Flights of Bell X-1, Douglas D-558, & Northrop X-4 at Muroc Air Force Base 1951 NACA; Kodachrome

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more at http://scitech.quickfound.net/ The Bell X-1 rocketplane (X-1-2, serial 46-063) is prepared for flight, mated to the B-29 mothership, dropped, flown and landed by Scott Crossfield in 1951. Then the Douglas D-558 Skyrocket is prepared and flown. Finally, the Northrop X-4 Bantam jet aircraft is flown. Silent NACA color film taken at Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base. Crossfield flew the X-1 10 times, all in 1951. Film of the other two aircraft MIGHT be from the same year. The X-1-2 was later rebuilt at the X-1E. Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1 The Bell X-1, originally designated XS-1, was a joint NACA-U.S. Army Air Forces-U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by the Bell Aircraft Company. Conceived in 1944 and designed and built during 1945, it reached nearly 1,000 m.p.h. (1,600 km/h) in 1948. A derivative of this same design, the Bell X-1A, having greater fuel capacity and hence longer rocket burning time, exceeded 1,600 m.p.h. (2,575 km/h) in 1954. The X-1 was the first airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the so-called X-planes, an American series of experimental rocket planes designated for testing of new technologies and often kept secret... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_D-558 The Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket (or D-558-II) was a rocket and jet-powered supersonic research aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company for the United States Navy. On 20 November 1953, shortly before the 50th anniversary of powered flight, Scott Crossfield piloted the Skyrocket to Mach 2, or more than 1,290 mph (2076 km/h), the first time an aircraft had exceeded twice the speed of sound... High-Speed Flight Research Station Chief Walter C. Williams had petitioned NACA headquarters unsuccessfully to fly the aircraft to Mach 2 to garner the research data at that speed. Finally, after Crossfield had secured the agreement of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, NACA director Hugh L. Dryden relaxed the organization's usual practice of leaving record setting to others and consented to attempting a flight to Mach 2. In addition to adding the nozzle extensions, the NACA flight team at the HSFRS chilled the fuel (alcohol) so more could be poured into the tank and waxed the fuselage to reduce drag. Project engineer Herman O. Ankenbruck drew up a plan to fly to about 72,000 feet (21,900 m) and push over into a slight dive. Crossfield made aviation history on 20 November 1953, when he flew to Mach 2.005, 1,291 miles per hour (2,078 km/h). It was the only Mach-2 flight the Skyrocket ever made... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-4_Bantam The Northrop X-4 Bantam was a prototype small twin-jet aircraft manufactured by Northrop Corporation in 1948. It had no horizontal tail surfaces, depending instead on combined elevator and aileron control surfaces (called elevons) for control in pitch and roll attitudes, almost exactly in the manner of the similar-format, rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163 of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. Some aerodynamicists had proposed that eliminating the horizontal tail would also do away with stability problems at fast speeds (called shock stall) resulting from the interaction of supersonic shock waves from the wings and the horizontal stabilizers. The idea had merit, but the flight control systems of that time prevented the X-4 from any success... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Scott_Crossfield Albert Scott Crossfield (October 2, 1921 -- April 19, 2006) was an American naval officer and test pilot... In 1950, Crossfield joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station (now the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center) at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as an aeronautical research pilot... Over the next five years, he flew nearly all of the experimental aircraft under test at Edwards, including the X-1, XF-92, X-4, X-5, Douglas D-558-I Skystreak and the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket. During one of his X-1 flights, the cockpit windows completely frosted and Crossfield was literally flying blind. Ever resourceful, he removed a loafer, took off his sock, and created a peep hole to reference his chase plane wingman all the way to landing. On November 20, 1953, he became the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound as he piloted the Skyrocket to a speed of 1,291 mph (2,078 km/h, Mach 2.005). The Skyrocket D-558-II surpassed its intended design speed by 25 percent on that day. With 99 flights in the rocket-powered X-1 and D-558-II, Crossfield had — by a wide margin — more experience with rocketplanes than any other pilot in the world by the time he left Edwards to join North American Aviation in 1955...