Science: Bill & the Little Beast

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"Dear Franklin . . ." After three months of brooding and flying a hospital bed, Ensign Bridgeman wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, beginning "Dear Franklin . . ." and demanded transfer to an active job. He told his secret to an admiral's wife who did welfare work in the hospital. She turned white and ran to the commanding admiral of the San Francisco Naval District. In old-line Navy custom, such conduct by an ensign was almost as shocking as mutiny.

Bill is not sure what happened, except that the admiral called Washington on the telephone and tried to explain "the unfortunate circumstances concerning a letter sent to the President." But two days later, Bill got high-priority "expedite orders" usually reserved for captains and admirals.

During the rest of the war, Bill got plenty of action. He flew bombing missions all over the Pacific with Buzz Miller's famous "Reluctant Raiders." He was slightly wounded by flak over Truk, but came through the war in tiptop shape and a lieutenant commander.

About this time he got married. Six years later he had the marriage annulled. "Odd, I know," is all he will say about it.

Twelve Hours in Jets. Out of the Navy, Bill worked for airlines but tired of the routine and joined Douglas as a production test pilot, checking out finished airplanes before delivery. After a year of this, he got transferred to the more stimulating (and better paid) job of experimental test pilot.

Douglas' Skyrocket had just been completed, but no pilot had been assigned to fly it. Bill's chief weakness in going after the job was that he had never flown a jet plane, and the rocket-pushed Skyrocket was a sort of superjet. He got checked out in an F-80, and in twelve hours of jet flying he convinced Douglas engineers that he was the man to entrust with the precious Skyrocket.

No one regretted the decision. In 60 dangerous but splendidly executed flights, Pilot Bridgeman flew the Skyrocket faster and higher than any other plane has flown. He met new perils of the air, e.g., "supersonic yaw" and heating, and brought the Skyrocket back again & again to its base. Death often brushed his shoulders, but the Skyrocket is still intact, and it has accumulated enough data about high-speed flying to keep designers figuring for years.

It was natural that Bill was considered for the even more dangerous job of testing the X3.

The new assignment did not change his personal way of life, except that it gave him considerably more money ($20,000 instead of the $9,000 that production test pilots make). When not busy at Muroc, or studying the mathematics, aerodynamics and other subjects that modern test pilots need, Bill is what Californians approvingly call a "beach bum." He lives in a small, pleasant shack squeezed between the Pacific Coast Highway and the rocky shore two miles north of Monica. He swims, water-skis, sails, chases fish underwater with a spear, dives for spiny lobsters in the kelp beds, pries abalones off rocks. In quiet moments he sits on his porch, a high dive from the water, and feeds bagels to sea gulls. It is a pleasant life for a relaxing warrior, but always some odd airplane is waiting behind the mountains.