Word: skyrockets
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...rocket ship which Bridgeman jockeyed to speed and altitude records (79,494 ft., 1,238 m.p.h.) in 1951 was the third stiletto-nosed, dull white Skyrocket built by Douglas for the Navy.* It could fly for three minutes under full power after it had been dropped from the bomb bay of a B29, but it took weeks to prepare for each 180-sec. flight, including replacing the 15 coats of lacquer burned off in every...
Angel with a Drawl. Even fueling the Skyrocket was an unearthly business. Men dressed in hoods with glass faceplates, plastic coveralls and heavy gloves worked more than three hours before dawn to do the job. Writes Bridgeman of the first time he saw it done: "The minus-297-degree-below-zero liquid oxygen was introduced into one of the large twin tanks that sit two inches apart from each other. If the liquid oxygen should be contaminated, it would blow the plane, trailer, crew and spectators off the desert floor . . . Once in the tank, the liquid oxygen boiled off continuously...
...Chuck" Yeager (TIME, April 18, 1949), first man to hurtle through the sound barrier (in Bell's X-I), makes an entrance in Bridgeman's book that is worthy of jet-age grand opera-and typical of Yeager. As Bridgeman started his first rocket flight in the Skyrocket, bright sunlight made it difficult to read the dials in the cockpit. Suddenly a shadow hovered over his face, and a relaxed voice came over the radio: "Is that better, son?" Yeager, flying chase in an F-86 jet, had screened the sun. It was Bridgeman's introduction...
...less than 14 years after its dedication, the National Gallery in Washington ranks with the world's finest. The gallery's principal offering is a grand tour of Western art-from stiff but splendid beginnings in Siena and Florence right through to the skyrocket flash and fizzle of modern times. Casual visitors may make the tour in a day, students in a decade; the gallery is solidly studded with masterpieces...
...Force test plane broke the world's record for high-altitude flight, soaring higher than the 83,235-ft. mark reached by a Navy Douglas Skyrocket last year (TIME, Sept. 14). So reported Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbott at an Air Force Association convention in Omaha last week. For security reasons, he refused to identify the new record-breaking plane, the pilot or the exact altitude reached. Best guesstimates: altitude, 90,000 ft. (17 miles) above sea level, probably reached by Bell's XiA rocket aircraft. An added feather in the Air Force...