For the Pointy Nose Crowd…On This Date Sixty Years Ago
(You know who you are 
):
1947 – Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager, 24, flying a Bell X-1, became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Similar Posts
Operation Red Hat: 10 October 1985
The background: Arab terrorists had found and struck an Italian luxury liner, Achille Lauro. The ship had just departed Alexandria, Egypt, on a pleasure cruise of the Mediterranean. A few hours later, terrorists from the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the ship. After tense negotiations and the killing of an American tourist, the hijackers traveled in…
Flightdeck Friday: USMC WWII MIA Return Edition
The Official press release: Marine Pilot Missing In Action From WWII Is Identified The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors He is…
The Solomons Campaign: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, 24-25 August 1942
Today Steve Ambrose joins the project with the battle of the Eastern Solomons. Â A former S-3 NFO, Steve has a wonderful blog that runs the gamut from hand-crafted wooden canoes to an on-line novel about life at sea (‘On The Line‘). Coral Sea was the scene of the first carrier vs carrier battle where…
Pearl Harbor – 69 Years Later
“AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL” Sixty-nine years ago those words ushered in a period of unbelievable agony, trial, effort and sacrifice. What was once before was forever changed afterward. Jack-booted thugs bent on their “Final Solution” strode cobblestone streets of the land distantly remembered as the forebear of a new nation,…
U.S. Naval Aviation – 100 Years
18 January 1911: At 11:01 a.m., Eugene Ely, flying the same Curtiss pusher used to take off from Birmingham (CL 2), landed on a specially built platform aboard the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (Armored cruiser No. 4) at anchor in San Francisco Bay. At 11:58 he took off and returned to Selfridge Field, San Francisco, completing…
Flightdeck Friday: Apollo 11 Forty Years Later
20 July 1969 102:42:08 Duke: Roger. Copy. (Pause) Eagle, Houston. You’re Go for landing. Over. 102:42:13 Armstrong (on-board): Okay. 3000 at 70. 102:42:17 Aldrin: Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3000 feet. 102:42:19 Duke: Copy. 102:42:19 Aldrin: Program Alarm. (Pause) 1201 102:42:24 Armstrong: 1201. (Pause) (On-board) Okay, 2000 at 50. 102:42:25 Duke: Roger. 1201 alarm. (Pause)…
2 Comments
Comments are closed.
It may just be a “sea story,” but one of my bosses, who was a great one, fond of saying “My idea of ‘small arms” is a 5″ gun…” claimed to have had a family friend, who was a test pilot for Bell. The story goes is on the day before Chuck’s flight, he took it up, and was sternly warned not to break Mach….You know pilots, competitive sorts they are…he claims to have pushed the nose down a bit and did the deed. Of course, it was buried for history’s sake.
Pat also told a hilarious story of testing the jet pack…they wandered around the factory asking “who wants to try it out?” After that, the in hanger, tethered first flight got quite wild, so it seems…
Dunno…third person stories can sometimes come way too embellished…