Man in a Hurry

(See Cover)

Deep in the Mojave Desert, across the San Gabriel Mountains and 70 miles inland from Los Angeles, lies a strange, unnatural lake. It is eleven miles long and four miles wide, with clearly defined shores and what look like beaches. But, except for a short time after a rare desert rain, the lake has no water. Its smooth and precisely level surface is cement-hard dark-red mud. Its one surface craft is a weathered wooden dummy battleship, built long ago as a bomber target. Above it, in the bright desert sky, thunder the real craft of Muroc Dry Lake.

Muroc is the U.S. Air Force's secret test base. Its ships, as un-nautical Air Forcemen insist on calling aircraft, are the latest planes, from the big B-36 to Buck Rogerish craft that are still marked "Top Secret." Muroc is the world's finest landing field. A deliberately overloaded bomber can labor for miles across the lake before it tries the air. An experimental jet fighter of unproved design can be tested and wrung out, with worlds of room for landing if there is a structural or power-plant failure. Muroc's miles & miles of smoothness have allowed many a crash-threatened pilot and airplane to survive and fly again.

Hole in the Wall. Walled off from the world by the desert and the strictest military secrecy, Muroc Air Force Base is a strange sort of community. In all it does, it is dedicated to military aircraft performance, with special emphasis on speed. In the realm of speed it also has its king. He is Captain Charles ("Chuck") Yeager, 26, a modest, blue-eyed test pilot with an infectious grin and an easy West Virginia drawl. What makes Chuck Yeager outstanding, even among the crack pilots at Muroc, is the fact that his name is certain to go down prominently in aviation history books. Chuck Yeager was the first man to break through the dreaded "sonic wall" and fly faster than sound.

A few days ago, as he made his 31st successful landing in the remarkable plane specially designed for his remarkable feat, Chuck was able to say casually: "We've punched so many holes in that old wall, you can see 'em all over the Mojave."

Chuck punched the first hole on Oct. 14, 1947, when a B-29 took off from Muroc with his odd, fat little airplane nestled under its bomb-bay. Chuck's small craft had no propeller, no intake for a jet engine; only four rocket orifices in its stubby tail. The little airplane, the Bell X-1, was as daring a challenge to the unknown as the Wrights' first faltering biplane.

Demon on the Tail. In the long-ago (to airmen) days of October 1947, the air was like a prison with invisible steel-strong walls. There seemed to be an upper limit to speed. As airplanes flew faster & faster, strange things had happened to them. Hard, unseen fists punctured their metal skins. Mysterious arms reached out of the air to wrestle with their controls. Sometimes a wartime fighter pilot, diving too fast in combat, would feel his stick freeze fast. No matter how he tried, he could not pull out of the dive. Sometimes he did not live to tell the tale. Sometimes the demon let go just in time, and the shaken pilot got back to his base to describe his hair-raising experience. Aerodynamicists explained it as "shock waves."

When a body moves with the speed of sound, the air does not yield smoothly. Instead, hard shock waves (sound waves) form. These are no gentle whispers; they are tough, speeding shells of compressed air, powerful enough under certain conditions to tear an airplane to bits.

Even flying much slower than sound, airplanes can run afoul of shock waves. The air crowding past them has to go faster to get around their curved surfaces. If, in its hurry, the air hits the speed of sound, shock waves form locally. Good design has steadily raised the speed at which an airplane can fly without trouble from local shock waves. But there is a limit: the speed of sound itself.* At this critical speed, an airplane's motion is sure to generate shock waves.

What violence these would do no one knew, but so many airplanes had met disaster far below sonic speed that the "sonic wall" had earned a fearful reputation. Designers and pilots spoke of it with awe. It was widely believed that when an airplane reached the speed of sound, it would disintegrate.

All for Love. Test Pilot Yeager knew all this when he prepared to fly the Air Force's odd little Bell speedster. He took over the X-1 from a civilian test pilot, Chalmers ("Slick") Goodlin, who had flown the ominous little ship at Mach .8 (eight-tenths of the speed of sound). Goodlin was offered a fat reward (a rumored $150,000) for flying it at full speed, but he did not like the terms. Another civilian pilot had a try at the X-1 and hastily bowed out. Then the Air Force took charge and gave the job to Chuck Yeager, who did it in line of duty for a captain's salary ($511.50 a month, including flying pay and extras).

