Word: bridgeman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Angel with a Drawl. Even fueling the Skyrocket was an unearthly business. Men dressed in hoods with glass faceplates, plastic coveralls and heavy gloves worked more than three hours before dawn to do the job. Writes Bridgeman of the first time he saw it done: "The minus-297-degree-below-zero liquid oxygen was introduced into one of the large twin tanks that sit two inches apart from each other. If the liquid oxygen should be contaminated, it would blow the plane, trailer, crew and spectators off the desert floor . . . Once in the tank, the liquid oxygen boiled off continuously...
...machines were no more fantastic than the men who uneasily controlled them. The Air Force's "Chuck" Yeager (TIME, April 18, 1949), first man to hurtle through the sound barrier (in Bell's X-I), makes an entrance in Bridgeman's book that is worthy of jet-age grand opera-and typical of Yeager. As Bridgeman started his first rocket flight in the Skyrocket, bright sunlight made it difficult to read the dials in the cockpit. Suddenly a shadow hovered over his face, and a relaxed voice came over the radio: "Is that better, son?" Yeager, flying...
Ghost on My Shoulder. Pilot Bridgeman tells his story with pride but not conceit. He tells of the things he had to learn till they became second nature, e.g., reverse breathing at high altitude, when a tank forces oxygen into his lungs and he has to breathe it out. He explains how many hours he spends studying and how many sweating. Every two weeks for three months he climbed down from the B-29 into his rocket ship. Each time the flight was called off. Finally he began to toss a utilitarian Dixie container, betraying his nervousness, over the side...
...Bridgeman proves the necessary role of man even in the most highly developed planes. Engineers said the Skyrocket could not survive a spin. Bridgeman fell 7,000 ft. in ten seconds in a spin-and survived it. Another time engineers said the Skyrocket would not handle badly if sent into a sharp pushover at high altitude, but Test Pilot Bridgeman discovered: "Harder she rolls, harder and faster. The flat horizon line flips wildly through the squinting slit windows. I fight the crazy gyration with the ailerons. They are no weapons. They are feathers in a windstorm ... I release my hand...
High spot in the book is Bridgeman's record altitude try. Writes Bridgeman: "I have left the world . . . Every cell, fluid, muscle of my body is acutely awake. Perception is enormously exaggerated- black is blacker, white is whiter. Silence is more acute . . . Fear seems to be independent, a ghost sitting on my shoulder . . . Time is now. Nothing but this experience is significant ... It is intensely bright outside . . . There seems to be no reflection; it is all black or white, apparent or nonapparent. No half-tones ... I roll to the right and there it is. Out of the tiny window...