Breaking the sound barrier was a very complex undertaking, and I knew next to nothing about it. Twice during quick trips out to Muroc (Edwards Air Force Base) in California to pick up airplanes and ferry them back to Wright Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, I saw the X-1 being shackled beneath a B-29 bomber prior to taking off on a flight. It was a small ship, painted bright orange and shaped like a .50-caliber machine-gun bullet. Somebody told me it was rocket-propelled with 6,000 pounds of thrust, designed to fly at twice the speed of sound. That was beyond my understanding, and I let it go at that.
When I returned to Wright in May 1947, I attended a meeting of all the fighter test pilots, requesting volunteers to fly the X-1. Bob Hoover, Jack Ridley and I raised our hands, along with about five others. It was probably a good thing that I wasn`t very close to the flight test engineers who worked in the section, because they had warned some of the pilots to stay away from the X-1 project if they wanted to stay alive.
A few days later Col. Albert G. Boyd, head of the flight test division, sent for me. He never looked sterner, and when I saluted in front of his desk, he kept me standing at attention for nearly half an hour, while we talked. I left in a state of shock. He didn`t exactly offer me the X-1, but he sure moved around the edges.
He asked me why I had volunteered, and I told him it seemed like an interesting program, something else to fly. He said, ”Yeager, this is the airplane to fly. The first pilot who goes faster than sound will be in the history books. It will be the most historic ride since the Wright brothers. And that`s why the X-1 was built.”
He told me there were all kinds of incredible planes on the drawing boards, including an aircraft that could fly six times faster than the speed of sound and a supersonic bomber powered by an atomic reactor. The Air Corps was developing a project that would put military pilots into space. But all these plans were stuck on a dime until the X-1 punched through the sound barrier.
”I haven`t any doubt it will be done,” Col. Boyd told me, ”and that an Air Corps pilot will be the one to do it.”
I asked the old man if he thought there was a sound barrier. ”Hell, no,” he said, ”or I wouldn`t be sending out one of my pilots. But I want you to know the hazards. There are some very good aviation people who think that at the speed of sound, air loads may go to infinite. Do you know what that means?”
”Yes, sir,” I said. ”That would be it.”
He nodded. ”Nobody will know for sure what happens at Mach 1 until somebody gets there. This is an extremely risky mission, and we`re not going to take it one step at a time, but one inch at a time. This is our first crack at being allowed to conduct research flying, and we are not going to blow it.” Then he asked me if I wanted to fly in it and when I said yes, he said, ”Okay, Yeager, it`s your ride.”
(Yeager flew the X-1 eight times between Aug. 29 and Oct. 14, 1947. During the test flights a number of problems were encountered and overcome. The most severe problem occurred as the flights began approaching the speed of sound, and unless a solution was found, Yeager`s efforts to break the sound barrier would be doomed.)
On Oct. 5, I made my sixth powered flight and experienced shock-wave buffeting for the first time as I reached .86 Mach. It felt like I was driving on bad shock absorbers over uneven paving stones. The right wing suddenly got heavy and began to drop, and when I tried to correct it my controls were sluggish. I increased my speed to .88 Mach to see what would happen. I saw my aileron (wing flaps) vibrating with shock waves, and only with effort could I hold my wing level.
But on my very next flight we got knocked on our fannies. I was flying at .94 Mach at 40,000 feet, experiencing the usual buffeting, when I pulled back on the control wheel, and nothing happened! The airplane continued flying with the same attitude and in the same direction.
The control wheel felt as if the cables had snapped. I didn`t know what in hell was happening. I turned off the engine and slowed down. I jettisoned my fuel and landed feeling certain that I had taken my last ride in the X-1. Flying at .94, I lost my pitch control. My elevator ceased to function. At the speed of sound, the ship`s nose was predicted to go either up or down, and without pitch control, I was in a helluva bind.
I told Ridley I thought we had had it. There was no way I was going faster than .94 Mach without an elevator. He looked sick. So did Dick Frost, the project manager, and the NACA (National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, forerunner of National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
team. We called Col. Boyd at Wright, and he flew out immediately to confer with us. Meanwhile, NACA analyzed the telemetry data from the flight and found that at .94 Mach, a shock wave was slammed right at the hinge point of the elevator on the tail, negating my controls. Colonel Boyd just shook his head. ”Well,” he said, ”It looks to me like we`ve reached the end of the line.” Everyone seemed to agree except for Jack Ridley.
