Yeager breaks sound barrier - Oct 14, 1947 - HISTORY.com Yeager breaks sound barrier Publisher A+E Networks U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight. For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California.

The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis,” was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet. Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

Related Videos Chuck Yeager: First Person to Break the Sound Barrier Chuck Yeager: First Person to Break the Sound Barrier By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | June 11, 2014 04:28am ET MORE Chuck Yeager continued to act as a flight consultant for the air force until his last flight on October 14, 1997. Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office Chuck Yeager was an American test pilot who was the first person to break the sound barrier — the point where a speeding object (such as an airplane) passes the speed of sound. Yeager made his history-setting flight on Oct. 14, 1947 in an airplane he dubbed Glamorous Glennis, after his wife. The Bell X-1 rocket plane (which today hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum) passed Mach 1 following a drop from a B-29 airplane. The monumental "top secret" event was kept classified until 1948, but once it hit the public airwaves, Yeager became a celebrity.

He also received a prestigious aviation award called the Collier Trophy, which called his flight the greatest achievement in aviation since the Wright brothers first took flight in 1903. War fighting and escape Yeager had a colorful aviation career long even before breaking the Mach barrier. Born in 1923 in a small town near Hamlin, West Virginia, Yeager grew up working on his father's pickup trucks, according to Yeager's website. His high school graduation in 1941 took place just six months before the United States entered World War II that December. By that point, Yeager was a young member of the Army Air Corps. He was tapped for flight training in July 1942, and quickly distinguished himself among his peers. "He had remarkable 20/10 eyesight, tremendous physical coordination, and an uncanny ability to stay focused in stressful situations. Those traits coupled with a competitive streak and his understanding of machinery caught the attention of his instructors," his website stated. Yeager received his pilot wings in 1943 and served in WWII, flying 64 combat missions for 270 hours in Europe.

He was shot down on March 5, 1944, over Bordeaux, France, but with the assistance of French resistance movement the Maquis, Yeager made it back to neutral territory a few weeks later. USAF Capt. Charles E. Yeager (shown standing with the Bell X-1 supersonic rocket plane) became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound in level flight on Oct. 14, 1947. Credit: United States Air Force Archive Breaking the barrier Following the war, one of Yeager's assignments as an assistant maintenance officer in the fighter section at the Flight Test Division in Wright Field, Ohio. Yeager's website describes the location as "the center of Army Air Forces R and D [research and development]", and said his main assignment was to fly the fighters being developed there. His flight skills got him some attention: he was asked to fly in air shows and also took part in service trials at Edwards Air Force Base (then called Muroc Army Air Field). Then in 1947, the young Yeager was picked to try to break the sound barrier . Yeager's work on Glamorous Glennis began with three glide flights, then powered flights starting Aug. 29.

He had trouble keeping the plane straight due to pitch problems, particularly on a flight Oct. 10 where he briefly lost pitch control completely. Another crew member suggested that Yeager should move the X-1's horizontal tail very slightly to keep his airplane under control. On his next flight, Oct. 14, Yeager tried out the tail idea at 0.83, 0.88 and 0.92 Mach and found the method worked. "At 42,000 feet, [Yeager] relit a third chamber of his engine," his website stated. "The X-1 Glamorous Glennis rapidly accelerated to 0.98 Mach and then, at 43,000 feet, the needle on his Machmeter jumped off the scale." The speed of sound, Mach 1, is about 758 mph (1,220 kph) at sea level, and decreases with altitude.) After the test Yeager continued his flight testing duties for many years after breaking the sound barrier, including testing Lockheed’s XF-104, an aircraft that was capable of going double the speed of sound.

But Yeager had a couple of near misses as he tested the aircraft, which was always a risky endeavor as he was among the first to fly these types. In December 1953, Yeager turned off his Bell X-1A engine as planned at 76,000 feet. The aircraft began to roll and yaw, then quickly fell out of control despite Yeager's attempts to correct the issue. Yeager managed to pull out safely at 25,000 feet — after falling more than 50,000 feet. Ten years later, Yeager piloted a Lockheed NF-104 aircraft that crashed, but he managed to parachute out safely. "The veteran Air Force pilot suffered burns on his face and neck, apparently from the ignition of pure oxygen in his mask, but otherwise was not injured seriously," the L.A. Times reported at the time . The crash was depicted in both the book and movie versions of "The Right Stuff." (Yeager played a small part in the movie, as the bartender at Pancho Barnes’ Happy Bottom Riding Club.) Yeager's last active duty flight was on Feb.

25, 1975, in an F-4C Phantom II, but he remained an active consulting test pilot for decades after that. In 2012, the then 89-year-old Yeager flew in the back seat of the F-15D to re-enact the 65th anniversary of his record-setting flight. Editor's Recommendations Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier on same day as Felix Baumgartner - Telegraph USA Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier on same day as Felix Baumgartner As Felix Baumgartner became the first man to break the speed of sound unaided, Chuck Yeager, the first man to ever go through the sound barrier, was recreating that feat all over again. Image 1 of 2 Yeager reportedly told journalists after his flight that he was unaware of Baumgartner's record-breaking attempt Photo: Jay Nemeth/AFP Image 1 of 2 As Baumgartner reached 833mph, Yeager was flying in an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier Photo: Master Sgt. Jason W.

