MACH PLUS: Yeager's
fateful flight was top secret for several months
Oct. 14, 1947
Flying Faster than Sound
By Cathy Booth Thomas
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.
TIME Cover
Collection: Click
here to see covers from 1947
Previous: 
