and permit a dash at mach 1.6 for 200 nautical miles in the target area.⁶

Whatever the merits of either design, at a time of fiscal austerity the Air Force acknowledged the two-aircraft attack system to be far too expensive.⁷ To be sure, the National Security Act of 1947 had established the Air Force as a separate, independently funded service, but funds for research and development remained, as always, in short supply. And as the complexity of manned aeronautical weapon systems increased, shorthanded engineering and production organizations in Dayton relied more and more on the technical expertise of the airframe contractors. Furthermore, according to General Arnold and his successor, General Carl Spaatz, officials of the Air Materiel Command during World War II had become too much involved in quantity production and too little concerned with research and development.⁸ To ensure that the quality of aircraft received proper attention, Air Force leaders in the late 1940s investigated new ways of organizing the weapon system research and development cycle.

In early 1950 the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, after considerable prompting from Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington, acted on this issue. Approving recommendations made by the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, he reorganized Air Force Headquarters and established a Deputy Chief of Staff for Development. One year later, in April 1951, he signed orders creating the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) as an autonomous, major Air Force command. This new organization was to be responsible for all weapon system research and development undertaken by the service. The Air Materiel Command, which had previously controlled this work, retained responsibility for weapon system procurement, production, and logistics. Both organizations would share facilities at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.⁹

In spite of some shortcomings, particularly one leaving AMC largely in control of the purse strings,* the Air Force reorganization provided in ARDC a management structure that seemed adequate to direct and control research and development. But officials engaged in that enterprise still had to fashion procedures to manage it, and, as a point of departure for the design of new bombers, Air Force leaders had yet to prepare concepts for the use of these weapons in strategic nuclear warfare. Meanwhile, studies of the supersonic bomber at Boeing and General Dynamics had progressed far enough to permit formulating the desired operational requirements. New technology, contractor reports intimated, brought within reach a measure of bomber super performance.

*AMC procurement funds would be used to pay ARDC research and development bills, an arrangement that fostered delay and at times provoked considerable tension.

To AVOID interrupting design work on the supersonic bomber, the Air Force established in the fall of 1951 the first of the requirements for its operational use. The parasite mode of range extension was dropped, replaced officially by air refueling.¹⁰ Air refueling was crucial if one wanted intercontinental range; intercontinental range was indispensable if one wanted the support of the organization that would operate the new bomber, the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Lieutenant General LeMay in particular, the former Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development and now SAC Commanding General, was known to favor range and high-altitude performance in his bombers at least as much as high speeds.

Air Force Headquarters completed the task of defining the remaining operational requirements a few weeks later. The document, known formally as General Operational Requirement SAB-51, was issued on 8 December 1951. It called for a versatile, multimission strategic bomber of minimum size capable of operating in daylight or darkness under all-weather conditions. This air-refuelable bomber, which was to be made available to the service by 1957, was to perform supersonically at high altitudes in the target zone and conduct low-altitude missions at high subsonic speeds. Moreover, it was to be capable of an unrefueled radius of 2300 nautical miles, a distance greater than either Boeing or General Dynamics had as yet been willing to guarantee in their designs.¹¹ Coupling as it did so many features in a machine never before built, the operational requirements placed before the Air Force and its contractors an unmistakably tall order.

Major General Donald N. Yates, the Air Force Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Development and the official responsible for preparing a development directive that would authorize work on the program, found the order much too tall. Given the state of the aeronautical art in 1951, a bomber that provided maximum performance throughout the entire flight envelope would require a new, massive, and extremely costly development effort; such a machine, he believed, would surely not become available in 1957, or even perhaps by 1967. After discussion among members of the Air Staff, the operational requirement was divided into somewhat more manageable segments.¹² In February 1952, Headquarters 'USAF issued two development directives: the first specified development of a high-altitude, supersonic strategic bomber, eliminating the requirement to conduct low-altitude missions at high subsonic speeds; the second called for development of a low-altitude strategic bomber and eliminated the requirement for highaltitude flight and supersonic dash speeds. Both airplanes were to become available to the Air Force in 1957.¹³ It now remained for Major General Donald L. Putt, Commander of the Wright Air Development Center, to obtain designs that met these requirements, recommend a contractor to fabricate the aircraft, and decide how best to manage the research and development program.

When acquiring military aircraft, the Air Force had customarily matched engines and airframes and then incorporated any refinements that appeared technically or scientifically sound to achieve the best possible performance. New fighters and bombers might sport such innovations as the NACA cowl or laminar flow wings. Wright Field, through separate contracts, supplied its airframe manufacturers with most of the needed ancillary devices such as radios, wheels, propellers, and the like-called government-furnished equipment-that ensured a degree of uniformity and standardization. In essence, the Air Force had accepted technology as the determinant against which operational requirements could be fitted. But General Operational Requirement SAB-51 and its development directives of 1952 revised this practice dramatically. Air Force leaders decided instead that requirements should come first and technology could be challenged to conform. That set a precedent; it also set the service on a bold if uncertain new course in aircraft acquisition.

