Word: cockpits
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Only 70 seconds before the B-29 crew was to release the plane, an explosion ripped through the X-1A. The blast shook up Pilot Joseph Walker, but he carefully turned off cockpit switches, began jettisoning the rocket's highly volatile fuel (hydrogen peroxide, liquid oxygen, alcohol, water). Then he crawled groggily up into the belly of the B29. The B-29's civilian skipper, Stan Butchart, hoped to land his valuable cargo without further trouble, but the chase plane's pilot saw that there was still some dangerous fuel in the X-1A's tanks...
...plane, and pushed by a rocket engine designed to give a 16,000-lb. thrust, the slim-nosed, stainless steel X-2 will be used mainly to explore the effects of high speed and air friction on the metals used in aircraft building. In an emergency the capsule-enclosed cockpit can be ejected from the new plane; after it falls by parachute to a safe altitude, the pilot can bail out as if from any more conventional craft and float to earth with his own chute. With the X-2 flying in the air perhaps as fast...
Campbell strapped on his light-blue life jacket and wedged himself into the Bluebird's cockpit. The 4,000-h.p. turbojet whined into life. Once he was lined up on his marker buoy. Campbell widened out on his foot throttle. Spray arched from her stern as the Bluebird rose on her floats and shot toward the end of the lake five miles away. Her jet roar thundered through the nearby hills. Seconds later, Campbell was ready to refuel for the run back...
Again he aimed the Bluebird. Almost before it started the whole performance was over. Back at his base, Campbell climbed from the Bluebird's cockpit and grimaced with pain; an old back injury had been aggravated by his bouncing, high-speed ride. He shuffled to a nearby crane, held on to its hook, and called out, "I want to stretch my back." The crane operator hoisted him a foot off the ground, let him hang for a few moments and then lowered him gently to earth. After that, he joined his wife and Lady Campbell to wait...
...point, the two men piled into Hughes's Convair and took off for Las Vegas. As the plane droned over the desert, Hughes and O'Neil dickered in the cockpit, while two lawyers dozed in the seats behind them. At one point Hughes casually turned the piloting over to O'Neil (although he had never flown a plane), came back after a while and said, "Well, Tom, you're a great pilot...