Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier?

[Ian David]

Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the

Skeptoid #154
May 19, 2009
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We all know the story of how Captain Chuck Yeager opened the throttles of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis in October, 1947. Breaking the sound barrier was to aviation what Neil Armstrong's first step was to the space program: No matter how many others went higher or faster later, it will always be that seminal, unassailable "first" that can never be topped. Yeager's name will always sit atop every list of record-breaking pilots, up there by himself in his own special stratosphere. But: Was he really the first pilot to fly faster than sound?

Plenty of stories out there say Yeager wasn't the first. How do we know what to believe? Do we accept the popular official story, or do we give credibility to the other claimants with good evidence of their own? Today we're going to point our skeptical eye at some of these other claims, and see who really deserves the credit.

There are certainly many pilots who approached the sound barrier but didn't live to tell about it. The years preceding Yeager's flight were among the most exciting in aviation history, as World War II drove aeronautic advancement like never before. Planes that had been shot down often entered the transonic realm as they plummeted, and were torn apart by the resulting shockwaves. Dive bombers had to have special air brakes developed to prevent them from breaking up, which sometimes happened anyway. Of the many pilots who toyed with the sound barrier in WWII — all unintentionally, of course — most never survived the adventure.

During WWII, engineers didn't yet have any flight test experience that taught us how to design aircraft capable of supersonic speed. Even in 1947, Yeager's X-1 was designed after a 50 caliber bullet, known to be stable at supersonic speeds. WWII had seen widespread use of the German V-2 rockets, which were supersonic, so we knew such flight was possible. But the V-2 was ballistic, it didn't require a controllable airframe; and designing a supersonic controllable airframe was the problem for aeronautical engineers. The main issue is called shock stall, and it's what happens when a control surface approaches the speed of sound. A shockwave forms around the control surface, rendering it useless, and the pilot has no way to control the aircraft.


More:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4154

[Deep13]

1. I think the point is to acheive supersonic speed in level flight. nt

[conscious evolution]

2. No

Unfortunately,few of his predecessors survived to tell about it.

It took the developement of the horizontal stabilator to achieve controllable supersonic flight,IIRC.