General Putt approved two competitive studies for the high-altitude bomber. Before building mockups, Boeing and General Dynamics would define further the bomber design, evaluate the operational effectiveness of the weapon system, and prepare general specifications for all of the needed equipment. But even with its operation confined to high altitude, program participants understood that science and technology would be hard pressed to provide a bomber that could fly at speeds approaching the muzzle velocity of a 30-06 caliber bullet. At the same time, the Air Force had yet to complete preparation of the concepts* for employing this weapon.

*It is important here to distinguish between Air Force doctrine and concept. Doctrine is predicated on tactics and technique substantiated in actual combat. defined as an "authoritative rule, a precept, giving the approved way to do a job." A concept precedes formal doctrine and proposes the anticipated best way to do a job in the absence of experience, usually with new and untried weapons. See I. B. Holley, Jr., "The Doctrinal Process: Some Suggested Steps," Military Review, April 1979.

In Dayton and Washington, the small supersonic strategic bomber drew a great deal of attention. A minimum-Size machine--recommended by Rand and favored in various quarters of the Air Force because of the smaller cross section it would present to defense radars-had been specified in the general operational requirement. That preference approached official policy on 29 May 1952, when Hq USAF issued the preliminary statement of military concepts for its operation: the Development Planning Objective for Strategic Air Operations, 1956-60. The Air Force Assistant for Development Planning, Colonel Bernard A. Schriever, attempting to extrapolate beyond the operational experience of World War II, had prepared this planning objective in late 1951. Schriever was an advocate of General Operational Requirement SAB-51 in general and the small bomber in particular.

With the cachet of the Air Council and the Air Force Chief of Staff, the Schriever planning objective declared that future strategic aerial warfare would be most economically and effectively accomplished by a "combination system [that] incorporates a tanker airplane for refueling in flight the combat zone airplane." The planning objective still called for a multimission strategic bomber and for penetration of the target zone at a low altitude and high subsonic speed. The bomber would then rise to altitude, release its weapon at supersonic speed, and withdraw quickly. To achieve these design and operational characteristics, the planning objective averred, the bomber would need to be small and compact, its "unrefueled radius must be limited [to 2300 nautical miles], a minimum crew not to exceed three must be used, and unconventional design and operating techniques must be employed."¹⁴

This planning objective apparently conformed to General Operational Requirement SAB-51 and thus called for more rapid advances in technology than might reasonably be expected. What is more, it also favored the unconventional bomber design of General Dynamics. And it guaranteed the attention of big bomber advocates, most of whom were to be found at Headquarters Strategic Air Command in Omaha. They believed this proposed concept and its underlying suppositions to be precipitous and its conclusions and recommendations unwarranted. As the operators of Air Force strategic weapon systems, they favored high-altitude penetration of enemy defenses using larger bombers of less density and greater load-carrying capacity, capable of greater ranges. "Even though the best intercontinental bomber available requires some refueling," they responded, "it does not follow necessarily that the optimum system requires a bomber which has no intercontinental capability without refueling." They argued that "high performance alone" could "never ensure mission success" against targets defended by modern interceptors. A small supersonic bomber, moreover, would confine crew members physically and lack even the range necessary to operate without refueling from most forward operating bases. Finally, instead of fostering economy and reliability, combining unconventional design and operating techniques made it "entirely possible that the system might prove operationally unsuitable."¹⁵

With the debate joined in Omaha, commitments to the supersonic bomber intensified elsewhere. Within a year, the small combat-zone bomber had vaulted from a novel configuration study to a conceptual linchpin in the officially promulgated Air Force Development Planning Objective for Strategic Air Operations. Indeed, the program now seemed to have acquired a momentum of its own. Events in October 1952 reflected that momentum when the Wright Air Development Center selected the unconventional design offered by General Dynamics instead of the larger, more conventional one proposed by Boeing.

The design for the high-altitude bomber of General Dynamics now had a name, Hustler. No longer a parasite, the vehicle had increased slightly in size and weight and featured landing gear and a defensive tail gun. To improve the low-speed performance of the delta wing configuration, General Dynamics had decreased the sweep from 65 to 60 degrees. The external bomb and fuel pod beneath the fuselage was retained, and two afterburning turbojet engines on each wing were to power the machine and its three-man crew up to speeds of mach 2.1 at a combat altitude of 55,000 feet. With these characteristics, the contractor projected an unrefueled radius of 2500 nautical miles.¹⁶ Because the general operational requirement had been subdivided, the high-altitude bomber had to rely for defense largely on its size and speed. With the surface-to-air missile threat just emerging, Air Force officials believed that supersonic dash speeds at high altitude, coupled with a smaller radar cross section than the B-52, would permit effective penetration of defenses. Thus, a usable supersonic capability became the key requirement, and the smaller Hustler offered greater supersonic performance than its Boeing competitor.¹⁷

