BY THOMAS LOY
On Oct. 16, 1963, Maj. Sidney
J. Kubesch, along with Maj.
John Barrett and Capt. Gerald
Williamson, made an 8,028mile trip in a B-58 Hustler
nicknamed “Greased Lightning”
in 8 hours, 35 minutes at an
average speed of 938 miles an
hour.
It was the longest supersonic
flight in history. It still holds that
record.
Although the bomber had to
slow down five times for inflight refueling during its dash
halfway around the world,
it still managed to halve the
previous west-to-east record of
17 hours, 42 minutes set by a
British Canberra jet in 1955.
The crew and the B-58 bomber
were stationed at then-Bunker
Hill Air Force Base near Peru,
Indiana.
President John F. Kennedy
announced the record flight
from Washington after the
Hustler touched down on the
airfield at Greenham Common,
England, at 10:34 p.m. Japan
time.
Newspapers and other media
outlets covered the story for
months.
Talking to reporters, Kubesch
said the B-58 “performed
magnificently” and called the
flight “routine.”
It was anything but routine.
It took five inflight refuelings
near Japan, Alaska, Greenland
and Iceland to keep the plane
going, and Kubesch recalled
flying right through the middle
of the Northern Lights.
“We saw ‘em after Anchorage.
They were really there. All
‘round us, bright and changing
and continuous,” he said in a
newspaper article. “The whole
night was only about 3 hours
45 minutes long.”
“It was early afternoon Oct. 16
when we left Japan,” he said.
“We passed the international
dateline about Shemya and
it was then the early evening
of the 15th – we were back in
yesterday. Over Anchorage it
was near midnight local time
and so we went back into the
16th again. And finally we saw
the second sunrise of Oct. 16
near Thule.”
That’s what happens when
you’re flying Mach 2 to the east
and the sun is only doing Mach
1 to the west, Kubesch said.
Now, 50 years later, the historic
B-58 bomber has a prominent
place in the Strategic Aerospace Museum in Ashland,
Neb. The flight suit and helmet
Kubesch wore is on display at
the Grissom Air Museum near
Peru, IN.
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