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Runway of History |
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Click on each part of the "Runway of History" to learn about the elements of flight. This will teach you what you need to know to keep a plane at a steady speed and altitude in the air. Once you have learned about each element you can then test your knowledge of flight and see if you can keep your own plane in the air. To do this, click on "Formula 1 Flying" in the lower right frame of any page. Or, if your browser is not capable of displaying frames, scroll to the bottom of any page and click on "Formula 1 Flying." Good luck, pilot!
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Bell X-1
Chuck Yeager was the first man to fly
faster that the speed of sound. But he had a very special
plane: the Bell X-1.
This plane was made so that air was pushed
through a tube running through the center of the plane at
extremely high speeds. This increased the thrust
dramatically.
The X-1 was carried up in to the air by a B-29 so as to save fuel, because the X-1's engine used up a lot of fuel very quickly. When the B-29 reached 20,000-25,000 it would release the X-1 like a bomb, which went shooting ahead. The pilot would turn on the four rockets and climb up to 45,000 feet, where the air was thinner. The X-1 one would already have the momentum of the carrier plane, so it did not have to fly as fast and climb as high as if it had taken off by itself.
But Chuck Yeager was not supposed to be the one to break the sound barrier: Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin was. But at the last minute, Goodlin decided not to fly. Earlier in the year an English pilot, Geoffrey De Havilland, Jr. tried to fly faster than the speed of sound his plane, "the Swallow," was ripped apart and he was killed instantly. This was too much of a risk for Goodlin, so the Col. Albert Boyd, the leader of the project, called in Chuck Yeager as the primary pilot and Bob Hoover as his backup. Yeager and Hoover were the youngest pilots, but were also the best. Yeager flew the X-1 on almost every flight, with Hoover following him in the chase plane, a P-80 Shooting Star.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager and the X-1 were carried to 20,000 feet and the little orange rocket plane was released. Yeager ignited two of its rockets and climbed to 42,000 at .88 Mach. At that altitude he leveled out and ignited the two remaining rockets. But at .965 Mach, the airspeed dial went out of control. It had only been designed to show up to 1.0 Mach. Going faster, the indicator smoothed out and Yeager pushed it to its limit. The 11 engineers on the ground heard the the distant rumble of the sonic boom as Yeager passed 1.0 Mach. Later, on the ground, the engineers found that the tiny X-1 had reached 1.07 Mach, 7/100 faster than the speed of sound.
Formula 1 Flying Tip:
The main advancment in creating the X-1 was the increase of thrust and decrease of drag, by designing a much more powerful engine and making a sleek frame for the shape. The X-1 was not designed stay at the same altitude and speed for a long time like other planes. The Bell X-1 was designed to fly up to 40,000 ft. after being dropped off at 200,000 ft and increase thrust to 1.0 Mach, about 600 miles per hour.