Wright Air Development Center judged that the Hustler more nearly fulfilled the Air Force operational requirement and planning objective.¹⁸ But in recommending this selection, leaders of the center urged that ARDC alter the planned acquisition process: instead of calling for detailed designs and a mockup from both of the competing firms, they proposed that the Boeing contract be terminated immediately. This action would avoid the expense of developing a second detailed design, consolidate funds in one program, and save the time that would otherwise be used in contractor selection proceedings. The leaders of ARDC agreed and so did the Air Staff in Washington.¹⁹ In another break with customary practice, Wright Air Development Center was authorized in November to proceed with development on the strength of the General Dynamics design alone; the Air Force wanted the Hustler weapon system operational "at the earliest date possible consistent with the design concepts of minimum size and [maximum] usable supersonic capability."²⁰

The new high-altitude bomber, General Putt said in a letter that notified the President of the Convair Division of General Dynamics of the award, would be known as the "B-58." The Air Force, he went on, intended to assign complete weapon system development responsibility to the firm as the prime contractor.²¹ Although General Putt did not mention the number of vehicles or the dollars involved, General Dynamics had unquestionably landed a very big job. However big it might be, the Air Force had now to pay for the B-58, and no one, it seems, could be sure what the program might cost. Although a few individuals had expressed reservations about the absence of studies of overall costs, their apprehension was not widely shared; such analytical studies of projected costs were not obligatory. In the early 1950s there existed no single office in the Air Force or in the Department of Defense where cost estimates were systematically reviewed and approved by officials responsible for authorizing the start of system development.²² Air Force leaders had moved quickly, without any known cost estimates committed to paper. In 1952 they wanted, above all, high performance in a small, supersonic bomber; they had chosen the design approach that matched that preference; they were willing and ready to concede schedule and cost to get it; and they intended to control the risk that this action implied through a new method of weapon system management.

Defense spending rose after the Soviets detonated an atomic device in 1949 and increased again with the Korean War. But in 1952, as today, the Air Force had under study more aircraft and missiles of promise than it had funds to develop. Those few weapons brought to production had to perform reliably in an operational role. The B-47--the first American bomber to feature sweptwings, turbojet engines, and sophisticated fire control and bombing-navigation systems-had posed for the Air Force monumental problems of subsystem integration. Like the B-47, the medium-range B-58 was also recognized as one of the most technically complex manned bombers ever selected for development by the service. To accomplish this and other important work, therefore, the leaders of ARDC and AMC considered the most pressing questions affecting weapon system management.

First, besides the customary shortage of funds, the service lacked enough skilled personnel for the systems engineering and technical direction of the B-58. Instead of hiring more engineers and constructing additional facilities, would not the Air Force avoid criticism and secure a constituency by contracting for the technical and managerial skills it needed with the airframe industry? Second, building aircraft prototypes before selecting one of them was alleged to be costly and time-consuming. The B-47 and B-52, for example, even though subjected to a "flyoff"' comparison of actual prototype aircraft, still had been found to have deficiencies in design that needed correction.²³ Would not the costs and time required in this approach become proportionately greater if new weapon systems were technically much more complex than their predecessors? Would not the Air Force save time and money by selecting for development a weapon system tailored carefully to operational requirements solely on the strength of its design?²⁴ In choosing the Hustler design approach for the supersonic bomber, the Air Force answered all these questions in the affirmative. Whatever the evidence for it, the reasoning was to prevail for a number of years as an article of faith.

With Hustler as the catalyst, the Air Force substantially revised the management of aircraft acquisition.²⁵ In December 1952, General Putt outlined the new duties and responsibilities of the service's acquisition managers. The B-58, he explained for the Wright Air Development Center, would be the first aircraft developed by a prime contractor under the "weapon system management concept." In this concept, a complete weapon system, its components and supporting equipment, would be carefully planned, scheduled, and controlled from design through tests as an operational entity. The prime contractor responsible for system design and engineering would contract for the major components directly with subcontractors. To help ensure that all of the pieces specified by the contractor came together as desired, government-furnished aircraft equipment would be minimized. Air Force contracting for major components would occur "only when limitations of industry, operations, or logistic considerations force the [service] to control source and/or methodology." As the customer, the Air Force would monitor the prime contractor's plans and progress, supply the funds, approve the specifications and the subcontract sources, and retain a veto over any developments likely to cause "operational or logistic difficulties." Weapon system management would be exercised at the Wright Air Development Center by a joint project office, made up of representatives of ARDC and AMC.²⁶

This management policy removed from the Wright Air Development Center the duties of weapon system integration and delegated that function to the prime contractor. It signaled an end, at least for the moment, to competitive prototyping and substituted instead extensive preproduction planning, design analysis, and subscale testing to eliminate technical uncertainties. It called for a larger number of test aircraft, which would now more closely resemble the production model, to wring out any unforeseen defects. Finally, it required the contractor to procure, at least by mockup inspection, the tooling and long lead-time supporting equipment necessary for rapid production and deployment.²⁷

ARDC leaders were convinced that the weapon system management concept, properly administered, could produce substantial benefits for the Air Force. As General Putt phrased it, the service expected "to obtain, within the time allowed, the best engineered functional combination of equipments. . . allowed by the state-of-the-art." Although failing to mention costs, he strongly implied the corollary of significant savings. The Air Force, it certainly seemed, had already reduced costs by eliminating competitive prototyping and restricting the number of service personnel needed to manage the B-58 research and development program.