Edwards/AFP < > By Mark Hughes, New York 6:36PM BST 15 Oct 2012 Felix Baumgartner: Daredevil's skydive record attempt: as it happened The Austrian daredevil's leap from the edge of space came exactly 65 years to the day that Mr Yeager, a retired US air Force pilot, became the first man to break the speed of sound in an aircraft. As Baumgartner reached 833mph when he fell 24 miles from space, Yeager, who is now 89, was flying in an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California's Mohave Desert. It was the same place he first broke the sound barrier in 1947 and 700 miles from where Baumgartner began his ascent. Yeager reportedly told journalists after his flight that he was unaware of Baumgartner's record-breaking attempt. Related Articles Oct. 14, 1947: Yeager Machs the Sound Barrier | WIRED Oct.

14, 1947: Yeager Machs the Sound Barrier subscribe 6 months for $5 - plus a FREE Portable Phone Charger. On Twitter 6 hours 11 things we wanna steal from #CES2017 but won't because stealing isn't cool, okay? You just don't do it. It's wrong wrd.cm/2jl9IPu Author: Jason Paur. Jason Paur Date of Publication: 10.14.09. Time of Publication: 12:00 am. 12:00 am Oct. 14, 1947: Yeager Machs the Sound Barrier 1947: Capt. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager pilots the rocket-powered Bell X-1 to a speed of Mach 1.07, becoming the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. In breaking the sound barrier, Yeager becomes the fastest man alive — and the legend of the X-Planes begins. Photo Gallery: Let the X-Planes Begin As airplanes flew faster and faster throughout the 1930s, pilots began to experience a number of problems associated with the increased airspeed.

Aircraft such as the Lockheed P-38 and Republic P-47 flew just fine at ordinary speeds in level flight. But if pilots put them in a high-speed dive, they began to experience control problems that led to the deaths of several pilots. The main problem facing these pilots was the aerodynamic condition known as compressibility. Simply stated, at speeds well below the speed of sound, most of the air molecules have time to get out of the way of an aircraft as it approaches, and the density of the air does not change. However, as the speed of sound is approached, the air molecules can’t get out of the way, and more of them hit the aircraft. The impact compresses the air in front of the aircraft and increases the air density. Eventually shock waves form around the airplane, affecting the lift and drag. These changes were not well-understood and led to the loss of control in several aircraft. Because the effects of compressibility are directly related to the speed of sound, a ratio is used to describe the speed of an aircraft. The Mach number is the speed at which an object is traveling relative to the speed of sound at a particular temperature. The name is in honor of physicist Ernest Mach, who studied high-speed gas dynamics.

The Bell X-1 was developed to research aerodynamics in the transonic region , or speeds just below and just above the speed of sound. After numerous flights with civilian test pilots, Capt. Yeager of the newly formed U.S. Air Force made his first powered flight in the X-1 on Aug. 29, 1947, high over the Mojave Desert of southern California. Over the next several weeks, Yeager piloted the X-1, named ‘Glamorous Glennis’ after his wife, on several flights creeping closer and closer to the sound barrier. In his autobiography, Yeager , the legendary test pilot writes about one of the surprises discovered during the experimental test flights: “I was flying at 0.94 Mach at 40,000 feet, experiencing the usual buffeting, when I pulled back on the control wheel, and Christ, nothing happened!” Yeager had experienced one of the control problems associated with transonic flight. “The airplane continued flying with the same attitude and in the same direction.” The problem Yeager was experiencing was the ineffectiveness of the X-1’s pitch controls, as shock waves essentially created an aerodynamic shadow around the tail.

Changes were made to the horizontal tail controls, allowing Yeager to control the airplane’s ability to pitch up and down, and flights continued. This knowledge would lead to the all-flying tail, or stabilator, standard on all supersonic fighters today. Yeager was nursing two broken ribs on the morning of Oct. 14, after being thrown from his horse on a ride the night before. He boarded the B-29 bomber that was to carry the Bell X-1 to altitude. The plan was to fly to Mach 0.97. But Yeager says the new moving tail boosted his morale, and he wanted to fly faster. After climbing down into the X-1, which was carried like a bomb in the belly of the B-29, Yeager’s friend and fellow test pilot Jack Ridley handed him a short, sawed-off section of broomstick. Yeager would use it to close the canopy of the X-1, because his broken ribs prevented him from closing the latch normally. The X-1 was dropped, and the first two chambers of the rocket were ignited to carry the plane to 40,000 feet.

