Bell needed someone who could safely guide their rocket plane into the thinnest of air. Yet for all its technological innovations, the X-1 couldn't fly itself. outrunning the shockwaves that had destroyed earlier aircraft." The addition of thin wings, a rocket engine, and a tail design borrowed from British research gave the plane the speed and stability it needed to break the sound barrier in level flight. 50 caliber bullet, which was known to fly at supersonic speeds without deforming. "Compressibility," he says, killed many pilots but proved difficult to remedy. Hersch adds that earlier aircraft powered by propellers and the first turbojet engines could achieve near-supersonic speeds during steep dives but had fuselages and wings that were particularly vulnerable to transonic instability. Pilots during WWII had reported that their planes ripped apart when they approached that speed, as if hitting a "wall." Later on, engineers realized breaking the wall depended on plane design. He was selected for the test pilot program because of his instinctive flying skills and his ability to remain calm under enormous pressure.īefore Yeager did it, it was commonly thought that you couldn't break the sound barrier. Without his return to combat, Yeager said, he probably never would've been the pilot who broke the speed of sound. "A World War II ace, he was a quick study who was able to translate what he experienced in the cockpit to the engineers on the ground in the days before computers." "Yeager was an exceptional, highly intelligent pilot who possessed a remarkable, innate understanding of machines," says Van der Linden. He ultimately recorded 11.5 victories - at one point downing five enemy aircraft in a single day, an act that vindicated his reinstatement.
Dwight Eisenhower, and eventually got his wish. But Yeager appealed that decision all the way up to Allied commander Gen.
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