During the months that followed, the weapon system management concept would transmute to doctrine, then to mystique. But whether the new method of management would provide the anticipated benefits depended on the efforts of the B-58 program participants and on the cost, schedule, and technical performance they achieved with the B-58 Hustler. At the end of 1952, however, they had yet to complete the detailed design of the bomber. And the Air Force had yet to name formally the command that would employ the new weapon.

Contractual arrangements concluded with General Dynamics in February 1953 permitted work to proceed. Still, as promising as the Hustler configuration appeared at the time of its selection, during 1953 and 1954 the machine progressed through a succession of revisions in design. In fact, the design chosen by the Air Force, NACA soon informed the service, produced at mach 1.02 a drag coefficient "almost twice as high as that predicted."²⁸ For various technical reasons, each of the proposed designs failed to satisfy operational requirements. As weeks stretched into months, many Air Force managers began to question seriously whether the prime contractor could provide a suitable end product The Air Force refused to approve a final design in early 1954, as originally scheduled. Apprehensive over the technical prospects, the service reduced the number of B-58 aircraft on order from 244 bombers to 30 test vehicles. After extensive wind tunnel tests, however, even the design in hand at the end of 1954 was judged to be marginal.²⁹

Disagreement over the final configuration of the bomber, the consequent interruption of subsystem development, and redirection of the program affected schedules adversely. In Fort Worth, General Dynamics officials resented what they considered to be Air Force overdirection, foot-dragging, and indecision with their accompanying delays and program restrictions. The prime contractor notified the service that deliveries would slip; to meet even the new schedule, the firm needed Air Force approval of a final design and authority to proceed with production of the test aircraft.³⁰

The Hustler was at a crossroad. After an investment of two years and $180 million, the program presented its sponsors few tangible achievements and numerous vexing issues. The attempt to tailor science and technology to suit Hustler's operational requirements had proved unexpectedly complex and frustrating and seemed to turn on such fortuitous advances as the discovery of the "area rule" of aerodynamics. * Developing Hustler under the weapon system management concept had thus far produced a questionable final configuration and greatly strained relations between the Air Force and its prime contractor. Furthermore, efforts to accord small bombers a preeminent role in the planning objective for strategic air operations had provoked strong objections from those who preferred big bombers with a greater unrefueled range. While Air Force leaders endeavored to address these issues and decide on Hustler's future, General Dynamics marked time. The enthusiasm and momentum of 1952-53 had vanished; at the beginning of 1955, the program wheeled on inertia. Many of the original participants seriously questioned how much longer the effort might continue.

*This theory, disclosed by NACA aerodynamicist Richard T. Whitcomb in July 1952, showed that drag at transonic speeds depended on the ratio of the total cross-section area at any station to the total length of the airframe. To reduce drag most effectively, the fuselage had to be indented over the wing to smooth the rate of change of the cross-section areas and limit the maximum cross section and thus make equal the volume at all stations. That produced a "coke-bottle" or "wasp-waist" configuration. In 1954 this theory was refined by NACA aerodynamicist Robert T. Jones, helping further to reduce drag at supersonic velocities.

At Strategic Air Command Headquarters, General LeMay questioned the reasoning that entertained Hustler as an operational weapon system. He had objected to Air Force procurement of the B-47 for many of the same reasons he opposed the B-58: the medium bomber lacked the range, payload, and altitude that he desired. Adding supersonic dash speed hardly compensated for these shortcomings; indeed, it affected range even more adversely and increased the requirements for tanker support. From all indications the B-58 would cost more per vehicle than the B-52 to own and operate. General LeMay had already secured initial approval from Hq USAF for development of the long-range, high-altitude supersonic B-70 bomber; accordingly, he had excluded the "short-legged" Hustler from any mention in his planning of the SAC force structure. Nevertheless, in late 1954 Hq USAF had issued a "Tentative B-58 Operational Concept" naming SAC as the using command for the bomber.³¹ A forthright statement of Hq SAC's opposition appeared essential to LeMay, and, on 4 January 1955, he expressed his views directly to Air Force Chief of Staff General Nathan F. Twining. In a brief letter he told Twining that his command had carefully evaluated the B-58. This evaluation, LeMay asserted, moving quickly to the point, showed that the "B-58 cannot be developed [as] an acceptable Strategic Bombardment Weapon System. Therefore, it is not desired in the SAC inventory."³² If ever the Air Force had harbored any illusions of SAC interest in the B-58, none now remained.