Still climbing, Yeager ignited the last two chambers, and as the speed passed Mach 0.96, he says the ride started to smooth out. After watching the needle on the Machmeter fluctuate a bit, it suddenly went off the end of the scale. (In a less-than-optimistic design, the instrument topped out at Mach 1.0.) People on the ground heard what sounded like distant thunder. It was the first sonic boom ever created by an aircraft. At age 24, Yeager had flown faster than the speed of sound. The flight was kept secret, and the world wouldn’t know about the first supersonic flight until months later. The X-1 would fly more than a hundred more times, reaching a speed of Mach 1.45. Subsequent X-1 models would fly more than twice the speed of sound. Later X-Planes would fly even faster, reaching hypersonic speeds where the density of the air wasn’t the only thing to change: They would fly so fast, the chemistry of the air would change. Capt. Yeager would go on to become Gen. Yeager and the iconic test pilot.

He was the first commandant of the Air Force’s test-pilot school and continued commanding fighter squadrons into the 1960s. Now age 86, Yeager will return this Saturday to the skies over the Mojave desert. He’ll make a now-routine supersonic flyby to kick off Edwards Air Force Base’s air show and open house. Sources: The X-Planes, X-1 to X-45, by Jay Miller; Yeager, by Gen. Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos For The First Time (or the last time): 1947: first man to break the sound barrier1953: first woman to break the sound barrier 1947: first man to break the sound barrier 1953: first woman to break the sound barrier The first man to break the "sound barrier" was Capt. Charles E. ("Chuck") Yeager, of the US Air Force. He reached this milestone of aviation history in 1947 over the test ranges at Muroc Field in California, now known as Edwards Air Force Base. Yeager accomplished this feat while flying the first Bell XS-1.

Later renamed the X-1, this vehicle was a rocket-powered high-speed research aircraft. The first woman to fly faster than Mach 1 was Jacqueline ("Jackie") Cochran, one of the pioneering women of aeronautics. Jackie originally worked in the cosmetics industry and was encouraged to pursue a pilot's license by her husband in order to travel more efficiently. Cochran managed to complete her pilot training in 1932 in just three weeks! She quickly realized that flying was her passion and set about becoming one of the most accomplished pilots in history. Jackie was the first woman to win the Bendix Race in 1938 and also set several aviation records before 1940, including three speed records and a world altitude record. Jackie's successes allowed her to become an accomplished test pilot setting many more firsts. As World War II approached, Cochran worked to encourage more women to join the war effort. The British Ferry Command hired Cochran to recruit women to fly planes from factories in the US to bases the UK, and she became the first woman to fly a military bomber on a transatlantic flight in 1941.

Jackie convinced Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, to support efforts encouraging greater participation of women in defense positions. In 1943, Cochran was named director of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP). WASPs proved vital to the war effort, and Cochran helped to train over a thousand auxiliary pilots for the military services. After the war, Cochran was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for her contributions. Jackie remained committed to the defense effort after the war and earned the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves. She continued to pursue her passion for flying and became a close friend of Chuck Yeager. Yeager helped Cochran make the transition to jet-powered aircraft, and she wasted little time setting new records. In 1953, Jackie flew an F-86 Sabre past Mach 1 becoming the first woman to break the sound barrier. She went on to set a world speed record of 1,429 mph in 1964 and no fewer than eight speed records in 1967 when she was over 60 years old. An interesting historical sidebar concerns the term "sound barrier." When a British aerodynamicist named W. F.

Hilton was interviewed on his high-speed experimental work, he was quoted as describing "how the resistance of a wing shoots up like a barrier against high speed as we approach the speed of sound." The newspapers of the period misconstrued his statement to mean that there was some sort of physical barrier to travel at or beyond the speed of sound, so no aircraft would ever be able to reach those speeds. In addition, there was some theoretical work done that had indicated the pressures generated on a body as it neared Mach 1 would go to infinity, and the drag would therefore be so great that no aircraft could pass through the barrier. However, these equations turned out to be based of faulty assumptions that were not valid at transonic speeds. Indeed, engineers had known for many years that the speed of sound could be passed simply because cannon balls and bullets were known to pass through the sound barrier as far back as Isaac Newton's day. The key to finally reaching Mach 1 was simply developing ways of minimizing the increase in wave drag at transonic speeds, developing engines with enough power, and understanding the effect of shock waves on wings and control surfaces so that control problems could be avoided.

The shape of the fuselage on the X-1 research plane had been designed to resemble a .50 caliber bullet since this object was known to exceed Mach 1. Other projectiles, like shells and cannon balls, had also been able to travel faster than the speed of sound for many years. However, it is not known for sure when the earliest projectile exceeded the speed of sound or when guns and cannons might have become powerful enough to accelerate an object to such speeds. Regardless, another object that has been around far longer than gun-launched projectiles was probably the first manmade object to exceed the speed of sound. Believe it or not, this object is a whip. As the whip's user snaps his wrist back and forth, it sends a wave down the length of the whip that accelerates the tip to very high speeds. This speed can grow fast enough to exceed the speed of sound, particularly if the whip is relatively long. Whips are known for the distinctive cracking noise they make as the move through the air. This crackling is actually the result of a miniature sonic boom being created by the tip as it travels faster than Mach 1. (info from Aerospaceweb) Posted by Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier?

Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier? Chuck Yeager and the Bell X-1 with paper tape of the supersonic flight profile (Photo credit: NASA) We all know the story of how Captain Chuck Yeager opened the throttles of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis in October, 1947. Breaking the sound barrier was to aviation what Neil Armstrong's first step was to the space program: No matter how many others went higher or faster later, it will always be that seminal, unassailable "first" that can never be topped. Yeager's name will always sit atop every list of record-breaking pilots, up there by himself in his own special stratosphere. But: Was he really the first pilot to fly faster than sound? Plenty of stories out there say Yeager wasn't the first. How do we know what to believe? Do we accept the popular official story, or do we give credibility to the other claimants with good evidence of their own? Today we're going to point our skeptical eye at some of these other claims, and see who really deserves the credit. There are certainly many pilots who approached the sound barrier but didn't live to tell about it.

The years preceding Yeager's flight were among the most exciting in aviation history, as World War II drove aeronautic advancement like never before. Planes that had been shot down often entered the transonic realm as they plummeted, and were torn apart by the resulting shockwaves. Dive bombers had to have special air brakes developed to prevent them from breaking up, which sometimes happened anyway. Of the many pilots who toyed with the sound barrier in WWII — all unintentionally, of course — most never survived the adventure. During WWII, engineers didn't yet have any flight test experience that taught us how to design aircraft capable of supersonic speed. Even in 1947, Yeager's X-1 was designed after a 50 caliber bullet, known to be stable at supersonic speeds. WWII had seen widespread use of the German V-2 rockets, which were supersonic, so we knew such flight was possible. But the V-2 was ballistic, it didn't require a controllable airframe; and designing a supersonic controllable airframe was the problem for aeronautical engineers. The main issue is called shock stall, and it's what happens when a control surface approaches the speed of sound.

A shockwave forms around the control surface, rendering it useless, and the pilot has no way to control the aircraft. Propeller aircraft can never reach the sound barrier, since the tips of propeller blades hit the sound barrier before the rest of the plane does. The propeller blades go into shock stall, and the plane can no longer accelerate. There are many claims of propeller driven dive bombers breaking the sound barrier during WWII, but these have to all be considered implausible. Approaching the sound barrier, an airplane is already well above its terminal velocity, the speed at which drag matches the acceleration imparted by gravity. Propellers are shock stalled, and there is neither thrust nor gravity available to accelerate a diving airplane past a certain point. As any aircraft approaches the speed of sound, airflow over some parts of the plane will exceed Mach 1 and create shockwaves. These shockwaves cause intense buffeting. Many propeller driven WWII fighter planes, including the Supermarine Spitfire, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and the North American P-51 Mustang, experienced these effects at Mach 0.85.

Similarly, jet engines of the day were not designed to work with supersonic airflow entering through the compressor vanes; such engines would flame out. However, one particular fighter plane of WWII was not driven by either propellers or jets: The German rocket powered Messerschmitt 163 Komet. The Komet was designed by the great Alexander Lippisch, a pioneer of delta wings and ramjets. By the end of WWII, Lippisch had a test glider of a supersonic ramjet powered aircraft actually undergoing flight tests. He understood the requirements of supersonic flight. The Komet was designed to fly as fast as possible while staying under the critical limits at which trouble happens. The Komet's delta wing was exceptionally thin. This delays the onset of shock stall over the primary airfoil, and allowed the Komet to remain stable up to Mach .85. However, Lippisch had no answer for shock stall at the control surfaces on the trailing edge of the delta wing, and so the Komet was destined to remain subsonic.

In combination with the relatively low 3,800-lb thrust of the Komet's Walter rocket engine (about half the power of Yeager's X-1), the Komet had little expectation of going supersonic, except in an uncontrollable, powered dive which would probably be unrecoverable. Nevertheless, stories persist of Komet pilots breaking the sound barrier, years before Yeager did. Komet test pilot Heini Dittmar, flying an early prototype in 1941, reached an officially measured speed of 1,004 kph in level flight. This was probably around Mach .95 but we don't know for sure since the flight was classified until after the war and the altitude is unknown. However, Dittmar made the flight at partial throttle to avoid buffeting, using an engine only half as powerful as that which went into production. But just because later versions were more powerful doesn't mean they wouldn't run into exactly the same limitations at the same top speed.

