dumb azz prolly coulda made a million bucks in endorsements by breaking the record...
Posted on 10/28/2005 9:38:21 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Chalmers H. "Slick" Goodlin, a test pilot who took the X-1 aircraft to near-supersonic speeds but became a footnote in aviation history when he lost his cockpit seat — and the right to shatter the sound barrier for the first time — to a young Chuck Yeager, has died. He was 82.
Goodlin, who flew military planes for three countries, died of cancer Oct. 20 at his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., his family announced.
After 26 test flights in the X-1, Goodlin was on the brink of making the first supersonic flight when he resigned over a contract dispute. Bell Aircraft Corp., the plane's manufacturer, refused to pay him a $150,000 bonus for the milestone flight.
The military subsequently took over the program, and Yeager achieved stardom on Oct. 14, 1947, at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base) by becoming the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound. He did it for his regular captain's salary: $3,396 a year.
For the rest of his life, Goodlin remained bitter about the lost opportunity, and he and Yeager feuded publicly.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Shoulda taken the chance, pal.
The central message I got from the Right stuff - was that Yeager had the rightest stuff of all even though he was not selected for the astronaut program.
He should have paid the manufacturer for the ride.
In that aircraft. WWII pilots had already broken the sound barrier.
dumb azz prolly coulda made a million bucks in endorsements by breaking the record...
Who did? The Germans in a steep dive? I have heard the Boeing test pilots have done it in a 727.
'Slick' had quite the career.
Renowned pilot lived doing what he loved
Chalmers H. "Slick" Goodlin
A particularly dumb decision with an appropriate consequence.
He was passed over because he only had a high school education. Pity.
RIP for a great pilot. History turns on those little things, and there's no sense in being bitter about it. I'd be upset if my fictional portrayal was inaccurate, too.
Generally shortly before installing a large hole in the ground. The fastest production planes in WWII that I can think of would be the ME-163 series, which was just barely subsonic.
Pilots of Spitfires, Mustangs, Corsairs, Hellcats, ME-262s, Thunderbolts, etc. all broke the sound barrier, unofficially, in dives during WWII and lived to talk about it. Me-163s routinely broke the sound barrier.
Got any documentation for that? Particularly for the Thunderbolt. Max speed 433, Cruise 350.
The best case is made by Hans Mutke in a 262.
http://mach1.luftarchiv.de/first_flg.htm
But even there, objective analysis has put his maximum speed below the sound barrier.
See http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0198c.shtml
So if you do have anything to back this up, I'd be interested in reading it.
A lot of them lived to tell about it. More than a few did not.
I don't think so.
They may have reached the unstable regime between subsonic and supersonic, but that not the same thing.
I think you confuse falling with flying.
For other sources, which are albeit subjective, Google is a good place for you to start. Read Aces Wild as well. George Welch, flying an XF-86 and some MiG-15 pilots, along with some Meteor pilots, most likely beat Yeager to the punch too but we'll never know, officially.
Therein lies the tale, and is why this sort of thing is determined by officially documenting it.
Pilots are a special breed, and unreliable in observations which glorify their own accomplishments. Ego is a major part of self-serving stories.
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