General Twining formed a special board to review the B-58 program and recommend to him a preferred course of action. The board, composed of four officers and the Chief Scientist of the Air Force, issued on 10 March 1955 its conclusions and recommendations.³³ The inverse relationship between speed and range worked against the bomber. The B-58, the board advised, would not fulfill the Air Force operational requirements in range or altitude. Evaluation of the design indicated a maximum unrefueled radius of 1700 (instead of the 2300) nautical miles and a combat altitude of 45,000 feet (instead of the 55,000 feet specified). Nevertheless, Hustler remained the only supersonic bomber in research and development. Rather than cancel the B-58 and lose much of the advantage to be derived from the funds already invested, the board recommended that 13 vehicles, projected to cost $554 million, be procured for tests vital to the design and operation of future strategic bombers.³⁴

General Twining, other members of the Air Council, and the Secretary of the Air Force agreed: 13 test aircraft offered the service the best possible return on its investment.³⁵ On 2 June 1955 Lieutenant General Donald Putt, now Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff Development, instructed Lieutenant General Thomas S. Power, Commander of the Air Research and Development Command, to reconstitute the Hustler program accordingly.³⁶ Work on the B-58, long on the verge of cancellation, accelerated in offices and factories around the country. Though at 13 vehicles the program was still larger than SAC deemed advisable or necessary, there was a sense of relief in Omaha that the B-58 had been removed from consideration as a strategic weapon system.³⁷ By the beginning of July, however, members of the Air Council in Washington began to express doubts as to the wisdom of the course they had approved. Unbeknownst to General LeMay, the debate flared anew; Hustler, it soon became evident, possessed far more inertia than was generally supposed in Omaha or perhaps hoped for in Fort Worth.

The Air Council served as the principal deliberative body of the Air Force. It consisted of the Air Force Chief of Staff, Vice Chief of Staff, the Inspector General, and the Deputy Chiefs of Staff for Operations, Development, Materiel, Personnel, and Comptroller. Whatever their prior affiliation with or thoughts about the B-58, the members of the council shared concerns that transcended the narrow technical issues evaluated by the special review board. Political considerations militated against a program expressly for the purpose of research, development, test, and evaluation. In terms of perceived Air Force needs and a FY 1956 budget of $15.7 billion, even those members of Congress who advocated superior air power could question as extravagant an outlay of one-half billion dollars for 13 aircraft that could not be employed against an enemy. The Air Force would be hard pressed to justify or develop political support for such a program. This seemed especially likely when the majority leader of the Senate and a powerful member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas), had already charged the Department of Defense to explain why the Air Force had been so dilatory in placing an order for B-58s with the Fort Worth aeronautical firm.³⁸

Military considerations, on the other hand, favored the B-58 as an interim weapon system. The subsonic B-52 preferred by LeMay had reached production, but the Air Force could not be certain of a date in the 1960s when more advanced strategic weapons would become available. Work on the intercontinental ballistic missile program had just begun in earnest; studies that would lead to the B-70 were barely under way. Carried to an operational capability, the Hustler could fill a weapons gap in the early 1960s, while providing the Air Force and the airframe contractors with valuable experience in the development and operation of new weapon systems.³⁹ As the debate progressed, Air Force leaders came to view the B-58 more and more as a usable intermediate-range strategic bomber.

Air Force Chief of Staff Twining decided the question, and, on 22 August 1955, General Putt teletyped word to the commander of ARDC: "Necessary actions consistent with minimum fund obligations must be taken to insure that this program is developed as a weapon system with the objective being. . . a wing of B-58s in the inventory by mid-1960. . . ."⁴⁰ Deciding in favor of development as a weapon system, the Air Force would in time procure a fleet of 116 B-58 bombers. Formal consignment of the aircraft to the Strategic Air Command, however, would occur only after General Power succeeded General LeMay as SAC Commander in Chief in 1957-a full two years in the future.⁴¹

Between 1950 and 1955, the Air Force sought with the Hustler to accelerate and render less costly the process of acquiring high-performance strategic bombers. All of the conditions essential for success, absent in the 1920s after World War I,⁴² appeared at hand. The Air Force functioned as a separate service, and its leaders had adopted as their own a tenet often ignored by the military, that superior arms favor victory. They reorganized the service for research and development and provided a structure to evaluate and procure the weapons made available by advances in science and technology. Finally, they established in advance military concepts for the use of new weapons. These conditions notwithstanding, the carefully conceived Hustler program went awry: schedules slipped, costs soared, and the vehicle's anticipated performance sagged.

