To overcome sound speed, not only skill was required, but also personal courage — no one knew how the airplane would behave under extreme conditions, what loads the pilot would experience. The first to overcome the sound barrier in horizontal flight and returned to base was the American pilot.
Officially, the pilot from the United States, Chuck Yeager, was the first to overcome supersonic speed. The record was set on 10/14/1957 on the Bell X-1 aircraft, which was specially designed by Bell Aircraft in early 1946 for this purpose. The aircraft was manufactured by order of the military, but had no relation to the conduct of hostilities. The car was literally crammed with research equipment. Outwardly, the Bell X-1 resembled a modern cruise missile.
Test Pilot Chuck Yeager
The pilot was born in February 1923 in 1923. After graduating from school, the young man immediately entered the flight school, after which he had to fight in Europe. At the very beginning of his flying career, the pilot managed to shoot down the Messerschmitt 109, but later he himself was defeated in the French sky and was forced to parachute.
The pilot was picked up by partisans, but counterintelligence removed him from flying. The outraged Chuck secured a reception from Eisenhower, who commanded the Allied forces. He believed the young man and, as it turned out, not in vain: the brave pilot managed to shoot down 13 more German planes until the end of the war.
Yeager returned home with an excellent track record, features, awards, and the rank of captain. This contributed to the enrollment of the pilot in a special team of testers, who at that time were selected as carefully as astronauts today. Chuck began to call his plane "Captive Glenys", in honor of his wife. The aircraft was equipped with one jet engine and was launched from a B-52 bomber.
On a winged car, the pilot repeatedly set speed records: at the end of 1947 he first broke the previous altitude record (21372 m), and in 1953 he managed to disperse the device to almost 2800 km / h, or 2.5 M (the speed of sound is measured in "max", named after the German philosopher, engineer; 1 M is approximately equal to 1200 km / h). Yeager resigned as a brigadier general in 1975, having managed to take part in the Vietnam War and hostilities in Korea.