On the big day, Chuck climbed aboard the B29. He already knew what the X-1 would do below Mach 1 (the speed of sound). He had flown it many times, working it up gradually toward the critical speed. The rocket plane handled beautifully, both when flying under rocket power and when gliding down so quietly that Chuck could hear the clock ticking on the instrument panel. After each landing, Captain Jackie L. Ridley, Muroc flight test engineer, analyzed the records of the X-1's instruments. On the whole, they were encouraging. But no one was sure what would happen at the critical speed. The sonic wall was still unpierced; the big test still lay ahead. Chuck is reported to have remarked cheerfully: "I'll be back all right. In one piece, or a whole lot of little pieces."

Lox & Alcohol. The B-29 took off with Major Robert Cardenas, /- one of the Air Force's best test pilots, at the bomber's controls. Followed by two F-80 "chase airplanes" (to observe the X-1 in flight), the B-29 circled to 7,000 ft. above the lake. Then Chuck, bundled in a flying suit and topped with a golden, hard-plastic crash helmet, climbed down a retractable ladder and squeezed through the door in the side of the X-1.

The cockpit was barely big enough for him. Behind him, cramming most of the fuselage, were thick-walled tanks of "lox" (liquid oxygen) and alcohol. Tucked away in odd places, even under his feet, were heavy flasks of nitrogen gas compressed to 4,500 Ibs. a square inch. The windshield (of glass, rather than plastic, so it would not melt from air friction) was too small to give much visibility. From all sides, and above and below, a bristle of controls, dials and warning lights pressed on the pilot's seat.

Chuck Yeager could not see much, but he had plenty to do. Swiftly he checked the instruments, tried the controls and adjusted his oxygen mask. Outside he could hear the thunder of the B-29's great engines and feel the vibration as the bomber climbed higher & higher. He felt it wheel on a turn, and heard Major Cardenas' voice on the radio: "Am turning on downwind leg at 21,000 ft." Then the bomber wheeled again. "Am turning on the base leg," said Major Cardenas. "Five minutes to drop time."

Chuck says that he was scared. He says he is always scared when he flies the X-1, but no one takes him very seriously. Scared or not, he waited, watching the seconds tick round the clock.

Cardenas called the last warning to all radio listeners: "B29 eight zero zero to NACA radar, Muroc Tower, F-80 chase aircraft. One minute warning."

Chuck knew now that the B-29 was in a flat power glide to increase its speed to 240 m.p.h., minimum flying speed of the loaded X-1. "B29 eight zero zero," chanted Major Cardenas, "30 seconds to drop time."

At 15 seconds to drop time, Cardenas told Chuck to start his recording instruments. ("He always remembers," says

Cardenas, "but I'm supposed to tell him.") Another short silence. Then Cardenas counted the last ten seconds: "Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five ["He always misses one of them," says Chuck] three-two-one-drop!"

One Piece. Silently and smoothly the X-1 cut away from the B29. For an instant it drove forward and downward. Then Chuck turned on the nitrogen pressure and fired the lox and alcohol in one of the rocket chambers. A spurt of white dots (visible shock waves) spurted out behind and grew into a long plumelike "contrail" (condensed water vapor).

The sudden acceleration hit Chuck Yeager like a sledge hammer and the X-1 climbed high at tremendous speed. ("It's like having hold of something by the tail and not daring let go.") At carefully timed intervals he fired the other rockets. Each gave the little orange airplane another mighty push. Chuck didn't hear much noise; he was leaving sound behind.

What he experienced at the critical moment when he crossed the sonic barrier is a tightly guarded secret. But when he looked at his instruments after a few moments, he realized that he was flying actually faster than sound. The terrible sonic wall lay far behind. The X-1 had not disintegrated. It still flew beautifully ("a pilot's dream") and Chuck was still in one piece.

