Word: skyrocket
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Navy Secretary Dan Kimball last week officially confirmed the unofficial guesses that the Navy's famed Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket had hit a top speed close to 1,300 m.p.h. on its record-breaking flight a year ago (TIME, July 16, 1951). The precise figure: 1,238 m.p.h. The record was made in level flight at the top of the plane's run. The Skyrocket's altitude record, made on another flight...
Test Pilot Bill Bridgeman added one other bit of pertinent information: even at his top speed he had needed no special cooling equipment. Said he: "The plane is soaked in cold at 65° below zero [F.], while the B-29 [from which the Skyrocket is dropped] cruises at an altitude of 35,000 ft. So far that has been all the air conditioning I've needed...
...might have to do menial work, and that would have an "unfortunate effect on prestige and morale." Moreover, explained the Army solemnly, wives in outlying areas often have to travel 50 miles to buy groceries at PXs and, without servants to stay home and guard the houses, burglaries would skyrocket...
...turns the nose upward for a steep climb. This keeps the speed below Mach 1, and takes him up toward the thin upper atmosphere where really high speed is possible. Bill finally reaches a point where the air is so thin that it can no longer support the Skyrocket below the speed of sound. Then he "bends over," flies at a flatter climb, and lets the speed build...
Swooping Plunge. In the thin, high air (probably close to 80.000 ft.), there is not much kickback in passing the speed of sound. The Skyrocket was designed to minimize transsonic buffeting, and the rockets push it quickly to high supersonic speed...