One unofficial report claims that Dittmar hit 1,130 kph in 1944 (Mach 1.06), and another states that in a steep dive he created sonic booms that were heard on the ground. However, these stories first appeared in 1990 book written by Dittmar's friend Mano Ziegler, and do not have contemporary corroboration or documentation. But the best evidence against Komets breaking the sound barrier is the fact that the Allies did capture all of the program's classified data, and no supersonic flights were ever recorded, even in secret. Claims you'll find on the Internet that "Komet pilots routinely broke the sound barrier" cannot be given much weight, given the aircraft's limitations well understood by Alexander Lippisch. As an aircraft approaches the speed of sound, the shockwave over the wing moves the center of lift backwards and the plane noses down. This is a condition called Mach tuck. Normally you'd pull back on the stick to correct this, but conventional elevator controls on the trailing edge of the tailplane would be unable to get any bite, since the elevators would be shock stalled.

The only way out of Mach tuck is to use an all-moving tailplane to trim back to level. With its delta wing, the Komet had no tailplane at all, let alone an all-moving tailplane. It had fabric-covered elevons on the trailing edge of the delta wing, which would always be shock stalled. Even if a pilot opened his Komet's rocket engine to full throttle to muscle his way past the sound barrier, Mach tuck would send him tumbling out of control irrecoverably, and probably destroy the airframe. It's also important to be aware of a limitation of early airspeed indicators. One built for subsonic speed is probably going to give unreliable readings in the presence of shockwaves. A phenomenon called compressibility error gives inaccurately high airspeed readings as the aircraft approaches the speed of sound. This error is called Mach jump. To counter this, supersonic aircraft use a Mach indicator instead of an airspeed indicator. The speed of sound at any given pressure and altitude is determined primarily by temperature. A Mach indicator is essentially an airspeed indicator mounted on an aneroid diaphragm to correct for static air pressure.

Since Mach and airspeed are both dependent on temperature, they cancel each other out and no temperature diaphragm is needed. Komets had airspeed indicators, not Mach indicators; and so even the speeds logged by the German test pilots are probably incorrectly high. One of the best known claims to the sound barrier comes from German WWII fighter pilot Hans Guido Mutke, flying perhaps the most devastating fighter of the war, the Messerschmitt Me-262. The 262 was the first true operational jet powered fighter plane in the world, sporting twin BMW 003 turbojet engines mounted below the swept wings. Although the 262 entered the war too late to have any real impact, it boasted a 5:1 kill ratio against allied fighters. Mutke was cruising at 36,000 feet when he began a steep dive under full power. With his airspeed indicator pegged at its limit of 1,100 kph (just over the speed of sound, but remember the airspeed indicator problem), Mutke reported severe buffeting and loss of control.

Suddenly the buffeting stopped and he regained control, with the airspeed indicator still pegged; and it's this that could indicate he had broken the sound barrier. Unfortunately his engines flamed out, not being designed for supersonic speeds, and he slowed, and the severe buffeting returned. Finally his speed dropped enough that he regained control again and was able to restart his engines. He returned to base, and it was found that his aircraft had lost many rivets, and its wings had become so distorted that the plane had to be scrapped. Mutke never understood what had happened until Chuck Yeager's flight was declassified and the supersonic flight profile became known: Severe buffeting while approaching Mach 1, then the shaking stops above Mach 1, and then resumes upon deceleration below Mach 1. But unfortunately for Mutke, there was not, and could not have been, any independent verification of his speed or of the period of smooth supersonic flight. Nobody denies the damage done to his plane during the buffeting period, but supersonic flight was not necessary for this to happen.

The designer of the Me-262, Willy Messerschmitt, always stated emphatically that the 262 was incapable of supersonic flight. In flight tests, he found that at Mach 0.86, the 262 experienced Mach tuck: It lost control and assumed a nose-down attitude that could not be corrected by the pilot, and throttling down was the only way to resume control. The 262 only had conventional elevators on the trailing edge of its tailplane, like all aircraft of the day, so these would have shock stalled and not been able to correct the Mach tuck. But the 262 also had an additional feature: The tailplane was actually all-moving for trim purposes. This was a separate electrically operated control, and it was normally used to keep the plane level as its fuel supply was consumed. Mutke reported that he actually employed this all-moving trim control in order to get out of the nose-down state, a technique which may not have been considered in Messerschmitt's own tests.

Mutke's report was given additional credibility in 1999, when computer modeling and scale model wind tunnel testing conducted at Munich Technical University found that the 262 was capable of reaching, and passing, Mach 1. So, while we cannot prove or disprove Mutke's claim, it is possible that he did reach supersonic flight. However, like in sports, it's not what happened, it's what the referee says happened that matters. Mutke's feat was unverified and unofficial, and certainly unintentional; so even if he did break the sound barrier before Yeager, it "doesn't count." There are two other flights that don't count, both accomplished by George Welch, a civilian test pilot for North American Aviation. On October 1, 1947, just 13 days before Yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1, Welch took the new XP-86 fighter prototype up for its maiden flight. In a powered dive from 35,000 feet, Welch reported Mach jump on his airspeed indicator, showing that he was traveling supersonic. Anecdotal stories say that a sonic boom was heard on the ground.

