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Engineer Dale Reed holds a model of the M2-F1 Lifting Body aircraft with the full scale version directly behind him. In support of the M2 lifting body program in the early 1960s, Dale Reed had built a number of small lifting body shapes and drop tested them from a radio controlled mothership.

The M2-F1 lifting body aircraft rests on the sun-baked floor of a dry lake bed located out in the Mojave Desert at the Dryden Flight Research Center, California. Pilot Chuck Yeager, seated in the cockpit of the M2- F1, talks with fellow pilots from left to right Milt Thompson, Don Malick and Bruce Peterson. All three flew the lifting body in several flights. The vehicle later suffered a mishap when Peterson was landing it--the oil in the landing gear hydraulics was not suitable for cold temperatures and caused the gear to break and the vehicle to suffer minor damage.

NASA research pilot Bill Dana takes a moment to watch NASA's NB-52B cruise overhead after a research flight in the HL-10. On the left, John Reeves can be seen at the cockpit of the lifting body. The HL-10 was one of five lifting body designs flown at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, from July 1966 to November 1975 to study and validate the concept of safely maneuvering and landing a low lift-over-drag vehicle designed for reentry from space.

The wingless, lifting body aircraft sitting on Rogers Dry Lake at what is now NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, from left to right are the X-24A, M2-F3 and the HL-10. The lifting body aircraft studied the feasibility of maneuvering and landing an aerodynamic craft designed for reentry from space. These lifting bodies were air launched by a B-52 mother ship, then flew powered by their own rocket engines before making an unpowered approach and landing. They helped validate the concept that a space shuttle could make accurate landings without power.

NASA research pioneer dies
Antelope Valley Press

Oral history pilot panel focuses on X-15, shuttle

Dale Reed was one of the modest geniuses who helped keep the USA at the leading edge of aeronautics during the first century of flight. I love the story about Reed pitching his ideas about lifting bodies to Flight Test Center Director Paul Bikle, with the goal of attaining project status and a budget. Bikle told him that money was very tight but he so believed in Reed's talent and was so convinced by the self funded work he had done with models that he scraped money from the already budgeted coffee fund to get the lifting body project off the ground.