death_date death_place birth_place mission nationality birth_date selection article_title name type occupation
29 september 1968 santa catalina island , california iowa none american 1916 1957 miss group bill bridgeman
 william -lrb- bill -rrb- barton bridgeman usaf astronaut test pilot
bill bridgeman

william `` bill '' barton bridgeman -lrb- 1916 -- september 29 , 1968 -rrb- was an american test pilot who broke aviation records while working for the douglas aircraft company testing experimental aircraft .
in july 1951 , the united states navy announced that the douglas skyrocket -lrb- d-558-ii -rrb- piloted by bridgeman had `` attained the highest speed and altitude ever recorded by a piloted plane . ''
on august 15 of the same year , he set a world record with a speed of mach 1.88 and an unofficial record height of .
bridgeman was born in iowa .
his father was a barnstormer and separated from his mother shortly after he was born .
he was raised in malibu , california by his paternal grandmother .
he enlisted in the united states navy to attend flight school at pensacola .
he graduated and was commissioned in 1941 , and was sent to pearl harbor , where he experienced the japanese attack on december 7 .
he flew pby catalina flying boats in the new guinea/australia sector , then four-engined pb4y-2 privateer patrol bombers on a tour of operations with vp/vpb -109 squadron -lrb- the `` reluctant raiders '' -rrb- .
he was reassigned afterwards to training activities stateside from august 1944 until the end of the war , then spent two years flying transport missions from pearl harbor to the west coast .
upon leaving the navy in 1947 , bridgeman joined southwest airlines -lrb- a local west coast airline that eventually merged into pacific southwest airlines , not to be confused with today 's southwest -rrb- to fly dc-3s on the san francisco-seattle route .
bored with the airline routine , he left in 1949 to join the douglas aircraft company as a production test pilot to certify a-1 skyraiders off the assembly line before their delivery to the navy .
a few months later , he was offered and accepted to take over the test program of the d-558 ii skyrocket , one of the world 's first supersonic research prototypes .
bridgeman converted to jet aircraft on the f-80 in early 1950 and eventually conducted a very successful test program with the skyrocket , collecting data on the behavior of swept-wing aircraft over a wide envelope of load factors and mach numbers deep in the supersonic range .
in may 1951 , he broke the world speed record with mach 1.72 , then raised the record to mach 1.88 -lrb- 1,245 mph , 1,992 km/h -rrb- the next month .
immediately afterwards , he broke the world altitude record with 79,494 ft. -lrb- 24,230 m -rrb- on the skyrocket 's final flight before delivery to naca .
during this campaign , bridgeman was one of the first pilots to encounter the phenomenon of inertia coupling , a flight hazard that would dominate high-speed aircraft research for much of the 1950s .
he was on the cover of the april 27 , 1953 issue of `` time '' magazine .
he went on to fly other douglas test programs including the x-3 stiletto , a promising but ultimately unsuccessful design .
in 1955 , he recounted his experiences test-flying the skyraider and skyrocket in a successful memoir , `` the lonely sky '' , written with jacqueline hazard , whom he married shortly after the book was published .
he was an astronaut candidate for the united states air force man in space soonest program , but the program was cancelled on august 1 , 1958 , and replaced by nasa 's project mercury .
bridgeman eventually moved to grumman aircraft where he conducted test programs of commercial aircraft , then pursued a career in commercial real estate .
in september 1968 , his airplane went down in the pacific ocean during a routine leisure flight from los angeles to santa catalina island .
his body was never found .
