Posted on 10/15/2011 8:47:55 AM PDT by Daffynition
American test pilot Chuck Yeager flew a plane through the sound barrier on October 14th, 1947. Some say only the Wright brothers — Orville and Wilbur — can claim a more significant achievement in the history of flight. At the time, Britain and Germany also were trying to develop a plane that could break the sound barrier, but the United States soon won out with its X-1. It was more rocket than plane, developed specifically to fly through the shock waves of the sound barrier, with Yeager as pilot. “About half of the engineers gave us no chance at all of ever successfully flying beyond the speed of sound. They said it’s a so-called barrier and the airplane would go out of control or disintegrate, but I didn’t look at it that way.” Yeager said he had confidence in the craft. He named it “Glamorous Glennis” for his wife, and described its bullet-shaped body as cozy. ....
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
The only place I know where you can still buy it.....Weston, VT.
Thanks Daffynition, and a happy belated anniversary of the event goes out to General Yeager. I heartily recommend his autobiography, and not least for its “other voices” chapters, which were contributed by other people.
An “extra, extra” ping to the APoD members.
Yep....great movie. Yeager is a hero to my grown son. Read about Yeager while in grade school and made Yeager his hero.
One of my childhood heroes!
My sister was part of Public Relations at Edwards back when he visited the place in later years. She handled all kinds of requests, including requests for his autographed picture. He was long gone when the requests came in, so she signed his name and sent them off.
Days later she realized she had spelled his last name “Yaeger”. Nobody ever complained.
They even used a wind tunnel. The think the key word for Wrights is they had the first controlled flight.
actually, click the image in my post above and you can order it online.
Actually there were several other pilots(or would be pilots)but only the wright bros got off the ground:). Yep, I would say there's was a far greater achievement than Chuck's. Although Chuck was a great pilot, he would never have broken the sound barrier had it not been for Orville an Wilbur. A pilot I think came closest to their achievement was Charles Lindbergh, he helped build his plane and played a large part in the design of it, not to mention flying across the Atlantic with only a compass and dead reckoning to guide him. Still, without the pioneer work of the Wright Bros, he would never have known how to design a plane let alone fly one.
Did the Wright brothers utilize any of the aerodynamic discoveries of Otto Lilienthal, the German glider designer and pilot?
I really appreciate your ping to this “blast” from the past!
(Someone said that already, surely.)
We associate the Swiss with high-quality goods and if you haven’t had the chance, view the video of Rossy’S flight over the GC....exquisitely done.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2792867/posts
If we ever see a Chuck Yeager autograph appear on the pawn-show, and they discover it is spelled wrong...we'll know why! LOL
Otto Lilienthal,1848–1896 The most influential glider pioneer was Otto Lilienthal, a German engineer who began his aeronautical research in 1871 by studying bird flight. After nearly two decades of imaginative experimentation and research, he produced the best and most complete body of aerodynamic data up to that time. He published his results in Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst (Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation) in 1889.
Lilienthal gliders
Following his program of data collection, Lilienthal constructed and tested a series of elegant, full-size gliders. Between 1891 and 1896 he made nearly 2,000 brief flights in 16 different glider designs based on his aerodynamic research.
An abrupt and tragic end
On August 9, 1896, while flying one of his monoplane gliders, Lilienthal stalled and crashed. He died from his injuries the following day. The Wright brothers later cited his death as the point when their serious interest in flight research began.
The drawbacks of Lilienthal's method of control Otto Lilienthal controlled his glider by shifting his body weight from side to side, which altered the craft’s center of gravity and caused it to turn. The Wrights recognized that this technique severely limited the size of the aircraft, because the pilot and craft had to be similar in weight for body shifting to be effective. They reasoned that if they could control balance aerodynamically—using the forces air exerts on a wing—they could build an aircraft of any size and weight.
It’s been on cable the past couple of weeks and I’ve seen it three times now. What a great, quiet movie.
Easy for me, day after I was born!
You are correct, sir. Ribs it was. I don’t know why my fingers types “arm.”
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