Word: jetted
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...calling aircraft, are the latest planes, from the big B-36 to Buck Rogerish craft that are still marked "Top Secret." Muroc is the world's finest landing field. A deliberately overloaded bomber can labor for miles across the lake before it tries the air. An experimental jet fighter of unproved design can be tested and wrung out, with worlds of room for landing if there is a structural or power-plant failure. Muroc's miles & miles of smoothness have allowed many a crash-threatened pilot and airplane to survive and fly again...
Chuck punched the first hole on Oct. 14, 1947, when a B-29 took off from Muroc with his odd, fat little airplane nestled under its bomb-bay. Chuck's small craft had no propeller, no intake for a jet engine; only four rocket orifices in its stubby tail. The little airplane, the Bell X-1, was as daring a challenge to the unknown as the Wrights' first faltering biplane...
...whether it lives up to the contractor's guarantees. Often a hidden defect, perhaps unknown even to the manufacturer, drags the plane out of the air. The pilot's best bet is to make an emergency landing on the broad lake. Bailing out alive from a modern jet plane is difficult; it is also part of the test pilot's code to bring the aircraft back if it is humanly possible...
...ringed desert, with its mourning Joshua trees, has a kind of austere beauty. On its broad plain are little oases - alfalfa farms kept green by diesel-pumped water. There is hunting and riding. When these rural pleasures pall, Los Angeles is only 70 miles away (eleven minutes as the jet flies...
...alone on the flat desert with only a few low trees, it invites the dangerous prank that all young pilots play, no matter what the threats of flying field managers or military C.O.s. Chuck Yeager has roared low over the ranch in every sort of airplane, including the fastest jets. When he buzzes the place in a jet plane, the slap from the zipping wing jounces...