Chasing the Demon

by Dan Hampton

  Ripples.

  Immediate public consequences for breaking the so-called barrier were negligible because the public was unaware the flight had even occurred. The military did what was usual when undecided about what to do, and clamped the security lid down tight. This hardly meant what had happened was a secret since everyone at Muroc either heard the boom (or booms) and listened to the talk. As for the public, nothing would be confirmed until Aviation Week published an uncleared article about the X-1 on December 20, 1947; an article that did not go over well at all with the secretary of the Air Force who threatened to prosecute the editor, Bob Wood, for disclosing official secrets. Dutch Kindelberger of North American Aviation was at the Pentagon directly after the article released and was summoned to Stuart Symington’s office. Apparently the secretary, though upset over the disclosure, was more concerned about a phone call he had received from an old acquaintance: Joe Swing.

  The general relayed to the secretary that the article was false, that the X-1 had not been the first aircraft to go supersonic and Yeager was not the first to do it. Of course, Swing had heard the rumors about the first flight of the XF-86, but had also been present at Muroc himself on October 14 when both aircraft were airborne, and he specifically heard two booms fifteen or twenty minutes apart. This was no hostess or uninformed mink rancher, this was a general officer and a war hero. Symington, who owed his position to fellow Missourian Harry Truman, had guaranteed the president that the U.S. Air Force, and Bell’s X-1, would be the first to fly supersonic and now there was credible evidence to the contrary.

  So an agreement was reached that hopefully satisfied everyone. If any supersonic XF-86 documentation existed, then it would be contained by the company, as would any public verbal discussions. “We just don’t talk about it,” NAA test pilot Bud Poage said. “Not then. Not now.” The cloistered documentation was to include data from radar-phototheodolite equipment the NACA used to track the X-1 and, according to physicist Dr. Joe Baugher, which recorded the XP-86 on October 19 and 21 at Mach 1.02 through 1.04, respectively. This same equipment was also used to officially track the XF-86 on November 13, 1947, when George Welch was clocked at Mach 1.02 diving the Sabre at Rogers Dry Lake. These “High Mach Number Investigation” flights, conducted between October 14 and the onset of military Phase II tests in early December, are quite interesting. The NAA test reports repeatedly list the test Mach number achieved as “over .90,” nothing more exact. This is odd because all the other tests show very specific readings with the Mach number often carried out to three digits. Of course, the ambiguity could be due to the before mentioned instrumentation inaccuracies, though these errors were on the cockpit gauges only, and not from the engineering data obtained in postflight analysis.

  Nothing was said about this at the time because the X-1’s flight had not yet been acknowledged, and after it had been the point was hopefully moot from the Air Force’s perspective. Ken Chilstrom, who was the first military pilot to fly the Sabre, took over Phase II testing with the same prototype in early December. “Colonel Boyd told me not to fly past Mach 0.9,” he recalled. “That’s what North American had officially designated as the jet’s top speed. So I didn’t fly any faster than that.” The company’s Preliminary High Speed Performance table shows a bit more. In fact, Welch’s fifteenth through twenty-seventh flights chart speeds past 0.9 Mach and, strangely, data for several of these flights is not plotted at all. Of course, there could be a valid reason for this, but it is not noted. However, there is a note on the bottom of the October 1947 reports that reads:

  THIS FIGURE SHOWS THOSE DATA PRESENTABLE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE MAXIMUM MACH 1.0 LIMIT. COMPLETE DATA FOR THESE FLIGHTS WILL BE FORWARDED IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE UNDER A DIFFERENT CLASSIFICATION.

  One interpretation of this could be that North American was well aware the Sabre could go supersonic in a dive and was hedging its bets against the future. Could it be done? I asked Colonel Chilstrom point-blank during an interview, and he merely smiled. Even after all these years, his loyalty to Al Boyd is still strong. “He was my mentor,” Ken added. “And my friend.”

