Word: pilots
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Captain Milburn G. Apt, who flew the X-2 on her last flight, was new at the job. He was an experienced test pilot and familiar with jet aircraft, but he had never handled the X-2 or any other rocket plane. Air experts have wondered why he was not permitted to take it easy the first time and fly the X-2 slowly (maybe twice the speed of sound) until he got the feel...
...palace discords back home in The Netherlands (TIME, Oct. 29), Prince Bernhard, seeming to be enjoying every moment of his bachelor vacation away from Queen Juliana, concentrated on donning a life preserver at Jacksonville. Fla. An able airman and best-known jet pilot among Europe's royalty, Bernhard then flew off to the aircraft carrier Forrestal for an informal two-day fling with the U.S.'s Atlantic Fleet...
Supersonic speed has brought a new hazard for jet-plane pilots: shooting themselves down with their own gunfire. Last week the Navy told how Test Pilot Tom Attridge was trying out the 20-mm. guns of a Grumman F11F-i fighter off Long Island. He put the airplane into a dive, speeded up to 880 m.p.h. and fired a four-second burst (about 70 rounds). Then he went into a steeper dive and fired another burst. As the last bullets left his guns, something struck and shattered his windshield. Pilot Attridge thought he had run down a bird. He headed...
Examination of the airplane proved that Pilot Attridge had hit no bird; he had overtaken and run down the fire from his own guns. A nonexplosive 20-mm. bullet (used in practice) had gone through his windshield. Another had hit the engine, a third had punctured the nose. If the projectiles had been explosive, Pilot Attridge would not have got home alive...
Home Is the Sailor. In Ensenada, Mexico, three crewmen of the American fishing boat Sportsman were taken into custody by the Mexican coast guard after Captain E. W. Bartell charged that they threw the boat's food, tools and fishing gear overboard, cut the automatic pilot loose, pulled out a plug in the bait tank, set fire to the engine room, forced him to steer back to port by threatening him with a shotgun and butcher knives, because the cook wanted to visit his pregnant wife...