B-58

Mobryan’s kind of right. The B-58 was designed as an extremely high speed, high altitude bomber. But as Soviet air defences became more effective at altitude (both interceptors and SAMS) that tactic became less viable. So alternative ideas were contemplated including low level. And iron bombs. Not sure if stand-off weapons were considered or could be carried. Anyway fundamentally what happened is the B-58 was not suitable at low altitude because of its integral wing tanks (vulnerability to AA) and, given it’s primary role [high altitude] was also no longer viable, it had become obsolete and was therefore phased out. Also a very expensive aircraft to operate, but that’s secondary.

I opened a thread recently about the B-58 prototype http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=69710 and in it Bager1968 gave us a link to Joe Baugher’s excellent website about the B-58 … check it out http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b58.html