  Whether or not the conversation between Symington and Kindelberger actually occurred, there are several facts worth considering. North American did indeed keep its F-86 contract, and the initial purchase order of 221 aircraft remained in place. Then the USAF rather lamely acknowledged in June 1948 that George Welch had officially gone supersonic in a shallow dive on April 25, 1948, in the XF-86 with the less powerful J35 Allison jet engine. No doubt this announcement was precipitated by British test pilot Roland “Bee” Beaumont’s supersonic Sabre flight in late May just prior to the Air Force’s acceptance of its first production F-86A models. In the fall of that year, Major Bob Johnson would set a new Federation Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) speed record of 670.981 in Sabre 47-608. Incidentally, the FAI did not recognize Yeager’s X-1 supersonic flight as a legitimate record because the aircraft did not take off from the ground under its own power, as did the Sabre.

  Second, the value of NAA contracts exceeded $300 million within a few years of the X-1’s flight, and the XF-86 did indeed become the F-86, a hugely successful jet aircraft from both a tactical and financial viewpoint.* North American would eventually produce over 6,600 of these in the United States, and at least 2,500 under foreign licenses at a flyaway cost of approximately $311,000 each. Another 1,146 FJ Furys, essentially a naval version of the Sabre, were built for the Navy and Marine Corps. The company also held long-running contracts to produce training aircraft, including some 15,000 T-6 Texans, and another 2,000 T-28 Trojans. Interestingly, NAA had acquired enough supersonic data from someplace to embark on a series of evolutionary X-plane designs, including the amazing X-15, which was designed for hypersonic flight and eventually reached a maximum recorded airspeed of 4,520 miles per hour.*

  Bell Aircraft would meet a different fate. Touting its expertise with rockets, the company was awarded a 1946 contract to build a supersonic air-to-surface missile capable of challenging the Soviets. An offshoot of several programs, it eventually became the ASM-A-2/B-63 and was topped with a nuclear warhead: America’s first such weapon. The military redesignated it as a GAM-63 RASCAL, and the Air Force aimed to arm its new B-47 jet bombers with an air-launched version, though this was eventually scrapped. Bell then attempted to develop several X-planes of its own, but never quite succeeded. Unable to compete, the company got out of fixed-wing aircraft and became one of the world’s leading helicopter manufacturers.

  The long-term ripples from October 1947 still endure through today. For the military, exceeding the speed of sound meant another fundamental change in capabilities that disturbed the muddy waters of diplomacy and foreign policy, just as the biplane did over the trenches during the Great War, and heavy bombers did in World War II. Rockets, largely based on German wartime technology, enabled supersonic delivery of nuclear warheads and were now a fearsome reality that had to be countered. Mass-produced, reliable jet aircraft meant high-speed, high-altitude penetrations of enemy airspace and, when coupled with nuclear weapons, drastically altered military thinking around the world, especially in the United States and Soviet Union. After 1947, the potential of supersonic military flight became the new yardstick for tactical and strategic military combat aircraft.

  The first fighter capable of level flight past the Mach began development in 1949 from the fertile imaginations of Ray Rice and Ed Schmued of North American. Knowing this was the next threshold to cross, and keenly aware of parallel Soviet development, they began work on the NA-180, also called “Sabre 45.” In addition to supersonic flight, the new fighter would have an afterburning Pratt & Whitney J57 jet engine and 45-degree swept wings. This engine necessitated a longer, thinner, and heavier fuselage and, though the wingspan only increased by twenty inches, the overall wing area was 100 square feet larger than its smaller brother. A fascinating example of concurrent advancements, the design also featured the first use of titanium with milled, internal wing
stiffeners instead of spars. This made the fighter more survivable from battle damage and also very, very strong while maintaining a relatively light weight. First of the “Century Series” fighters, it was redesignated by the USAF as the F-100, and NAA called it the “Super Sabre” to honor its lineage.*

  Of course, the Soviet Union could not stand idly by while the West, specifically the United States, had such a capability and they did not. Utilizing captured data, especially the Focke-Wulf Ta 183, the Lavochkin design bureau flew its La-176 in the fall of 1948. A blunt-faced, swept-winged, and swept-tailed prototype, it rather resembled a stubby F-86, though the Russians mounted the wings high on the fuselage. By late December the Soviets claimed that test pilot Ivan Fedorov had flown the jet past Mach 1. More designs followed: the MiG-15/17; the La-15; and the YAK-23. By 1951 the Soviets were developing their own supersonic fighter through Mikoyan-Gurevich called the I-340: the MiG-19.

