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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orionblamblam" data-source="post: 314764" data-attributes="member: 90"><p>Thanks. The XB-59 seems like one of those designs that should be better known than it is. It failed because it did not promise the performance that the B-58 did... but had it actually been built, that lack of performance *might* have actually helped the B-59 have a longer service life than the B-58. The B-58 was designed to go blisteringly fast at high altitude, but Soviet SAM development made it fly low and slow, utterly ruining the potential of the plane. The B-59 was also supposed to fly high, but with a subsonic cruise and a rather meager supersonic dash. In the new SAM environment, it might have done better low and slow.</p></blockquote><p></p>