Welch's airspeed was not being officially recorded, and no official record states that he broke the sound barrier. If he did, it was either unverified or classified. Welch believed that he did, and to hammer the point home, he gave a repeat performance. While Yeager was strapped into the X-1 still attached to its B-50 mother ship, just before the historic flight, Welch again put his XP-86 into a steep dive. Some stories say that he buzzed the B-50 close enough for those onboard, Yeager included, to hear his sonic boom. He made a 4g pullout from his dive, and those same stories say that his sonic boom was louder than Yeager's just 20 minutes later. There is no engineering reason to doubt Welch's claim. The history books credit George Welch with breaking the sound barrier in the XP-86 in a dive six months later on April 26, 1948, with official measurements and a proper Mach indicator on board. Did he do the same thing before Yeager's flight? He may well have, and a lot of people say he did.

But there's a significant difference between Yeager's flight and those of Welch, Mutke, Dittmar, and probably others. Their claims to the sound barrier were all in dives, and were transient at best. Glamorous Glennis, on the other hand, was the first aircraft capable of sustained supersonic level flight. Sure, being the first to break the sound barrier becomes less glitzy when you have to pile on qualifications. But every aviation milestone has been an incremental one; few are truly revolutionary. Yeager, Welch, Mutke, and Dittmar all made real contributions to the science of aviation. All had "the right stuff". At some point, any lines you draw to separate their achievements come down to semantics; yet you still have to draw those lines somewhere. Flights have to be official, they have to be verifiable, and they should demonstrate a deliberate capability. And so, while it's a virtual certainty that the sound barrier was broken by someone somewhere in some circumstance, Chuck Yeager's flight of the Bell X-1 is the only flight to meet all the criteria of a true aviation first. Cite this article: Dunning, B.

"Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier?" Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, 19 May 2009. Web. 19 Jan 2017. < Hilton, William F. High-Speed Aerodynamics. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952. 15-19, and Ch. 6. L.J. Clancey. Aerodynamics. Ney York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated, 1975. 283, 415. Mason, W.H. Configuration Aerodynamics. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech, 2006. Chapter 7. Rotundo, Louis C. Into the Unknown: The X-1 Story. Washingon, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994. Wagner, Ray. The North American Sabre. London: Macdonald, 1963. Yeager, Chuck, et. al. The Quest for Mach One: A First Person Account of Breaking the Sound Barrier. New York: Penguin Studio, 1997. Copyright ©2017 Skeptoid Media, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Rights and reuse information Breaking the Sound Barrier | The Greatest Moments in Flight Breaking the Sound Barrier | The Greatest Moments in Flight By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | July 23, 2012 04:43pm ET MORE Chuck Yeager and the X-1 research plane that broke the sound barrier. It can be seen today at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office This is part of a SPACE.com series of articles on the Greatest Moments in Flight, the breakthrough events that paved the way for human spaceflight and its next steps: asteroid mining and bases on the moon and Mars. A booming thunder roared across the clear skies of the Mojave Desert on Oct. 14, 1947, as U.S. Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager nudged an experimental rocket-powered plane faster than the speed of sound. Though only a handful of people realized it at the time, an aviation record had been set. In 1935, a simplified explanation of the challenges of supersonic flight led to the creation of the term "sound barrier," which seemed to imply a physical wall that could not be overcome.

Bullets and cannon balls had exceeded the speed of sound for hundreds of years, but the question loomed as to whether or not a plane—or a man—could withstand the pressures that accompanied it. The U.S. Air Force set out to answer this looming question. Sponsored message: The plane The Bell X-1 broke the sound barrier with Col. Chuck Yeager at the controls on Oct. 14, 1947. Credit: NASA A bullet-shaped plane, the Bell X-1 (originally designated the XS-1), was modeled after a .50 caliber machine gun bullet, an object known to be stable as it exceeded the speed of sound. Four rocket engines propelled the X-1, and it was built to absorb 18 times the force of gravity. Unlike most planes, it didn't take off from the ground, but was instead dropped from the belly of a B-29 Superfortress, rapidly accelerating in the air on only a few minutes worth of fuel before gliding back to the dry lakes below. The historic plane, nicknamed the "Glamorous Glennis" for Yeager's wife, slowly approached the sound barrier over the course of nine flights.

Muroc Air Force Base—now known as Edwards Air Force Base—in the empty southern California desert provided an ideal spot for testing a variety of experimental vehicles, including the X-1. The pilot The man who would go down as the most famous test pilot in American history was born in West Virginia on Feb. 13, 1923. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps at the age of 18 and served in World War II, where he flew 64 combat missions. In 1945, he was assigned as a maintenance officer to the Flight Test Division at Wright Field, Ohio, flight-testing the planes. Col. Albert Boyd, in charge of the test program for the Air Force, invited him to become a test pilot, and Yeager accepted, transferring to Muroc to enroll in the Flight Performance School. It was there that Yeager was selected to be the first person to attempt to exceed the speed of sound. The flight Yeager's first test launch of the Glamorous Glennis took place on Aug. 29, 1947, with subsequent attempts increasing speed by two hundredths of a Mach number.

