Word: bridgeman
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...morning of Aug. 15 (as the Navy told about it last week), William Barton Bridgeman, Douglas Aircraft Co. test pilot, climbed into a B29, sat down in its crew's quarters as it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on Muroc Dry Lake, Calif. Under the bomber's belly hung Bill Bridgeman's own baby: the milk-white Douglas Skyrocket, slim, needle-nosed, with four rocket motors...
Last month, like its predecessor, the X-1, the Skyrocket was hooked up into the enlarged bomb-bay of a 6-29 and hauled 35,000 feet into the cold, thin air over the Mojave. Test Pilot Bill Bridgeman was gunning for an altitude where the outside air temperature is 67° F. below zero and the pressure low enough to make a man's blood boil; though the little plane's cockpit was pressurized and air-conditioned, Bridgeman wore a specially designed pressure-suit with a helmet like a deep-sea diver's. A tiny windshield...
Long Glide Home. Cut loose from the bomber, Bridgeman switched on his rocket motors, climbed quickly to the test altitude (about 12 miles). Then he pushed over into level flight. The tiny (25-ft. spread), sharply swept wings, the sleek fuselage that carries its rakish tail surfaces high above the wing wake, met little resistance from the rarefied atmosphere. For three thundering minutes the Skyrocket boomed along. Before its rocket fuel ran dry it was probably screaming through empty upper air at 1,500 m.p.h. or more. Power gone, it glided in lazy spirals back to its base at Muroc...
...test data remained secret. The Navy would only say that Pilot Bridgeman had climbed higher and flown faster than any mortal. But he had done it as a scientist, busy watching his instruments, recording information for later study. There had been no time for even a glance at the sky, and Bridgeman had only one tantalizing comment on his high, wild ride: in the first few seconds of rocket flight, he said, "you feel like you're going right on out of this world...
Cohn is allotted $25,000 by the Higgins fund for his work this year, while Bridgeman receives $14,000. Former Dean Burwell of the Medical School will get $20,000 for his research...