DROPPING THE ORANGE BEAST
DURING THE PAST 70 YEARS, NUMEROUS BOOKS, ARTICLES, DOCUMENTARIES AND MOVIES HAVE TOLD THE STORY OF HOW U.S. AIR FORCE PILOT CHUCK YEAGER BROKE THE SOUND BARRIER IN A BELL X-1 ON OCTOBER 14, 1947.
But Yeager was far from alone in his pursuit of that historic milestone. Scores of other individuals who contributed to the success of the project have gone largely unnoticed by the general public. They were the Bell engineers and mechanics, the ground crew and the men who carried that orange beast into the sky. Without them, the world would never have heard of Yeager.
America’s first rocket-powered research plane, the X-1 was designed to push the unknown limits of high-speed and high-altitude flight with a superbly designed airframe and liquid-fueled rocket motors. In March 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces contracted with Bell and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to develop the XS-1 (its original designation) and fly it up to and beyond the transonic “barrier.”
The huge B-29 Superfortress was the only aircraft then capable of lifting a fully fueled X-1 to its launch altitude of 25,000 feet. Bell extensively modified Superfortress serial no. 45-21800 to accommodate the X-1, removing the bulkhead between the bomb bays, the bay doors and large sections of the fuselage for the rocket plane’s nose, wings, high tail and stabilizer. Removing so much of the bomber’s hull reduced structural integrity, so a steel longitudinal spar was installed through the centerline. To eliminate glare from the polished aluminum skin and provide a highly visible reference point for the X-1 pilot, the entire underside of the B-29 was painted black.
The rocket plane, painted bright international orange, was hung from a standard D-4 bomb
