Word: sonic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Only a few years ago, designers thought that at the speed of sound, turbulent shock waves would pound a plane to bits. But when jets pushed aircraft up to the sonic barrier, it turned out to be nothing worse than a bump in the road. Plane after plane passed over into the exhilarating calm of supersonic flight. In the current issue of Skyline magazine, Vice President Ray Rice of North American Aviation, Inc. explains why the thermal barrier can only be pushed ahead, never completely overcome...
...designers and test pilots pushed their planes up toward the speed of sound, the danger they feared most was the beating they took in the "transsonic zone." When an airplane is moving close to sonic speed, shock waves'(powerful sound waves) form on its wings and control surfaces. They come and go, shift irregularly and sometimes exert enormous forces on the plane's structure. Many early airplanes that trespassed too far into the transsonic range were destroyed by galloping shock waves. The remedy is now understood: thinner wings and tail surfaces, and a quick passage through the danger...
...North American's FJ-2 "Fury," another swept-wing jet fighter capable of near sonic speeds. An older sister, the FJ-1, first flown in 1946, was taken over by the Air Force, and became the F-86 Sabre jet of Korean fame...
Schoolboy's Dart. Airplanes with conventional wings have been known to run into trouble at high speeds. Near the sonic barrier, the turbulent air shoved aside by wings and fuselage offers so much resistance that to go still faster requires extravagant power. Given that power, some straight-winged planes do push through into supersonic flight, e.g., Bell's rocket-powered X-1 (TIME, April 18, 1949). But there are tense moments while they pass through disturbed...
...59th day the sonic gear picked up another marker in the underseas graveyard. Over went the camera, 285 feet down off the island of Alderney. Onto the screen came the image of a submarine's conning tower. As the camera swept along the hull, the brass name plate came into focus: Affray...