When the fuel was gone (it lasts only 2 1/2 minutes at full power), the X-1 slowed down and was back on the other side of sound's great wall. Chuck scavenged the last of the dangerous oxygen and alcohol from the system by flushing it with nitrogen. Then he began the long glide to earth, listening to the clock ticking on the instrument panel. He somehow found this "awful boring," he says, and welcomed his spurt of interest when he landed the X-1 at close to 165 miles an hour and rolled to a stop on Muroc's smooth surface.

The Wringing-Out. Chuck's X-1, like all modern aircraft, was first tested while still on the drawing boards. Some manufacturers make scale models of their new airplanes and drop them from high altitudes. As they streak down to destruction, telemetering instruments report their performance by radio. After the airplane itself is assembled, the "contractor's" test pilots have the ticklish job of easing it into the air. In the case of high-speed aircraft, this is generally done at Muroc; civilian pilots like the field as much as the Air Force does. Untested aircraft are shipped all the way to Muroc from the Atlantic Coast.

After the first few flights have proved it airworthy, the airplane is turned over to a military test pilot as his "project." He takes it into the air, loaded with automatic recording instruments, to find out whether it lives up to the contractor's guarantees. Often a hidden defect, perhaps unknown even to the manufacturer, drags the plane out of the air. The pilot's best bet is to make an emergency landing on the broad lake. Bailing out alive from a modern jet plane is difficult; it is also part of the test pilot's code to bring the aircraft back if it is humanly possible.

After the first flight tests, the new airplane (if still intact) goes back to the manufacturer with a detailed report. If he can convince the Air Force that its defects have been corrected, the Air Force buys several improved copies and turns them over to test pilots for final "evaluation." Since the airplane's basic flight characteristics are well understood by then, evaluation work is usually done at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, close to the great laboratories of the Engineering Division. The airplane is flown at all possible altitudes, loads, power outputs and rates of climb. It is strained, stunted, landed under adverse conditions. Out of this work, which requires hundreds of flights, grows a thick book of detailed figures on the airplane's performance.

Not Enough Money. The 90-odd pilots of the Flight Test Division, most of them based at Wright Field, have the highest prestige of any group in the peacetime Air Force. Slim, unshakably calm Colonel Albert Boyd, 42, chief of the division, picks his men with minute care. Their records must show that they are not "accident prone." Formal engineering training is valuable, but character is essential. The prospective test pilot must be alert, intelligent, stable and not excitable. He must be enthusiastic about the work. There isn't enough money, explains Colonel Boyd undramatically, to pay for what a test pilot will be asked to do.

Over & above these professional qualifications, Colonel Boyd demands that the test pilots have agreeable personalities. They are, he feels, ambassadors of the Air Force to civilian engineers and designers. They must criticize airplanes sharply, point out defects, suggest changes. Everybody is happier if such work can be done tactfully. Colonel Boyd is skillful at selecting his ambassadors: one notable fact about them is that they have pleasant personalities (another is that the married ones have pretty wives).

The Regulars. Most test pilots stay only a short time at Muroc, coming & going with their "projects," i.e., the aircraft on which they are making tests. Colonel Boyd, a strict but much-beloved "Old Man," is there a great deal. His pilots testify that "he does everything we do" and he is one of the six Air Force men who have flown faster than sound in the X-1.* ("The Old Man did fine," says Chuck.) In 1947, Test Pilot Boyd also set a new world's speed record (623.8 m.p.h.) over Muroc Lake in a specially built F-80 (TIME, June 30, 1947).

Chuck Yeager, Major Cardenas (Chuck's C.O. as well as the pilot who takes the X-1 aloft), and Flight Engineer Jackie Ridley are permanent at Muroc. The X-1 is not a transient project but the Air Force's first "research airplane," and it needs both Muroc's room and its walled-off secrecy. The X-1 was never intended as an "operational airplane"; it is more like a flying wind tunnel. Its big advantage is that its rockets, which produce a thrust of 6,000 Ibs., are not weakened, like "air-breathing" engines, by high speed or high altitude. The X-1 can whip up to where the air is thin and still have power to pick up speed as long as the fuel lasts.