  So it began.

  On November 20, 1953, NACA test pilot Scott Crossfield reached Mach 2 in a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket: 1,291 miles per hour. Yeager set out to immediately beat him in the X-1A, which he briefly did by reaching Mach 2.44 on December 12, 1953, but Chuck nearly died himself due to a unique high-speed phenomena called inertia coupling. This can occur when the forward momentum of a high-speed fuselage exceeds the capability of the wings and/or horizontal tail surfaces to control the aircraft. Basically, the control surfaces are too small, and uncontrolled pitching, rolling, or yawing results, which create forces far beyond the structural limits of the aircraft.

  Three years later USAF Captain Milburn “Mel” Apt broke Mach 3, nearly 2,100 miles per hour, in a Bell X-2. Due to inertial coupling he lost control of the aircraft on the way back to the dry lake and was tragically killed. A high-stakes technological leapfrog then ensued that, by necessity, had to continually develop better aircraft that flew faster and higher than whatever was being designed to shoot them down. This begat air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface missiles, and surface-to-air missiles, which then necessitated more advanced systems to detect and target fast-moving, supersonic aircraft. It was, as fighter pilots say, “a self-licking ice cream cone.” Radar technology, used since World War II, was also rapidly evolving and soon a fighter would be at a tremendous disadvantage without its own onboard air-to-air radar. Fueled with the knowledge that virtually anything was now possible, design and capability began a dance that continues today.

  If we can dream it, we can build it, became a credo still very much in effect. Surely there is no greater expression of this attitude during the decades after 1947 than the tantalizing possibility of space travel. And why not? If the demon could be chased to the far reaches of our atmosphere, then he could be pursued even farther into the vacuum of space. On October 4, 1957, a polished little globe, only twenty-three inches in diameter and festooned with antennas, was launched into low earth orbit from Site Number 1 in Soviet Kazakhstan. Called Sputnik 1, it completed 1,440 orbits of the earth until burning up twenty-one days after its launch. Though lagging somewhat in terrestrial technology, the Russians caught the West by surprise and triggered yet another dimension of the military-political-ideological arms race. The United States countered on January 31, 1958, as Explorer 1 blasted into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and another period of demon chasing began in earnest.

  That same year saw President Dwight Eisenhower sign the National Aeronautics and Space Act, thus replacing the old NACA with a new organization centered on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Among other goals, the new entity was charged with:

  1. The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

  2. The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.

  3. The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology . . .

  In anticipation of a space race, the USAF initiated the MISS Program (Man in Space Soonest) in 1958, though it was canceled when NASA announced Project Mercury later that year. The goal was to put a man into orbit, and at the direction of President Eisenhower, the first American astronauts would be military test pilots. Out of 508 applicants, 7 were eventually chosen: Major John Glenn from the United States Marine Corps; Lieutenant Scott Carpenter with Lieutenant Commanders Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard from the Navy; and Major Deke Slayton along with Captains Gordon Cooper and Gus Grissom from the U.S. Air Force. In addition to multiple psychological and physical screening programs, each man had to be under forty years of age, no taller than five foot eleven (due to the capsule size), and have at least 1,500 hours of flying time with a jet qualification. Additionally, each man had to have at least a bachelor’s degree, or a professional equivalent: Al Boyd’s faith in military test pilots was once again well deserved.

  Less than three years later NASA’s goal of American preeminence was directly challenged by the Soviet Union, who put the first man into space on April 12, 1961. Also launched from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in Vostok 1 during his one hour and forty-eight-minute flight.* Less than a month later forty-five million Americans watched as astronaut Al Shepard blasted off on Mercury-Redstone 3, better known as Freedom 7, and the United States was truly in the space game. That same year saw USAF Captain Bob White pilot the North American X-15 to an astonishing Mach 4 on March 7; Mach 5 on June 23; and Mach 6, over 4,000 miles per hour, on November 9, 1961.

