A tad late, am I.
In September 1943 Edwards returned to the States as a Captain after having completed 50 combat missions in his Douglas A-20 Havoc. He was awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses and six Air Medals for his duty in North Africa and the Invasion of Italy.
In late 1944, when he returned home, Captain Edwards was assigned flight testing duties for some of the Edwards was assigned to the Flight Test Division at Wright Field in Ohio where he graduated from the Air Technical Service Command's Flight Performance School, a forerunner to the Air Force's Test Pilot School, and was sent to Muroc Army Air Field in the desert of California.
While at Muroc, Capt. Edwards found himself at the cutting edge of a newly formed U.S. Air Force, at a time where propellers were giving way to jet technology. In December 1945, Edwards set the transcontinental speed record with Lt. Col. Henry E. Worden, by flying from Long Beach, Calif. to Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., in just 5 hours and 17 minutes. They set the record in the XB-42 Mixmaster, a sleek experimental medium bomber powered by two counter-rotating pusher propellers. On Feb. 12, 1946, he was named Chief Test Pilot for the Bomber Section.
On July 1, 1946 Edwards was promoted to Assistant Chief of the Bomber Operations Section. He was nominated for the test pilot slot for the Bell X-1 rocket plane. The position was eventually given to Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager, who went on to break the sound barrier. In June 1947 Edwards received his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton and continued to work on the implementation of jet propulsion in to the Air Force's bomber development.
At this time Edwards became intimately associated with the revolutionary concept of the "Flying Wing", an idea that had been in development since the 1930s by aerospace pioneer Jack Northrop. Edwards was assigned to the test and evaluation of the YB-49, a prototype long-range bomber and a distant relative of the present day B-2 Spirit. Though the design and concept of the YB-49 was ahead of its time, its in-flight characteristics and handling were major causes of concern to Capt. Edwards during his test flights in May and June of 1948. The story of the YB-49 ended in tragedy on the morning of June 5, 1948, when the prototype that Capt. Edwards was piloting broke apart in midair and crashed to earth with four others on board. The exact causes of the crash still evoke controversy. In honor of his extraordinary professional accomplishments, Muroc AFB was renamed Edwards Air Force Base in December 1949.
Above info from the CheckSix website(CHECKSIX)
YB-49 over the Muroc Dry lake range, I think
Y'all stay safe out there and have a great week
Regards
alfa6 ;>}