Word: sonics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...search for the Affray took 59 days, covered a 1,000-sq. mi. Channel area where sonic gear marked the position of more than 90 different wrecks. Each time, the camera was lowered away. Sitting comfortably in the captain's cabin, the Navy diver needed only a glance at the TV screen to see that most of the wrecks were old fishing boats or coal barges...
...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...
...little (4O-ft.) white Skyrocket had waited a long time for its day of glory. Built as a Navy experimental ship, it made its first take-off from Muroc's long, dry lake bed almost three years ago. Even then it could crack through the sonic barrier, but for a supersonic research ship, its performance was unspectacular. The stubby little rocket-powered Bell X-1 had already been dropped from the belly of a B29, and had carried its pilot close to twice the speed of sound (TIME, April 1, 1949). By comparison the newer Skyrocket dawdled...