Bell X-1
The Bell X-1 was a rocket-powered research aircraft built by Bell Aircraft for a joint program of the NACA, the U.S. Air Force and Bell, created to explore flight at and beyond the speed of sound. Air-launched from a bomber, it became the first airplane to fly faster than sound, in October 1947, and the data it gathered shaped the design of the high-performance aircraft that followed.
Why It Mattered
The Bell X-1 was the first airplane to break the sound barrier, on 14 October 1947. Piloted by Captain Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager of the U.S. Air Force, it was dropped from a B-29's bomb bay and reached 700 mph (Mach 1.06) at 43,000 feet. The X-1 was built for research alone, under a joint program of the NACA, the Air Force and Bell Aircraft, to explore flight at and beyond the speed of sound.
Design Notes
The fuselage followed the lines of a .50-caliber machine gun bullet. Power came from a Reaction Motors rocket engine of 6,000 pounds of thrust, burning liquid propellants; with fuel for only a few minutes of powered flight, each sortie began with the aircraft carried aloft beneath a bomber and released in the air. On NACA's advice, the elevator was mounted on an adjustable horizontal stabilizer, so the whole tailplane could be trimmed to meet the large trim changes expected as an aircraft nears the speed of sound.
Operational History
The first XS-1 made its first flight on 19 January 1946, an unpowered glide over Pinecastle Army Airfield in Florida, dropped from a B-29 at 29,000 feet with Bell test pilot Jack Woolams at the controls. Powered flights began at Muroc Army Air Field in California on 9 December 1946, and the speed was raised in small steps toward Mach 1, with Air Force and NACA pilots joining the program as it widened. On 26 March 1948, Yeager took the first aircraft to Mach 1.45 at an altitude of 71,900 feet. An X-1A, X-1B and X-1D followed the three original aircraft, and the family as a whole flew 214 flights between 1946 and 1958. The first aircraft alone flew 78 times in all.
Afterlife
The X-1's flight data were used to correlate wind-tunnel work and in designing later high-performance aircraft, and the program set the pattern for the research aircraft that followed it. After the first aircraft's last flights, the Air Force presented it to Alexander Wetmore, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. It has been suspended on display at the National Air and Space Museum since that museum opened its doors in 1976. In 2015 the museum lowered it to the floor for the first time in its history, so that staff could carry out conservation before it was rehung in the renovated exhibition.