by Nigel Blackwell | Planes
From the heady days of 1947 through to the present day you could be forgiven for thinking the Air Force/NACA X-1 was the lone aircraft probing the sound barrier, but it wasn’t. The Navy had contracted the Douglas Aircraft Corporation to build an aircraft with a...
by Nigel Blackwell | Planes
In the years after Yeager broke Mach 1 in the X-1, the plane and its growing band of pilots were frequent visitors to the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the world; Life, Time, and probably even Pony Weekly featured articles. This set the publics...
by Nigel Blackwell | Planes
The X-1 program wasn’t just about reaching Mach 1. Supersonic was only one of numerous areas of flight and flying that the craft explored. The X-1’s speed was achieved by the thrust of a Reaction Motors XLR11 rocket (more of which later), and the duration...