He sat at a corner of the conference table scribbling little notes and equations. He said, ”Well, maybe Chuck can fly without using the elevator. Maybe he can get by using only the horizontal stabilizer.” The stabilizer was the wing-like structure on the tail that stabilized pitch control.
Bell`s engineers had purposely built into them an extra control authority because they had anticipated elevator ineffectiveness caused by shock waves. This extra authority was a trim switch in the cockpit that would allow a small air motor to pivot the stabilizer up or down, creating a moving tail that could act as an auxiliary elevator by lowering or raising the airplane`s nose. We were leery about trying it while flying at high speeds; instead, we set the trim on the ground and left it alone.
No X-1 flight was ever routine. But when I was dropped (from a B-29) to repeat the same flight profile that had lost my elevator effectiveness, I admit to being unusually grim. I flew as alert and precisely as I knew how. If the damned Ughknown swallowed me up, there wasn`t much I could do about it, but I concentrated on that trim switch. At the slightest indication that something wasn`t right, I would break the record for backing off.
Pushing the switch forward opened a solenoid that allowed high-pressure nitrogen gas through the top motor to the stabilizer, changing its angle of attack and stabilizing its upward pitch. If I pulled back, that would start the bottom motor, turning it in the opposite direction. I could just beep it and supposedly make pitch changes.
I let the airplane accelerate up to .85 Mach before testing the trim switch. I pulled back on the switch, moving the leading edge of the stabilizer down one degree, and her nose rose. I retrimmed it back to where it was, and we leveled out. I climbed and accelerated up to .9 Mach and made the same change, achieving the same result. I retrimmed it and let it go out to .94 Mach, where I had lost my elevator effectiveness, made the same trim change, again raising the nose, just as I had done at the lower Mach numbers. Ridley was right: The stabilizer gave me just enough pitch control to keep me safe. I felt we could probably make it through without the elevator.
As cautiously as we were proceeding on these X-1 flights, I figured that my attempt to break the barrier was a week or two away. So I looked forward to a relaxed few days off. But when I got home, I found my wife Glennis lying down, feeling sick. By Sunday she was feeling better, so we went over to Pancho Barnes` place for dinner. On the way over, I said to Glennis, ”Hey, how about riding horses after we eat?” She was raised around horses and was a beautiful rider.
Pancho`s place was a dude ranch, so after dinner we walked over to the corral and had them saddle up a couple of horses. It was a pretty night and we rode for about an hour through the Joshua trees. We decided to race back. Unfortunately there was no moon, otherwise I would have seen that the gate we had gone out of was now closed. I only saw the gate when I was practically on top of it. I was slightly in the lead, and I tried to veer my horse and miss it, but it was too late. We hit the gate and I tumbled through the air. The horse got cut, and I was knocked silly. The next thing I remember was Glennis kneeling over me, asking me if I was okay. I was woozy, and she helped me stand up. It took a lot to straighten up, feeling like I had a spear in my side.
Glennis knew immediately. ”You broke a rib,” she said. She was all for driving straight to the base hospital. I said, no, the flight surgeon will ground me. ”Well you can`t fly with broken ribs,” she argued. I told her,
”If I can`t, I won`t. If I can, I will.”
Monday morning, I struggled out of bed. My shoulder was sore, and I ached generally from bumps and bruises, but my ribs near to killed me. The pain took my breath away. Glennis drove me over to Rosemond, where a local doctor confirmed I had two cracked ribs and taped me up. He told me to take it easy. The tape job really helped. The pain was at least manageable, and I was able to drive myself to the base that afternoon.
I was really low. I felt we were on top of those flights now, and I wanted to get them over with. And as much as I was hurting, I could only imagine what the old man would say if I was grounded for falling off a horse. So I sat down with Jack Ridley and told him my troubles. I said, ”If this were the first flight, I wouldn`t even think about trying it with these busted sumbitches. But, hell, I know every move I`ve got to make, and most of the major switches are right on the control wheel column.”
He said, ”True, but how in hell are you gonna be able to lock the cockpit door? That takes some lifting and shoving.” So we walked into the hangar to see what we were up against.
We looked at the door and talked it over. Jack said, ”Let`s see if we can get a stick or something that you can use in your left hand to raise the handle up on the door to lock it. Get it up at least far enough where you get both hands on it and get a grip on it.”
We looked around the hangar and found a broom. Jack sawed off a 10-inch piece of broomstick, and it fit right into the door handle. Then I crawled into the X-1, and we tried it out. He held the door against the frame, and by using that broomstick to raise the door handle, I found I could manage to lock it. We tried it two or three times, and it worked. But finally, Ridley said,
”Jesus, son, how are you gonna get down that ladder?”