This occurred in part because Air Force leaders divided sharply over the B-58. The prospective users of the aircraft at Hq SAC objected strenuously to the machine as a strategic weapon and to those military concepts that encouraged small size and limited range. The suppliers of the aircraft, well placed in Washington, argued its merits as an intermediate-range strategic weapon and as a test precursor of still more superior bombers to follow--bombers they had no reason to doubt that the nation's elected officials would continue to approve. In 1955 the suppliers prevailed, but the internecine debate provoked tension, indecision, and vacillation that delayed the program and increased the costs.⁴³ Although this debate might have held up the serious study of program costs, it doubtless interfered with the kind of total, integrated program planning specified in the weapon system management concept--if indeed that kind of planning and analysis is a viable management tool where uncertainty abounds, as it so clearly does in the procurement of very advanced aircraft.

The program also went awry for another, perhaps more important, reason. The Air Force embraced, virtually without reservation, the notion that science and technology could be driven to meet operational requirements far beyond the state of the art within a short period and at an affordable cost. More to the point, its leaders seemed to believe that this process could be defined, analyzed, and planned in advance to limit technical uncertainty and then managed to control costs. If before World War II Air Corps procurement officials at Wright Field favored quantity over quality, ARDC officials in the 1950s appeared willing, without firm cost estimates, to recommend for development paper designs that offered only a promise of superior performance. They might have avoided at least some of the difficulties if they had been more attentive to the history of the Air Corps and Army Air Forces procurement organizations. Though smaller in scale, prewar operations did reveal how different procurement procedures and organizational responses produced different results in the acquisition of aircraft.⁴⁴

With the Hustler, the watchword became superior strategic bombers of superior technical performance. General Operational Requirement SAB-51 called in effect for a multimission B-1 bomber, one that could perform admirably throughout the entire flight envelope--this at a time of vacuum-tube electronics, before Whitcomb's discovery of the transonic area rule in 1952 and its refinements for supersonic flight in 1954, or of the NACA research that made possible the variable sweep wing in 1958. Even though the B-58 would be built expressly for high-altitude supersonic flight, Hustler meant developing and integrating a new and untried power plant and airframe and, among other things, new avionics, air conditioning, and flight control systems as well.

General Dynamics succeeded in that task, to be sure, delivering the last B-58 to the Strategic Air Command in 1962. But other advances in technology had in the meantime transformed the antiair defenses against which the B-58 was expected to contend. Once in service, the new bomber would be conscripted to fly a low altitude and essentially subsonic mission in wartime, a mission for which Hustler had not been designed and in which--except for its solid ride in turbulent weather--it was singularly ill-equipped.⁴⁵ The B-58 did serve as an intermediate-range strategic bomber in the 1960s, but its flawed operational potential contributed to early retirement from the inventory.

If the prospect of rapid improvements in antiair defenses affected tactical doctrine and compounded the very high risks of B-58 research and development, program costs ultimately proved most telling of all the risks involved. As the cost of the Hustler program skyrocketed in the late 1950s, Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White acted to conserve funds, cutting back from five wings to two the number of aircraft ordered. At that time, as shown in Figure 1, a disquieting trend became readily evident as the cost of manned bombers escalated rapidly and the numbers procured declined almost inversely. At about $33 million in constant 1967 dollars each,⁴⁶ the B-58 tripled in price over its subsonic predecessor, the B-52, while the number acquired shrank even more. The Air Force could hardly expect the implications of this trend to escape public notice.

The unit cost of the B-58 certainly smacked of "gold-plating" in an administration pledged to a balanced federal budget Hardly gold-plated, President Eisenhower declared tartly in his State of the Union Message on 9 January 1959, at $35 a troy ounce the B-58 and other new manned bombers literally "cost their weight in gold."⁴⁸ If the President's words encouraged greater scrutiny of these costs in the years that followed, they unmistakably labeled manned bombers as enormously expensive. Indeed, public scrutiny did intensify in the 1960s when new strategic bombers had to compete for procurement with less costly Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles.⁴⁹ The Air Force nevertheless remained committed to the precedents fashioned in the B-58 program; the service specified superperformance in the operational requirements of Hustler's successors, the B-70 and the B-1, and managed their development under the weapon system concept. Neither the added expense nor the operational potential of this extra performance, as it turned out, could be adequately justified. Weapon system management proved unable to achieve-or even closely approach-the planned cost, schedule, or technical performance.⁵⁰ Vetoing production of the B-70 and the B-1, other administrations judged them, like the B-58, to have been designed and built for the wrong mission and at an exorbitant cost⁵¹ As a template for acquiring these aircraft, the B-58 thus had ramifications unforeseen and surely unwanted by its Air Force planners and managers. More than a milestone in aeronautical research and development, the Hustler marked a watershed in American procurement of manned strategic bombers.

1. Neither the B-70 nor the B-1 strategic bombers reached production. The variable sweep wing FB-111A, to be sure, a variant of the F-111A modified for intercontinental bombing, did join B-52s in the SAC operational force in 1970 as the B-58 phased out. But the F-111A (TFX) was designed and built originally as a tactical fighter-bomber, not as a strategic bomber.

