Word: sound
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What he experienced at the critical moment when he crossed the sonic barrier is a tightly guarded secret. But when he looked at his instruments after a few moments, he realized that he was flying actually faster than sound. The terrible sonic wall lay far behind. The X-1 had not disintegrated. It still flew beautifully ("a pilot's dream") and Chuck was still in one piece...
When the fuel was gone (it lasts only 2½ minutes at full power), the X-1 slowed down and was back on the other side of sound's great wall. Chuck scavenged the last of the dangerous oxygen and alcohol from the system by flushing it with nitrogen. Then he began the long glide to earth, listening to the clock ticking on the instrument panel. He somehow found this "awful boring," he says, and welcomed his spurt of interest when he landed the X-1 at close to 165 miles an hour and rolled to a stop...
...their "projects," i.e., the aircraft on which they are making tests. Colonel Boyd, a strict but much-beloved "Old Man," is there a great deal. His pilots testify that "he does everything we do" and he is one of the six Air Force men who have flown faster than sound in the X-1.* ("The Old Man did fine," says Chuck.) In 1947, Test Pilot Boyd also set a new world's speed record (623.8 m.p.h.) over Muroc Lake in a specially built F-80 (TIME, June...
Performance figures of the X-1 have not been released. The Air Force says that it has flown "hundreds of miles" faster than sound. It has probably flown above Mach 2 (1,324 m.p.h. in the cold upper atmosphere) and reached a height above 60,000 ft., a record for airplanes. The big secret - what happens as it passes Mach 1 -is well kept. Chuck has been so carefully coached on this detail that he knows how to ward off questions before they are asked. Possibly something dramatic happens. It would be just as dramatic, perhaps more so, if nothing...
...real work of the X-1. It was designed to solve the problem of practical supersonic flying. Chuck Yeager has put it through maneuvers at all speeds within its range. He has dived it under power, rolled it, looped it. He has fired guns above the speed of sound ("getting somewhere," is all he says about that...