I said, ”One rung at a time. Either that or you can piggyback me.”
Jack respected my judgment. ”As long as you really think you can hack it,” he said. We left that piece of broomstick in the X-1 cockpit.
Glennis drove me to the base at six the next morning. She wasn`t happy with my decision to fly, but she knew that Jack would never let me take off if he felt I would get into trouble. Hoover and Jack Russell, the X-1 crew chief, heard I was dumped off a horse at Pancho`s but thought the only damage was to my ego, and hit me with some ”Hi-Ho Silver” crap, as well as a carrot, a pair of glasses, and a rope in a brown paper bag–my bucking bronco survival kit.
Around eight, I climbed aboard the mother ship. The flight plan called for me to reach .97 Mach. The way I felt that day, .97 would be enough. On that first rocket ride I had a tiger by the tail; but by this ninth flight, I felt I was in the driver`s seat. I knew that airplane inside and out. I didn`t think it would turn against me. Hell, there wasn`t much I could do to hurt it; it was built to withstand three times as much stress as I could survive. I didn`t think the sound barrier would destroy her, either. But the only way to prove it was to do it.
That moving tail really bolstered my morale, and I wanted to go to that sound barrier. I supposed there were advantages in creeping up on Mach 1, but my vote was to stop screwing around before we had some stupid accident that could cost us not only a mission, but the entire project. If this mission was successful, I was planning to really push for a sound barrier attempt on the very next flight.
Going down that damned ladder hurt. Jack was right behind me. As usual, I slid feet-first into the cabin. I picked up the broom handle and waited while Ridley pushed the door against the frame, then I slipped it into the door handle and raised it up into lock position. It worked perfectly. Then I settled in to go over my checklist. Bob Cardenas, the B-29 driver, asked if I was ready.
”Hell, yes,” I said. ”Let`s get it over with.”
He dropped the X-1 at 20,000 feet, but his dive speed was once again too slow and the X-1 started to stall. I fought it with the control wheel for about 500 hundred feet, and finally got her nose down. The moment we picked up speed I fired all four rocket chambers in rapid sequence. We climbed at .88 Mach and began to buffet, so I flipped the stabilizer switch and changed the setting two degrees. We smoothed right out, and at 36,000 feet, I turned off two rocket chambers. At 40,000 feet, we were still climbing at a speed of .92 Mach. Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had 30 percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride.
Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach
–then tipped right off the scale. I thought I was seeing things! We were flying supersonic! And it was as smooth as a baby`s bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade. I kept the speed off the scale for about 20 seconds, then raised the nose to slow down.
I was thunderstruck. After all the anxiety, breaking the sound barrier turned out to be a perfectly paved speedway. I radioed Jack in the B-29.
”Hey, Ridley, that Machmeter is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.”
”Fluctuated off?”
”Yeah, at point nine-six-five.”
”Son, you is imagining things.”
”Must be. I`m still wearing my ears and nothing else fell off, neither.”
The guys in the NACA tracking van interrupted to report that they heard what sounded like a distant rumble of thunder: my sonic boom! The first one by an airplane ever heard on Earth. The X-1 was supposedly capable of reaching nearly twice the speed of sound, but the Machmeter aboard only registered to 1.0 Mach, which showed how much confidence they had; I estimated I had reached 1.05 Mach. (Later data showed it was 1.07 Mach–700 m.p.h.)
And that was it. I sat up there feeling kind of numb, but elated. After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a let-down. It took a damned instrument meter to tell me what I`d done. There should`ve been a bump on the road, something to let you know you had just punched a nice clean hole through that sonic barrier. The Ughknown was a poke through Jell-O. Later on, I realized that this mission had to end in a let-down, because the real barrier wasn`t in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.
I landed tired but relieved to have hacked the program. There is always strain in research flying. It`s the same as flying in combat, where you never can be sure of the outcome. You try not to think about possible disaster, but fear is churning around inside, whether you think of it consciously or not. I thought now that I`d reached the top of the mountain, the remainder of these X-1 experimental flights would be downhill. But having sailed me safely through the sonic barrier, the X-1 had plenty of white-knuckle flights in store over the next year. The real hero in the flight test business is a pilot who manages to survive.
And so I was a hero this day. As usual, the fire trucks raced out to where the ship had rolled to a stop on the lake bed. As usual, I hitched a ride back to the hangar with the fire chief. That warm desert sun really felt wonderful. My ribs ached.
Monday: Escape from Nazi-occupied France.