2. Curtis E. LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 399-400; LeMay to Lt. Gen. N. F. Twining, 15 May 1947; Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907-1964, vol. 1 (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University, 1971), pp. 184, 192.

3. Known as Consolidated-Vultee at the end of World War II, the firm was renamed Convair before General Dynamics acquired controlling interest in March 1953. To avoid confusion, the name General Dynamics is used.

4. Richard D. Thomas, Air Force Systems Command (HO), History of the Development of the B-58 Bomber, vol. 1, November 1965, pp. 52-55.

5. AMC(REOL/REOA-2) to Hq NACA, "Status of Bombardment Development Projects Which May Be of Interest to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics on Aerodynamics," 4 March 1949.

6. Thomas, vol. 1, pp. 91-92.

7. Ibid., pp. 70-71.

8. Futrell, vol. 1, pp. 184, 188.

9. D. J. Stanley and J. J. Weaver, An Air Force Command for R&D, 1949-1976: The History of ARDC/AFSC, Air Force Systems Command (HO), n.d., pp. 10-11; Futrell, vol. 1, p. 437.

10. Progress Report, WADC(WCSB), "High Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System (MX-1964)," 1 May 1952, p. 7; Futrell, vol. 1, pp. 212-13.

11. General Operational Requirement SAB-51, USAF(DR), "General Operational Requirement for Strategic Bombardment System," 8 December 1951, Paragraphs VI, X, and XI.

12. Brig. Gen. John W. Sessums to Putt, "Strategic Reconnaissance/Bomber Weapon System Development Program," 28 February 1952.

13. Development Directive No. 00034, USAF(DDC/DR&D), "High Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System," 26 February 1952; Development Directive No. 00035, USAF(DDC/DR&D), "Low Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System," 26 February 1952.

14. DPO, USAF(DDC), "Development Planning Objective for Strategic Air Operations," 29 May 1952, as extracted in attachment 1, SAC(CV) to USAF(DDC), "Comments on Development Planning Objective Strategic Air Operations," 9 December 1952, pp. 2, 4.

15. Ibid., attachment 1, pp. 2-3, 5.

16. Report, Convair Fort Worth, FZP 4-005, "MX-1964 Basic Proposal," 18 August 1952.

17. Report, WADC(WSD), "WADC Analysis of Design Approaches, Boeing MX-1965 and Convair MX-1964, Performance Charts," 8 October 1952; WADC(WCOWB) to ARDC(C), "Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System Development Program," 8 October 1952; Maj. Gen. J. C. Maxwell (USAF, Ret) to J. T. Bohn, SAC(HO), 28 February 1979; Progress Report, WADC(WCSB), "High Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance System YB/RB-58," 1 May 1954, p. 8.

18. Boeing had recently received the production contract for the B-52 after its prototype had bested the General Dynamics B-60 in the "big bomber" competition, and the Seattle firm was still building B-47s. Spreading the work was undoubtedly another consideration, but to what extent is impossible to say.

19. ARDC(C) to USAF(DRD-SA), "High Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System," 31 October 1952, as quoted in Thomas, vol. I, p. 127.

20. ARDC(ADDS) to WADC(C), "High Altitude Strategic Bomber/Reconnaissance Weapon System," 24 November 1952.

21. Putt to General J. T. McNarney, President, Convair, 10 December 1952.

22. Robert L. Perry et al., System Acquisition Strategies (Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, R-733-PR/ARPA, June 1971), p. 10.

23. However, many deficiencies were uncovered in the prototypes, which seemed a better place to discover them than on the twentieth production article.

24. Lt. Col. Loren P. Murray, Jr., B-58 Program, Test Bed for Weapon System Management (Air War College, Air University, Thesis 1988), 1961, pp. 12-13,70-71; Theodor van Kármán to Gen. H. S. Vandenberg, 21 September 1949, pp. 3-4, in Research and Development in the United States Air Force, Report of a Special Committee of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board to the Chief of Staff, USAF, also chapter IX and passim; Futrell, vol. 1, p. 437; and Albert E. Misenko and Philip H. Pollock, Engineering History 1917-1978, McCook Field to the Aeronautical Systems Division, revised 4th edition, ASD(HO), 1979, pp. 18, 23.

25. See Murray.

26. Putt to WADC(C), "General Policy Guidance on Use of Single Prime Contractor for Development of a Complete Weapon System," December 1952, pp. 1-2.

27. B. H. Klein, T. K. Glennan, Jr., and G. H. Shubert, The Role of Prototypes in Development (Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, RM-3467/1-PR April 1971), p.15.

28. Joseph A. Shortal, A New Dimension: Wallops Island Flight Test Range, the First Fifteen Years (Washington: NASA RP-l028, 1978), p. 304.

