Supersonic/ Hypersonic in-flight refueling studies

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IIRC there were also B-58 and Suntan studies for a supersonic tanker.
 
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Oh boy, never knew that ! I suppose the deal was to get a special pod below the B-58 with LH2 for the Suntan ? the nice thing is, with an external pod you don't care about internal kerosene of the B-58. And you can put all the insulation and cold and safety you need on the pod. If something goes wrong, just drop the pod away,
 
Archibald said:
Oh boy, never knew that ! I suppose the deal was to get a special pod below the B-58 with LH2 for the Suntan ?
Click to expand...

One CL-400 would serve as a tanker for another. The B-58 pod might be good for some experiments, but it wouldn't hold near enough LH2 to be worth bothering with operationally.
 
Yep a mere 50 000 pounds or less, peanuts for Suntan which needed much more than that...
 
I've discovered something pretty exciting. Related to this.

Okay, so, they thought about wingtip to wingtip refueling at Mach 6, for Aerospaceplane plane, circa 1962.

But the same idea had been considered by Clarence L. Johnson for early A-12 Oxcart studies: Archangels: in 1959.

Look at the attached documents. It's a CIA memo, almost unreadable - it even screws OCR. So I denoised it, clean it to the maximum and managed to OCR it with my brain and hands. It's like a goddamn Red Sea Scroll !

random_tools_result_12_den.jpg
 

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Ok so, so far we have
- a 1956 USAF request for a supersonic tanker (@Orionblamblam had a Douglas design at APR)
- B-58 tentatively supersonic-hydrogen-refueling of SUNTAN
- Lockheed A-7 wing tip to wing tip refueling
- Aerospaceplane same scheme
 

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