Word: pilote
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...crossed the sonic barrier is a tightly guarded secret. But when he looked at his instruments after a few moments, he realized that he was flying actually faster than sound. The terrible sonic wall lay far behind. The X-1 had not disintegrated. It still flew beautifully ("a pilot's dream") and Chuck was still in one piece...
After the first few flights have proved it airworthy, the airplane is turned over to a military test pilot as his "project." He takes it into the air, loaded with automatic recording instruments, to find out 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...
...Enough Money. The 90-odd pilots of the Flight Test Division, most of them based at Wright Field, have the highest prestige of any group in the peacetime Air Force. Slim, unshakably calm Colonel Albert Boyd, 42, chief of the division, picks his men with minute care. Their records must show that they are not "accident prone." Formal engineering training is valuable, but character is essential. The prospective test pilot must be alert, intelligent, stable and not excitable. He must be enthusiastic about the work. There isn't enough money, explains Colonel Boyd undramatically, to pay for what...
...Regulars. Most test pilots stay only a short time at Muroc, coming & going with their "projects," i.e., the aircraft on which they are making tests. Colonel Boyd, a strict but much-beloved "Old Man," is there a great deal. His pilots testify that "he does everything we do" and he is one of the six Air Force men who have flown faster than sound in the X-1.* ("The Old Man did fine," says Chuck.) In 1947, Test Pilot Boyd also set a new world's speed record (623.8 m.p.h.) over Muroc Lake in a specially built...
Chuck Yeager, Major Cardenas (Chuck's C.O. as well as the pilot who takes the X-1 aloft), and Flight Engineer Jackie Ridley are permanent at Muroc. The X-1 is not a 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...