Mach is a unit of measuring the speed of sound in a given medium; a plane traveling at .2 Mach moves at only two-tenths the speed of sound, while Mach 1 is equal to it. (The speed of sound is about 758 miles (1,220 kilometers) per hour at sea level, and decreases with altitude.) Reaching .86 Mach on the sixth flight, the X-1 began to experience turbulence from the shock wave formed by the compression of the air. On the seventh flight, at Mach .94, Yeager lost the ability to control the plane's elevator, a problem since the shock waves caused the nose to pitch up and down. He cut the engines, dumped the fuel, and landed safely in the desert. Another pilot suggested using the horizontal stabilizer to correct the problem, and on-the-ground tests seemed to suggest the alternate method of control would work. Two days before his historic flight, Yeager was thrown from a horse while riding with his wife and broke two ribs. Knowing that he would never be allowed to fly, he traveled to a doctor off base and had them taped up.

Unable to close and latch the side door by hand, he utilized a broom handle at the suggestion of a fellow pilot. On Oct. 14, 1947, Yeager and the X-1 were dropped from the B-29, and quickly accelerated away. When the controls locked up, he successfully used the horizontal stabilizer to keep the plane stable. As the plane accelerated to Mach 1.06, controllers on the ground heard the first sonic boom . (The end of a bullwhip moves faster than the speed of sound. Some say the "crack" is a small sonic boom.) After exceeding the speed of sound, the buffeting decreased, creating a smooth short flight. The plane remained supersonic for approximately 20 seconds before Yeager turned off two of the four engines and slowly decelerated. The follow-up Chuck Yeager continued to act as a flight consultant for the air force until his last flight on October 14, 1997. Credit: Air Force Test Center History Office Yeager continued to fly experimental aircraft for the Air Force, and was appointed director of the Space School, NASA's precursor, where he trained astronauts to prepare for launch.

He flew more than 120 combat missions in Vietnam. After 34 years in the military, he retired in 1975 at the rank of brigadier general, though he continued to serve as a consultant. His last flight as a military consultant occurred 50 years to the day after he broke the sound barrier. In 1979, Tom Wolfe's best-selling nonfiction book, The Right Stuff, and the subsequent 1983 movie popularized Yeager's exploits to a generation too young to remember them. Yeager and his wife, Glennis, had four children before her death in 1990. He remarried in 2003. —Nola Taylor Redd Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier | World History Project Oct 14 1947 Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier Chuck Yeager's two cracked ribs hurt like hell, but he was darned if a little tumble from a horse in the Mojave Desert was going to stop him from breaking the sound barrier. The U.S. Air Force was counting on him.

It was his ninth flight in the experimental rocket plane XS-1, each one having edged closer to Mach 1, the never crossed barrier past which man would fly faster than the speed of sound. It was dangerous, he knew. A British test pilot had been blown to bits going Mach 0.94. The crew at Murdoc Air Base in California, not knowing the extent of Yeager's injuries, sent him off with a jolly "Hi-yo, Silver!" Climbing painfully down into the XS-1 as it lay in the airborne belly of the huge mother ship, a B-29, Yeager snapped the cover shut using a sawed-off broom. At 20,000 ft., he dropped out of the bomb bay with a jolt. With all four rockets firing, the plane started shaking violently. The Mach needle edged up past 0.965, and then it went off the scale. Yeager was thunderstruck. He was flying supersonic, and "it was as smooth as a baby's bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade," he said later.

He half didn't believe it—until the tracking crew ran up and reported hearing the world's first sonic boom, a sound that marked the end of the Wright Brothers' era and the beginning of the age of the astronauts, taking humankind into outer space. His XS-1 had accelerated to Mach 1.06, or 700 m.p.h. That night Yeager fixed his buddies a pitcher of martinis to celebrate. But the world would have to wait to learn of Yeager's feat. It was all top secret until Aviation Week broke the story in December. The government wouldn't come around to confirming it had happened until May 1948. Source: Cathy Booth Thomas Added by: Kevin Rogers 1947: Capt. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager pilots the rocket-powered Bell X-1 to a speed of Mach 1.07, becoming the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. In breaking the sound barrier, Yeager becomes the fastest man alive — and the legend of the X-Planes begins. As airplanes flew faster and faster throughout the 1930s, pilots began to experience a number of problems associated with the increased airspeed.

