YEAGER BREAKS SOUND BARRIER: October 14, 1947 [today in history]

History Channel ^ | Oct 14, 2004 | unknown

[Mike Fieschko]

U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager's achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

[nightdriver]

The picture shows a hinge in the horizontal stabilizer indicative of being an elevtor. The elevator of the first X-1 was discovered in mid-flight to be useless at supersonic speed and Yeager only recovered control and saved the plane by clear thinking and judicious use of the trim function, which utilized moving the entire horizontal stabilizer.

The design was subsequently changed to make the entire stabilizer the elevator, and the "flying tail" was born.

[Vision]

Cool, God Bless you sir

[tellw]

I think Chuck Yeager also appeared in television commercials in 1988 endorsing George HW Bush on defense issues.

[IGOTMINE]

I was present October 14, 1997 for the 50th Anniversary flight. He did it in an F-15E this time, so it wasn't quite as tricky :)

I can remember him taxing past the crowd with the canopy open, waving at us. He pulled up and parked, and I thought someone would have to help him out of the cockpit. No way! They rolled up the ladder, General Yeager climbed down, put on his garrison cover and gave about five minutes of very appropriate remarks. Then he strode off into history.

[RayChuang88]

The reason why the F-86 could safely exceed the speed of sound was the fact the plane had a "flying" horizontal tail stabilizer that was not affected by the shockwave of transonic flight, similar in design to the Bell XS-1 and the Miles M 52. There is no "official" proof that the F-86 went faster than Mach 1.0 before the XS-1 did but there are reports that North American test pilot George Welch did create sonic booms with the XP-86 prototype before Yeager's official flight on October 14, 1947.

By the way, the British did fly a scale model of the M 52 some years after Yeager's famous flight, and that research vehicle did exceed the speed of sound surprisingly smoothly, confirming that the "flying" horizontal stabilizer was the reason why the XS-1 succeeded in exceeding Mach 1.0.