Performance figures of the X-1 have not been released. The Air Force says that it has flown "hundreds of miles" faster than sound. It has probably flown above Mach 2 (1,324 m.p.h. in the cold upper atmosphere) and reached a height above 60,000 ft., a record for airplanes. The big secret -- what happens as it passes Mach 1 --is well kept. Chuck has been so carefully coached on this detail that he knows how to ward off questions before they are asked. Possibly something dramatic happens. It would be just as dramatic, perhaps more so, if nothing at all happens.

Supersonic Passes. Smashing speed and altitude records is not the real work of the X-1. It was designed to solve the problem of practical supersonic flying. Chuck Yeager has put it through maneuvers at all speeds within its range. He has dived it under power, rolled it, looped it. He has fired guns above the speed of sound ("getting somewhere," is all he says about that).

Inside the X-1 are intricate recording instruments that total more than 500 Ibs. This week, as Chuck brought the plane down once again, the records were greedily grabbed, as usual, by Muroc's scientists and airplane designers. Already the records have had a profound effect on high-speed modern aircraft. When production aircraft fly faster than sound, as scientists are sure they will one day, their pilots will thank the X-1, the first airplane to pass through the transonic zone and bring back information.

Happy Bottom. With its red dust, desolation and run-down buildings, Muroc is not an attractive place to live. But for the test pilots like Chuck, who do not have to live on the post, it is not too bad. The mountain-ringed desert, with its mourning Joshua trees, has a kind of austere beauty. On its broad plain are little oases -- alfalfa farms kept green by diesel-pumped water. There is hunting and riding. When these rural pleasures pall, Los Angeles is only 70 miles away (eleven minutes as the jet flies).

Other relaxation is close to the post : an aviation dude ranch called Pancho's Fly-Inn (or the Happy Bottom Riding Club). The ranch has its own airport, lighted at night, so that guests, friends and airborne wayfarers can fly in at all hours. The Fly-Inn is a much-buzzed place. Standing alone on the flat desert with only a few low trees, it invites the dangerous prank that all young pilots play, no matter what the threats of flying field managers or military C.O.s. Chuck Yeager has roared low over the ranch in every sort of airplane, including the fastest jets. When he buzzes the place in a jet plane, the slap from the zipping wing jounces the bar.

Last fall Chuck Yeager was asked to help dedicate an airport in West Virginia, his home state. Flying down from Wright Field in an F-80 jet fighter, he found the Kanawha River at Charleston crowded with a motorboat regatta. Chuck roared down the river, 20 ft. above the boats, at almost 600 m.p.h., shot under a highway bridge, did two slow rolls, and zoomed out of sight.

Besides being a notable buzzer, Chuck is a deadpan kidder. In spite of his blue eyes and fair skin, he is likely to assert solemnly that he is one-eighth Cherokee Indian. His parents say: "He's liable to tell you anything." Asked about his birthplace, Chuck says: "Ah come from so far up the holler, they had to pipe daylight to me."

The facts are that Chuck was born in a big white house a few miles from Hamlin, W. Va. (pop. 850). His father, A. Hal Yeager, is a prosperous contract gas-well driller. Chuck is a hero to Hamlin, but the townspeople love him with special fervor because he refuses to act like a hero. Says Louie Hoff, music instructor for Lincoln County schools: "He isn't the biggety type. He's still the same nice kid." Mrs. Ocie J. Smith, who has taught school in Hamlin for nigh on 40 years, says: "Land sakes! Why, when I had Charlie in the third grade, he was a little slow. I never dreamed he would grow up to be traveling around the country so fast. He used to sit in school daydreaming, and I always suspected he had his fishing pole hidden out back somewheres." In high school Chuck speeded up some. Miss Gonza Methel, a teacher, remembers him as "one of the best geometry students I ever had."

Bugs & Slide Trombones. As a freckle-faced boy, Chuck was mostly interested in collecting bugs, growing gourds and sunflowers, hunting with a .22 rifle, and fishing in little Mud River. He played in the school band, starting with a big bull tuba but settling finally for a slide trombone. He went to Methodist Sunday school, stayed out of trouble, and was quiet almost to the point of being timid. "Nobody ever noticed Charlie Yeager much," says Lyle E. Ashworth, a classmate, "until 1943 when he buzzed the town in a P47 and sent old Mrs. Lon Richardson to the hospital with a case of nerves."