  White had flown Mustangs with the 355th Fighter Group in World War II until shot down on his fifty-second mission during February 1945. After the war he finished a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from New York University, then went on to George Washington University for his MBA. Back in the Air Force for Korea, he flew fighters out of Japan, and after graduating from the USAF Experimental Test Pilot School, he became the primary pilot for the X-15 program. On July 17, 1962, Major White took the X-15 and chased the demon 59.6 miles above the earth to an altitude of 314,750 feet. The possibilities, it seemed, were endless.*

  Supersonic flight was quickly eclipsed by faster supersonic flight, then the wonder of the space program and, always, more war. Through hallway discussions and cocktails in Manhattan, members of the UN succeeded in preventing nuclear holocaust, yet the Cold War umbrella covered smaller eruptions in Korea, Vietnam, China, and the Middle East, to mention just a few. These were hardly on the scale of the last world war, but deadly enough to those fighting, and they always possessed the potential to spread. Through it all the pilots and engineers went on with life, some remaining with various programs, others retiring to new lives and, as always, some perishing while chasing the demon.

  Having passed up the X-1 program to go to Princeton, Glen Edwards arrived back to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) with a master’s of science in aeronautics and immediately jumped back into testing. He had been the primary project pilot for the Convair YB-46, and by May 1948 was out at Muroc with the Northrop YB-49: the Flying Wing. An amazing aircraft designed to fly nearly 10,000 miles and deliver nuclear bombs, it could have revolutionized long-range strategic warfare. But during performance testing on June 5, 1948, the outer wings collapsed and detached, killing everyone aboard, including Glen Edwards: he was thirty-two years old.* In his honor, on December 5, 1949, Muroc Air Force Base was renamed Edwards Air Force Base and remains so today. Glen is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, Lincoln, California (Plot 140, Grave 1).

  Colonel Al Boyd would remain in Dayton until his promotion to brigadier general during September 1949. Given command of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Muroc Air Force Base, he immediately began preparation to move most of the military test operations to California. The transfer became official on February 4, 1951, and operations commenced from an old hangar on the South Base. Boyd also successfully lobbied to have the base renamed in honor of Glen Edwards, whom he regarded as an excellent test pilot and example to those who would follow. Shortl
y thereafter, the Air Force created the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), which would oversee all research and development projects, as well as the new Experimental Test Pilot School.

  Under Boyd, the name would again change to the U.S. Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School, with a more stringent selection process. After adding another star to his shoulders, Al Boyd came back to the Wright Air Development Center in 1952, then went on to Air Research and Development Command headquarters. He retired in 1957, after flying 23,000 hours in 723 different types of aircraft. Boyd was vice president of the Westinghouse Defense & Space Group, then moved on to General Dynamics in Fort Worth, and finally became a consultant for Avco Lycoming. In 1963, the general flew solo from Wichita, Kansas to Geneva, Switzerland. Al Boyd died twenty-nine years to the day after the creation of the United States Air Force: September 18, 1976. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 11, #733-1).

  Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin, who could have flown supersonic anytime in 1946 if so directed, left Bell and the United States to fight for Israel during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli War. As a mahal, a foreign volunteer, Goodlin survived forty combat missions in the LF Mk IXe Spitfire, and then he flew in thousands of Jewish refugees for Near East Transport before becoming a test pilot for the Israeli Air Force. A highly successful businessman, Chal was a founder of Transavia, a Dutch charter company that later emerged as a KLM subsidiary. He also owned Seychelles-Kilimanjaro Air Transport and was later the CEO of Burnelli Aircraft. Slick Goodlin died of cancer in West Palm Beach, Florida, on October 20, 2005, and is buried at St. Johns Cemetery, Hempfield Township, Pennsylvania.