Going fast is cool. Going faster is cooler. Your driver’s education instructor may have told you speed kills in an effort to keep your parent’s Buick in one piece. To pilots, especially combat pilots, speed saves lives. For a nation sleep walking into a cold war with the Soviets that meant millions of lives. The faster our boys could get in the air to greet the invading communist hoards thrusting over the North Pole with their nuclear payloads and maps of Minneapolis the better off it was going to be for the free world.

The bright orange rocket powered plane with a shape borrowed from a rifle bullet was called the X-1. Could any other name put a stake in the ground to let history know it was passing into the new age of the atomic mid-century? This wasn’t some “Super Speedster Special”, this was “Experimental One”, an aircraft built for no other purpose but to see what is out there and to see what happens when you get there. The X-1 was the first in a long line of pure research x-planes and the sound barrier was its target.

The problem wasn’t simply going faster. A surprising phenomenon was tearing the wings from high-performance aircraft, shaking them to bits or causing a complete loss of control as they neared the speed of sound, which is approximately a quaint 700 miles per hour. Simply put, the air around these airplanes could no longer move out of the way fast enough and compressed into a barrier of sorts nicknamed the sonic wall. It was as formidable as it sounds. Many engineers thought that was as fast as anyone was ever going to fly.

In the Appalachian drawl of Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager, one of the X-1 test pilots, Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York built a little plane that “might could do it”. They thought they had the sound barrier licked. But as Yeager’s series of test flights nosed closer and closer to what we now call Mach 1, “might could” was looking more like “no f’ng way”.

Those flying airplanes, as well as those raising teen-age daughters, like to talk about a concept called control authority. As the X-1 went faster and faster it had precious little control authority. It was no longer responding to Yeager’s flight control inputs, especially in the up and down department known as pitch. Pilots seem to have great affinity for elevator authority. An elevator is the control surface on the trailing edge of the tail’s horizontal stabilizer which lets life loving pilots keep their nose pointed at the sky. Stable was not a good way to describe the X-1 going transonic.

It is easy to understand why a tough customer like Yeager thought nothing was impossible. He was certainly one of the most naturally gifted stick and rudder fliers to wear a uniform but maybe it was what happened on the ground after his P-51 Mustang was shot down over occupied France during World War 2 (before D-Day) that says more about him.

Yeager parachuted into a forest and made a break between enemy patrols to join and fight with the French resistance until winter receded enough for him to chance an escape with a fellow airman over the Pyrenees. 4 days into their mountain crossing they were discovered by a German unit. The concentrated hail of bullets severely wounded Yeager’s partner. A lucky move would slip them out of immediate danger by sliding back down the mountain, but one of the other airman’s legs was shot to pieces. Yeager was forced to amputate it with a pocket knife, tie up what was left and then carry his passed-out mate miles and miles, back up the mountain. You getting all this?

When folks like that are rescued they are sent home for good reason. Yeager had to beg to stay in the war, taking his request personally all the way to Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. Back in the skies over the shrinking Third Reich, Yeager would notch 12 ½ kills making him a bona fide ace more than twice over and one of the best dogfighters ever.

There is a heck of lot of more to this enlisted mechanic turned hot-shot but the point is a little compressed air and some transonic shock waves aren’t going to stop a dude cut as such. Yeager didn’t really buy into all the sonic wall jive anyway. But whatever it was, the X-1 was going to tumble to the California Mojave Desert floor unless someone figured out how to bridle the rocket powered beast.

So out there on the flight line, away from the Bell Aircraft slide rule brigade, Yeager and his Air Force project engineer buddy Jack Ridley hatched an idea. Jack was definitely an aeronautical genius but his small-town Oklahoma roots, Air Force education and own flying career made him more a part of the rocket jockey club compared to PhD types that took the train to work. They figured if Chuck could fly the plane by moving the entire horizontal stabilizer, which is a damn big piece of the tail, rather than just the elevator control surface, enough force could be created to get some pitch authority in the stubborn air near Mach 1. This “hey, how about we do this” became known as the flying tail and you can find it on nearly every supersonic plane ever flown.

However, it would take one more piece of Yankee ingenuity to bust the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. Yeager had broken a few ribs literally horsing around and plowing his steed into the closed gate of some stables two days before the big attempt. He kept this a secret so he didn’t get scratched from the flight. Chuck reasoned he could fly the X-1 with one good arm but he could not figure out how he was going to close the hatch. A bit before go time he confided in his buddy Jack Ridley with one more problem to be solved. Jack clandestinely sawed off the top of a wooden broom handle with the casual instructions to just “wang it down” on the lever to seal the cockpit one handed. This circus act would take place at 20,000 feet exposed to the elements since the X-1 was air dropped like a pregnant bomb from a war surplus B-29, instead of taking off from a runway, to save fuel for the speed run.

A thunderous boom punctuated the X-1’s dash through the sound barrier. It was considered the biggest thing in aviation since the Wright Brothers. Like the atomic bomb it marked not just new technology but a new mode of thinking. It was a time of cross over from the old ways of wild, leather helmeted, silk scarf rebels to extensively regimented data driven flight test programs. But that seems right for the era when fast became supersonic and science was everyone’s hope to save the day. In this post atomic but pre Kombucha America, Gleem Toothpaste, “Now with GL-70”, sounded incredibly appealing in a chemically toxic but irresistibly sparkly way.

Humans have a built-in disposition towards progress. We also happen to be allergic to the idea of getting our asses roasted in a nuclear inferno. In the past speed records were the domain of dare devils and showmen. In the opening stanzas of the cold war, before intercontinental missiles, speed became the most serious of businesses. For Yeager, who is still with us at 95 years old, and those that would soon follow him, fast planes meant survival but not necessarily theirs. Supersonic capability quickly migrated from experimental trailblazers to front-line interceptors tasked with knocking Russian bombers out of the sky. The Rand Corporation did a study and concluded that interceptor pilots were ready to trade their lives to save many. When out of their crude missiles and stingy allowance of bullets they would make the terminal decision to ram what they could not shoot down.

Maybe it would serve us all well to remember a time, not too long ago, when the highest of stakes put the whole world in the lurch. Our past and those who lived it must be judged in the frame of their own years. We are the blessed beneficiaries of incredible people and amazing events. Inarguably the cruise control world we inherit was forged in centuries of more challenging and difficult circumstances. Perhaps reverence for that which has come before is as rejuvenating as it is honoring.

Happy Anniversary General Yeager and the Bell X-1.