29. Brig. Gen. H. M. Estes, Jr., to Lt. Gen. T. S. Power, "B-58 Program Status," 30 September 1954, pp. 1-2.

30. Thomas, vol. 1, p.173.

31. Concept Plan, USAF(ODC), "Tentative B-58 Operational Concept," 15 November 1954, pp. 1-3.

32. LeMay to Twining, "B-58 Development Program," 4 January 1955.

33. Twining named as board chairman Maj. Gen. Clarence S. Irvine, AMC's Deputy for Weapon Systems. Serving with Irvine were Dr. Guyford Stever; WADC Commander Maj. Gen. Albert Boyd; Colonel Donald E. Hillman, Chief of the Tactical Requirements Division in the Directorate of Operations, Strategic Air Command; and as recorder Colonel George W. Crisis of the Air Staff, DCS Development.

34. Maj. Gen. C. S. Irvine, AMC (DCWS), "Report of B-58 Review Board," vol. 1, part II, Conclusions, and part II, Recommendations, 10 March 1955, pp. II-3 and II-5.

35. Memo for Record, Col. D. E. Hillman, "B-58 Review Board," 16 March 1955, p. 1.

36. Maj. Gen. H. B. Thatcher to Power, "B-58 Weapon System Program," 2 June 1955.

37. Hillman, p. 2.

38. Memo, Estes to Col. M. E. McNickle, "Review of B-58 Program at HQ USAF," n.d., but material for Senator Johnson requested by "Monday 11 Feb 55."

39. Gen. J E. Smart (USAF, Ret) to J. T. Bohn, SAC(HO), 3 February 1979.

40. Message, USAF(DDC) to ARDC(C) , "B-58 Weapon System Program," 22/1814Z August 1955.

41. Futrell, vol.1, pp. 471-72.

42. I. B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States during World War I, A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, unabridged reprinting, 1971), p. 10 and passim.

43. See Bruce L. .R Smith, The Rand Corporation: Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), number 15 at p. 212. Having contributed to the quarrel by recommending a smaller bomber, The Rand Corporation in the 1950s apparently sought to protect its advisory role and disassociate itself from further involvement.

44. See I. B. Holley, Jr., Buying Aircraft: Material Procurement for the Army Air Forces (Washington: GPO, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1964), especially chapters V and VI. This work should be required reading for all service and civilian officials involved in the acquisition of military aircraft.

45. Lt. Col. John J. Kohout III, "A Post B-1 Look at the Manned Strategic Bomber," Air University Review, July-August 1979, p. 40.

46. Based on an estimated total program price (RDT&E plus investment including aircraft procurement, initial spares, technical data, and aerospace ground equipment) of $3.2 billion in 1963 dollars divided by the units produced; unit amount converted to constant 1967 dollars.

47. Total program price and units produced from Margaret C. Bagwell, Procurement of Air Force Systems, 1945-1961, AFSC(HO), 1961, p. 38b, with B-52 figures adjusted to completion in 1962 from ASD, Project Backfill; B-1 program unit cost estimate of $100 million each from Lt. Col. Edd D. Wheeler, "Prospects for the Manned Bomber: High Noon or Sunset'" Air University Review, January-February 1979, p. 7.

48. "Text of President Eisenhower's Message to Congress on the State of the Union," New York Times, January 10, 1959, p. 6. In response to questions, the White House the following day made clear that the President was referring to the B-58 and that it cost more than its weight in gold.

49. See, for example, Futrell, vol. 2, pp. 669-70.

50. The FB-111 program, an attempt to convert a tactical fighter-bomber into an interim strategic bomber, also failed in the late 1960s and two administrations reduced the number of operational aircraft ordered from 263 to 76.

51. Compare the remarks of Presidents John F. Kennedy (28 March 1961) and Jimmy Carter (30 June 1977) on canceling production of the respective bombers; also, for a perceptive evaluation of the conditions and attitudes that fueled aerospace technology and USAF doctrine after World War II, see Robert L Perry, "The Interaction of Technology and Doctrine in the USAF," in A F. Hurley and R. C. Ehrhart, editors, Air Power and Warfare. The Proceedings of the 8th Military Symposium, United States Air Force Academy, 18-20 October 1978 (Washington: Government Printing Office, Office of Air Force History, 1979), pp. 386-401.

Acknowledgment

I am indebted to I. B. Holley, Jr., Duke University; Robert L Perry, The Rand Corporation; and Francis P. Hoeber, HoeberCorp., for their valuable advice.

The views expressed in this case study are those of the author. They do not represent official views of the Department of the Air Force or of any other federal agency.

R. Cargill Hall (B.A., Whitman College; M.A., California State University at San Jose) is Deputy Command Historian, Hq Military Airlift Command, Scott AFB, Illinois. He has served as a historian for Hq Strategic Air Command; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Sunnyvale, California. Hall has published articles in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, American Journal of International Law, Journal of Air Law and Commerce, Aerospace Historian, and Technology and Culture and contributed essays to several books.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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