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https://hackaday.com/2022/10/05/ugliest-airplane-ever-built-predicted-t…
Looks like a DEATH TRAP, but it definitely served a purpose.
October 10th 1947; Chuck Yeager was dropped from the B-29 mothership on his seventh powered flight in the X-1. Yeager fired all four chambers of his engine in rapid sequence and quickly accelerated towards that ol' demon that lived beyond the sound barrier. As his rocket plane approached .94 Mach, Yeagers controls suddenly ceased to function. Shock waves running across the plane’s control surfaces acted like concrete and froze the controls.
Yeager kept his cool and deselected the plane’s rockets in an attempt to slow the X-1 down and dump the remaining fuel. After regaining control at lower speeds, Yeager glided his now unpowered rocket plane back in to the dry lakebed to an uneventful landing.
Engineers expected that as the rocket plane reached the sound barrier, its nose would pitch up or down, but at .94 Mach, Chuck had lost any authority over the plane’s elevator. Without it, he could not correct for whatever pitch change might occur at Mach 1. It was Jack Ridley who came up with the solution that by changing the X-1's moving horizontal tail angle of incidence in small increments, he could potentially control his aircraft without having to rely on the elevator. This had never been attempted at extreme speeds, but Yeager was willing to give it a try on the next flight... where Yeager did in fact beat that Ol' demon. October 14th 1947 and earned that steak dinner at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club.
"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, 750 miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it: The sound barrier. Then, they built a small plane, the X-1, to try and break the sound barrier. And men came to the High Desert in California to ride it. They were called test pilots. And no one knew their names."
www.Sierrahotel.net
Chuck carried his balls in bowling bags....
An F-18 Super Hornet breaking the sound barrier.
The Shop
763mph.
More info please
The pilot ejected right as his aircraft dropped off the carrier in Rough Seas and hit the water.
These guys have nerves of steel--much Respect.
I had the story but now can't find it.
From the millisecond the cat released I knew immediately it wasn’t very strong, and our vertical speed (rate of climb) was zero for a few seconds. The tower comes on the radio “Truder 505, do you need to declare (an emergency)?” I said “No, sir, just a little settle”. He responds with “More than a little…”.
I later learned we had settled so much that the only thing visible was our vertical stabilizer. The deck crew started running to the deck edge, waiting for the splash, and with any luck, a couple of ejection seats.
“Vertical Take Off”: it literally took off vertically from a stand that launched it like a rocket…it stood on it’s tail.
There’s some really neat stuff from back in the day.
The flight deck is 60’ over the water, so even a slight loss of climb could spell catastrophe. We probably settled about 30’, which doesn’t leave much room for error.
That's quite a story were you a Navy pilot?
If so my hats off to you for your Bravado and Service to our Country. (Pilot or not)
The picture I posted was a pilot attempting to land and it went very wrong.
The HOOK device tore off the right side landing gear and the plane caught fire.
He barely was able to eject in a newly designed ejection seat that proved to be very functional and probably saved his life as he escaped with scrapes and bruises.
Pit Row
We have an air museum just up the road that has a Vulcan on static display, another one 25 mins away that does taxi runs, and i was lucky to have 11 flypasts of the last one flying as the came over out factory doing loops over a nearby reservoir.
This is the one that does taxi runs, it overshot the runway after a technical issue a few weeks ago.
Our factory was the other side of the trees, and we ended up stood on top of a stack of pallets , and shipping containers to get a better view.. after about 10 mins , the Ops Manager cam out, as he had heard it too, and joined us , he was a proper guy , and understood that this would likely be the last time any of us saw it fly in person.
Since then i have been in one, and i can honestly say that the guys that fly these things ( and anything like it) are a special breed.
Back in the day , i worked on the Olympus engines, making compressor blades for Concorde, i have been lucky enough to see that at close quarters too.
I knew a pilot who flew bit long haul stuff, and we chatted about the pressure of his job.
He said 'well the reality is that i rely on guys like you , to make the decisions about stuff that means i dont even have to think about the plane, i just need to think about me, as long as i can get from London to NY and not fuck up, everyone behind me will be fine'.
A lot of plane related stuff happens cos someone has a bad day on the ground, not in the air. Luckily we have checks and balances that catch that sort of shit.
I spent the last 10 years or so before retirement working on experimental military aircraft/projects. A lot of contact with DARPA and other govt funded stuff. There are some crazy cool things out there. I enjoyed working with the spec ops folks the most. They have a discretionary budget that allows them to expedite procurement.
With the re-engine plan for B52 going ahead, there is a chance that plane will be in the air for 100 years. That is unfathomable to me that a plane designed 50 years after we learned to fly, would last twice that long. Big chunk of work for us , long term too.
I did heavy maintenance on the Buff at Tinker Depot. Cool plane, relatively simple but everything is big and heavy. A lot of climbing. Boeing builds stuff to last.
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