[EveningStar]

Aviation and Aerospace ping

Please ping me to aviation and aerospace articles. Thank you.

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[EveningStar]

Aviation and Aerospace ping

Please ping me to aviation and aerospace articles. Thank you.

If you want added to or removed from this ping list, please contact EveningStar or Paleo Conservative.

[JRandomFreeper]

Built right across the lake from me. Back in the day, a B-58 broke my bedroom window twice. Supersonic isn't allowed over settled places, these days.

/johnny

[EveningStar]

Aviation and Aerospace ping

Please ping me to aviation and aerospace articles. Thank you.

If you want added to or removed from this ping list, please contact EveningStar or Paleo Conservative.

[Slyfox]

...and the Soviet “Bear” was our cold war enemy’s mascot. That is pretty funny.

[yarddog]

I remember when they had those things at Eglin.

Four engines on a plane about the size of a fighter. It really looked fearsome. Not sure why it never became more common or popular.

[Hot Tabasco]

the "pilot" used to test the capsule ejection system was a live bear.

Ditka????

[blueunicorn6]

Finally, the answer to that age old question

“Does a bear s**t in the woods?”

Nope, he does it in the escape pod when they eject him at Mach 2.

[blueunicorn6]

“But, Yogi, I don’t want to be ejected out of a plane at Mach 2.”

“That’s OK, Boo Boo. I’m sure Mister Ranger has a big net to catch us with.”

[PLMerite]

"This Air Force video about the program tries to put a smile on the whole situation, describing how the post-flight bears hung out for a few days munching on food until they were subjected to "the usual complete medical examination." This white paper of the era makes it clear that the usual medical examination involved euthanasia and autopsy."

"Euthenasia and autopsy?"

[llevrok]

As a 9 year old kid, I had a plastic (sort of a rubbery plastic) B58. It had a large bomb that could be dropped (a button on top of the fuselage) and a canopy that opened.

I made hundreds of bombing runs over the family cat.

Good times....

[MasterGunner01]

Convair built a total of 116 B-58 “Hustlers” of all types. About two-thirds (77) were written off in accidents. The B-58 was in service from 1960 to 1970. It was replaced by the FB-111 “Aardvark”. The B-58 was capable of Mach 2, but it was not well liked by its crews.

[Sirius Lee]

B-58 = aviation porn.

[x]

1) Actual bears? And not, you know, Andrew Sullivan fans?

2) How did they get security clearances? Wouldn't their sympathies be with their Russian cousins?

[BobL]

I guess, back then, they could have used humans (i.e., blacks) for experiments where the outcome wasn’t assured, but they didn’t, and thankfully so.

As for the bears, I happen to have no love for that animal. They, almost always, have a crappy attitude towards life and towards humans. So if a few go bye-bye, tough - enough humans have been mauled for NO REASON, anyway.

And for those bears that gave their lives to help us in the Cold War, I applaud them. We were looking at wiping out BILLIONS of people, if either side was perceived as weak. These bears helped us convince the Soviets that we meant business, and there are, likely hundreds of millions, if not billions of people alive today that would not be, if either side blinked.

[blueunicorn6]

So they promised the bears free choom and a ride in a fast plane and then they cut them up.......and I thought the Army Recruiters were sneaky.

[norton]

Must have been a very juvenile bear. I've seen those ejection capsules and at 5'8/5'9 I'd be cramped all to heck. I came to believe the tales we used to hear about height restrictions on flight crew.