FIRST TO MACH 3
Mar 05, 2019
4 minutes
BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER
he story of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in a Bell X-1 is well known to aviation enthusiasts and the general public alike (though Yeager had plenty of help—see P. 44). But much of the history of transonic and supersonic flight testing remains relatively obscure. The X-1 spawned a series of successors, the X-1A through X-1E, which made important research contributions. Bell’s competitor, the Douglas Aircraft Company, received tremendous media attention when its D-558-2 became the first aircraft to surpass Mach 2, with Scott Crossfield at the controls. Meanwhile, Bell went on to develop the
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