Word: bigs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...transient project but the Air Force's first "research airplane," and it needs both Muroc's room and its walled-off secrecy. The X-1 was never intended as an "operational airplane"; it is more like a flying wind tunnel. Its big advantage is that its rockets, which produce a thrust of 6,000 Ibs., are not weakened, like "air-breathing" engines, by high speed or high altitude. The X-1 can whip up to where the air is thin and still have power to pick up speed as long as the fuel lasts...
...have not been released. The Air Force says that it has flown "hundreds of miles" faster than sound. It has probably flown above Mach 2 (1,324 m.p.h. in the cold upper atmosphere) and reached a height above 60,000 ft., a record for airplanes. The big secret - what happens as it passes Mach 1 -is well kept. Chuck has been so carefully coached on this detail that he knows how to ward off questions before they are asked. Possibly something dramatic happens. It would be just as dramatic, perhaps more so, if nothing at all happens...
...facts are that Chuck was born in a big white house a few miles from Hamlin, W. Va. (pop. 850). His father, A. Hal Yeager, is a prosperous contract gas-well driller. Chuck is a hero to Hamlin, but the townspeople love him with special fervor because he refuses to act like a hero. Says Louie Hoff, music instructor for Lincoln County schools: "He isn't the biggety type. He's still the same nice kid." Mrs. Ocie J. Smith, who has taught school in Hamlin for nigh on 40 years, says: "Land sakes! Why, when...
Bugs & Slide Trombones. As a freckle-faced boy, Chuck was mostly interested in collecting bugs, growing gourds and sunflowers, hunting with a .22 rifle, and fishing in little Mud River. He played in the school band, starting with a big bull tuba but settling finally for a slide trombone. He went to Methodist Sunday school, stayed out of trouble, and was quiet almost to the point of being timid. "Nobody ever noticed Charlie Yeager much," says Lyle E. Ashworth, a classmate, "until 1943 when he buzzed the town in a P47 and sent old Mrs. Lon Richardson to the hospital...
...Big Boost. Washington and Lee started out in 1749 as Augusta Academy, when early settlers of the region decided to plant Scottish-Presbyterian learning in the Valley of Virginia. In 1798, the year before he died, George Washington handed the school its first big boost: $50,000 worth of canal stock, that had originally been the gift to Washington of the Virginia Legislature. The school gratefully changed its name to Washington Academy, later to Washington College...