The Air Force did wonders for the "timid" boy. In 1941, when he was 18, Chuck graduated from high school and enlisted as a private. He was trained as a mechanic, but was soon sent to flying school in various Western states. In northern California he met pretty, dark-haired Glennis Faye Dickhouse. Since then, all his fighting aircraft have been named Glamourous Glennis. Even the X-1 has Glamourous Glennis painted on its nose, but official Air Force pictures do not show it.

Chuck got his wings in March 1943 as a flight officer, a warrant rank below the level of the commissioned officers. He joined the 363rd Fighter Squadron and went to England in December. The timid boy from Hamlin flew 64 combat missions, shot down 13 German airplanes, won a captaincy and a hatful of decorations.

On his ninth mission, Chuck and his Glamourous Glennis of that day were shot down by three Messerschmitts over occupied France. After bailing out with a leg wound, he spotted an old Frenchman, chopping wood, who looked trustworthy. Chuck introduced himself in West Virginia English. The Frenchman put him in touch with the underground, which smuggled him by painful night marches over the Spanish border. Franco's Spaniards put Chuck and some pals in jail.

Part of the Bargain. He was not a prisoner long. The Spaniards had neglected to take away his escape kit, which contained a small, highly tempered saw. "The bars in that jail were brass," Chuck says. "The saw ate right through them." He and his pals "fooled around Spain for a while, swiping chickens." Then the British gathered them up and forwarded them to England. "The British fed us good," says Chuck, "I gained 25 pounds." Right off, he shot down five Germans.

Back from the wars, Chuck married Glennis in Hamlin. As a shot-down man, he just about had his choice of jobs in the Air Force. He tried instructing for a while, but found it dull. Then he got to Wright Field as a flight test pilot. After watching him do the most exacting tests (like landing jet fighters "hard"), Colonel Boyd gave him the X-1 project, which all ambitious test pilots wanted. "Chuck is always cool," says Colonel Boyd. "He never gets excited, and he flies like part of the airplane."

Now Chuck and brunette Glennis live in an airy desert house that is only a short drive from Muroc. They have three children. Donald, 3, has reached the shy stage, but Michael, 2, climbs all over visitors. Sharon Christine, 14 weeks, shows early signs, thinks proud Chuck Yeager, of developing into a pretty girl. What does Glennis think of his special kind of flying? Says Chuck: "I was flying when she married me. It was part of the bargain."

The Job Ahead. Colonel Boyd believes that Chuck has done just about enough test flying, but he hasn't the heart to tear him away from his beloved X-1. There is still work to be done with the little orange airplane, and it is an open secret that soon a greatly improved model will be ready to fly.

The new X-1 should be able to carry nearly twice as much lox and alcohol. This single improvement (there may be others) should push it into a much higher speed range. Numerous guessers around California airfields speculate that it ought to climb well above 100,000 ft. At this altitude the air is so thin that tremendous speed should be possible.

Chuck's pals are sure that he can fly the near-meteoric new airplane as it should be flown. He will bring it back safely, they are certain, from the top of the stratosphere, and land it at an unholy speed on the friendly lake. Then he will drive home to Glennis and tell her that the flight was "like all the rest of them." After a while, Chuck Yeager's friends hope, the Old Man will transfer him to some other Air Force job where promotion steps faster than the death that rides in the cockpit with every test pilot. From that day, others, to whom Chuck Yeager has pointed the way, will carry on with flight beyond the sonic wall.

*760.9 m.p.h. at standard sea level temperature (59DEG F.), 662 m.p.h. from 35,332 to 104,987 ft., where temperature is constant at -67DEG F.

/- Distant relative of Mexico's ex-President Lazaro Cardenas.

* The others, besides Chuck, are Major Gustav Lundquist, Major Frank Everest, Captain Jackie Ridley and the late Captain James T. Fitzgerald Jr.

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