Moderator: K. A. Pital
In 1949 the US government canceled the Boeing XB-55 contract, which had been an effort to produce a subsonic replacement for the just-being-introduced Boeing B-47 Stratojet. The XB-55 project had started in 1947, but by the end of the decade it was apparent that if strategic penetration in warfare were to be successful at all, it would require aircraft much faster than the jet fighter aircraft which were then being placed into operation. Thus the funding made available by the XB-55 cancellation was earmarked for the study of a supersonic medium bomber, and a request for proposals was extended to several aircraft companies.
Boeing submitted a proposal for a four-engine, high-wing aircraft with a highly streamlined fuselage. The four engines would be buried in thickened wing roots; the remaining wing planform was highly tapered.
Developed under weapons system designation MX-1965, the XB-59 was to have a crew of three, and would be powered by four GE J73-X24A turbojet engines, mounted in the roots of the 73 foot span wings. The landing gear would be similar to the bicycle arrangement found on the B-47 and B-52 Stratofortress, with wingtip-mounted outriggers.
The Boeing contract for the XB-59 was canceled in late 1952 after the Convair company's submission, designated B-58 Hustler, was selected for development.
The Boeing effort was a design study only, and no construction was involved.
From Joe Baugher's Files (http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b59.html):Sidewinder wrote:Why was Convair's proposal chosen over Boeing's? The Air Force didn't want to risk disrupting the B-52 and KC-135's production lines?
Later the B-58 was nearly cancelled as well (http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b58_1.html):In the summer of 1952, the Wright Air Development Center concluded that a less costly alternative would be to select just one of the two competitors even before the design and mockup stage was reached. The small bomber concept was endorsed by the Air Force Council and by General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who was Chief of Staff of the Air Force. However, General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, generally favored the development of larger bombers with longer ranges. SAC felt that high performance alone would not necessarily assure mission success, and that the small supersonic bomber's lack of range would prevent it from operating without midair refueling from most forward bases. Despite SAC's objections, the Wright Air Development Center recommended that the Boeing/Convair competition be stopped. Even though the Air Force thought that Convair's estimates of the MX-1964's supersonic drag and gross weight were overly optimistic, the Air Force felt that the Convair design was superior to the Boeing proposal. It was concluded that the Boeing design would offer insufficient supersonic capabilities, and on November 18, 1952, General Vandenberg formally announced that Convair was the winner of the contest. All work on the competing B-59 project was stopped.
In the meantime, the Strategic Air Command was still unhappy with the B-58. A mid-1954 staff study had actually excluded the B-58 from its projected 51-wing bomber force of 1958-1965. There were fears from even the B-58's most fervent supporters that even the latest configuration might not meet all the requirements of the military specification, but they still believed that the aircraft should be built even if the Air Force could not actually use it as originally intended. By this time, almost 200 million dollars had been spent. There was some thought to reorienting the program to a research and development effort, and even some thought to cancelling the program altogether. In June of 1955, a decision was made to restrict the program to just 13 aircraft. However, on August 22, 1955, this decision was reversed again and the B-58 was once again authorized for production. A wing of B-58s would be ready for service by mid 1960. However, there was at this time no mention of which branch of the Air Force that this wing would actually belong to.