Aircraft such as the Lockheed P-38 and Republic P-47 flew just fine at ordinary speeds in level flight. But if pilots put them in a high-speed dive, they began to experience control problems that led to the deaths of several pilots. The main problem facing these pilots was the aerodynamic condition known as compressibility. Simply stated, at speeds well below the speed of sound, most of the air molecules have time to get out of the way of an aircraft as it approaches, and the density of the air does not change. However, as the speed of sound is approached, the air molecules can’t get out of the way, and more of them hit the aircraft. The impact compresses the air in front of the aircraft and increases the air density. Eventually shock waves form around the airplane, affecting the lift and drag. These changes were not well-understood and led to the loss of control in several aircraft. Because the effects of compressibility are directly related to the speed of sound, a ratio is used to describe the speed of an aircraft. The Mach number is the speed at which an object is traveling relative to the speed of sound at a particular temperature. The name is in honor of physicist Ernest Mach, who studied high-speed gas dynamics.

The Bell X-1 was developed to research aerodynamics in the transonic region, or speeds just below and just above the speed of sound. After numerous flights with civilian test pilots, Capt. Yeager of the newly formed U.S. Air Force made his first powered flight in the X-1 on Aug. 29, 1947, high over the Mojave Desert of southern California. Over the next several weeks, Yeager piloted the X-1, named ‘Glamorous Glennis’ after his wife, on several flights creeping closer and closer to the sound barrier. In his autobiography, Yeager, the legendary test pilot writes about one of the surprises discovered during the experimental test flights: “I was flying at 0.94 Mach at 40,000 feet, experiencing the usual buffeting, when I pulled back on the control wheel, and Christ, nothing happened!” Yeager had experienced one of the control problems associated with transonic flight. “The airplane continued flying with the same attitude and in the same direction.” The problem Yeager was experiencing was the ineffectiveness of the X-1’s pitch controls, as shock waves essentially created an aerodynamic shadow around the tail.

Changes were made to the horizontal tail controls, allowing Yeager to control the airplane’s ability to pitch up and down, and flights continued. This knowledge would lead to the all-flying tail, or stabilator, standard on all supersonic fighters today. Yeager was nursing two broken ribs on the morning of Oct. 14, after being thrown from his horse on a ride the night before. He boarded the B-29 bomber that was to carry the Bell X-1 to altitude. The plan was to fly to Mach 0.97. But Yeager says the new moving tail boosted his morale, and he wanted to fly faster. After climbing down into the X-1, which was carried like a bomb in the belly of the B-29, Yeager’s friend and fellow test pilot Jack Ridley handed him a short, sawed-off section of broomstick. Yeager would use it to close the canopy of the X-1, because his broken ribs prevented him from closing the latch normally. The X-1 was dropped, and the first two chambers of the rocket were ignited to carry the plane to 40,000 feet.

Still climbing, Yeager ignited the last two chambers, and as the speed passed Mach 0.96, he says the ride started to smooth out. After watching the needle on the Machmeter fluctuate a bit, it suddenly went off the end of the scale. (In a less-than-optimistic design, the instrument topped out at Mach 1.0.) People on the ground heard what sounded like distant thunder. It was the first sonic boom ever created by an aircraft. At age 24, Yeager had flown faster than the speed of sound. The flight was kept secret, and the world wouldn’t know about the first supersonic flight until months later. The X-1 would fly more than a hundred more times, reaching a speed of Mach 1.45. Subsequent X-1 models would fly more than twice the speed of sound. Later X-Planes would fly even faster, reaching hypersonic speeds where the density of the air wasn’t the only thing to change: They would fly so fast, the chemistry of the air would change. Capt. Yeager would go on to become Gen. Yeager and the iconic test pilot.

He was the first commandant of the Air Force’s test-pilot school and continued commanding fighter squadrons into the 1960s. Now age 86, Yeager will return this Saturday to the skies over the Mojave desert. He’ll make a now-routine supersonic flyby to kick off Edwards Air Force Base’s air show and open house. Source: Jason Paur Added by: Kevin Rogers Yeager remained in the Air Force after the war, becoming a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base) and eventually being selected to fly the rocket-powered Bell X-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight, after Bell Aircraft test pilot "Slick" Goodlin demanded $150,000 to break the sound "barrier." Such was the difficulty in this task that the answer to many of the inherent challenges were along the lines of "Yeager better have paid-up insurance." Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the experimental X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,700 m).

Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, he broke two ribs while riding a horse. He was so afraid of being removed from the mission that he went to a veterinarian in a nearby town for treatment and told only his wife, as well as friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about it. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the airplane's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch of the airplane. Yeager's flight recorded Mach 1.07, however, he was quick to point out that the public paid attention to whole numbers and that the next milestone would be exceeding Mach 2. Yeager's X-1 is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Yeager was awarded the MacKay and Collier Trophies in 1948 for his mach-transcending flight, and the Harmon International Trophy in 1954.

Some aviation historians contend that American pilot George Welch broke the sound barrier before Yeager, once while diving an XP-86 Sabre on October 1, 1947, and again just 30 minutes before Yeager's X-1 flight. There was also a disputed claim by German pilot Hans Guido Mutke that he was the first person to break the sound barrier, on April 9, 1945, in a Messerschmitt Me 262.

Question: In 1947, who was the first person to break the sound barrier?
Answer: Chuck Yeager