Science: Bill & the Little Beast

• Share

(3 of 7)

The antennae brought more than voices. In a darkened end of the trailer, newsroom for the X-3's telemetering circuits, engineers stared intently at vertical lines of light on the faces of two oscilloscopes. The "green worms" were connected by electronics with 186 instruments tucked into the X3. Some of the lines crept upward slowly; some kept steady; some lengthened or shortened in quick little jumps. To a practiced eye they told almost everything about the ordeal of the distant X-3 and its watchful pilot. The lines of light measured the air speed and a host of air pressures all over the plane. They told the position of wheels, flaps and control surfaces. They rode herd on scores of temperatures inside and outside the engine and on the skin of the plane itself. They detected the first feeble flutters of a vibrating tail or wingtip. Every motion and tremor of the X3, as it rode high above the desert's Joshua trees, was written down continuously in lines of light in the trailer.

Phantom Crew. The cramped cockpit of the X-3 has no room for anyone except Bill Bridgeman, but the tense men watching the oscilloscopes can perform all the duties of a well-trained crew. They bend electronically over Bridgeman's shoulders, watch banks of instruments that he would have no time to glance at. They warn him when some unfelt danger is still small, but growing.

As the echoing voices crackle over the channels, and the lines of light rise and fall on the scopes, the men in the crowded trailer feel warm identification with the man in the air. They leave the ground when he does, hurtle through the sky in his ungentled airplane. Their hearts skip a beat when his does—and sometimes before. Their muscles tense with his. Bill Bridgeman feels the same intimate way about his phantom crew miles away on the ground. "They're right with me," he says, "watching every little thing. I don't even have to ask them. They'll tell me if any thing's wrong."

Much went wrong on the first flight of the droopy-nosed X3, but not much may be told about it. During its first attempt, it did not fly faster than a modern jet bomber, and at this speed, far below its design speed, its penguin wings probably gave it little margin of stability. After a stint of unstable flopping and wobbling, the engines began to act up. The phantom crew in the trailer sensed the danger instantly.

"I think you should bring it back," one of them warned Bridgeman.

Bridgeman: "You want me to bring it home?"

Trailer: "Right." Bill headed for the field. Blind Landing. Then came the most dangerous part of the flight. The X-3 lands well above 200 m.p.h., and its little, faired-in windows give its pilot almost no view of the ground as it flashes below. When Bill Bridgeman squared away and headed on a straight-in approach into Muroc, he cautiously opened his landing-gear doors. They buffeted alarmingly. Then he lowered his wheels. The X-3 obviously didn't like it.

Bridgeman to Yeager: "This thing doesn't want to stay in the air."

Yeager: "Doesn't seem to, does it?"

Slanting swiftly down toward the great brown lake, the X-3 wobbled a little.

Yeager flew close beside it, playing seeing-eye dog to its blind pilot.