Word: sonic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...with an infectious grin and an easy West Virginia drawl. What makes Chuck Yeager outstanding, even among the crack pilots at Muroc, is the fact that his name is certain to go down prominently in aviation history books. Chuck Yeager was the first man to break through the dreaded "sonic wall" and fly faster than sound...
...with a single earphone. But the Buck Rogers buffs might prefer a football type helmet, which the American Junior Aircraft Co. of Portland, Ore. displayed at the 46th annual American Toy Fair. It carried a tone transmitter (see cut) which controls the steering of a glider airplane by sonic vibrations. A steady sound tone makes it fly straight, interruptions turn it alternately right and left (price: $25). The 10,000 U.S. retail buyers attending the toy fair did so much early Christmas shopping that the Toy Manufacturers of the U.S.A. reported that 1949's business would be just...
...merely a flying laboratory, but the F-86A is a practical military aircraft (see BUSINESS). One of the secrets of its speed is probably its swept-back wings. When the plane itself is flying faster than sound, the air passes over the back-slanted wing at less than sonic speed, and so makes less trouble...
...both jet and rocket energy. Built by Douglas, the Skyrocket is a swordfish-shaped, back-swept-winged sister ship of the Navy's Skystreak, present holder of the world's speed record (650.6 m.p.h.). Douglasmen hoped that it would make air history by breaking through the sonic wall-i.e., by flying faster than the speed of sound (about 765 m.p.h. at sea level). ¶ In St. Louis, the McDonell Aircraft Corp. put the world's first ramjet helicopter* through its paces for the U.S. Air Force. In test flights, the 310-lb. "flying bike" readily lifted...
...firing tests, its six new .50 caliber M-3 guns pumped out lead 50% faster than the standard M-2 guns of World War II. The problem of firing high-powered machine-guns at near-sonic speeds had been licked...