![]() ![]() His maximum speed during this flight was Mach 1.06 (699.4 miles per hour/1,125.7 kilometers per hour). Air Force (Retired), Yeager, An Autobiography, by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Bantam Books, New York, 1985, Pages 120, 129–130.Ĭhuck Yeager and flown the XS-1 through “the sound barrier,” something many experts had believed might not be possible. 965 Mach-then tipped right off the scale.” Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached. At 40,000 feet, we were still climbing at. The moment we picked up speed I fired all four rocket chambers in rapid sequence. I fought it with the control wheel for about five hundred feet and finally got her nose down. The dive speed was too slow, and they dropped you in a nose-up stall. Wrong! You should have dropped the level. The bomb shackle release jolts you up from your seat, and as you sail out of the dark bomb bay the sun explodes in brightness. Major Cardenas, the driver, starts counting backward from ten. Ridley flashed the word from the copilot’s seat in the mother ship. (NASA)īob Cardenas climbed to 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) and then put the B-29 into a shallow dive to gain speed. ![]() A Bell XS-1 rocketplane carried aloft in the bomb bay of a modified Boeing B-29-96-BW Superfortress, serial number 45-21800. Like his P-51 Mustang fighters, he had named this airplane after his wife, Glamorous Glennis. Two more X-1 aircraft were built by Bell, and the second, 46-063, had already begun its flight testing.Ĭaptain Yeager had made three glide flights and this was to be his ninth powered flight. The X-1 airplane had been previously flown by company test pilots Jack Woolams and Chalmers Goodlin. Air Force/National Air and Space Museum)Īir Force test pilot Captain Charles Elwood (“Chuck”) Yeager, a World War II fighter ace, was the U.S. Air Force, with “Glamorous Glennis,” the Bell XS-1. Captain Charles Elwood (“Chuck”) Yeager, U.S. The B-29’s bomb bay had been modified to carry the Bell XS-1, a rocket-powered airplane designed to investigate flight at speeds near the Speed of Sound (Mach 1). Cardenas, took off from Muroc Air Force Base (now known as Edwards Air Force Base) in the high desert north of Los Angeles, California. On October 14, 1947, at approximately 10:00 a.m., a four-engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber, piloted by Major Robert L. ![]()
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