Word: muroc
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...Scott Crossfield, 32, pilot for the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), which has taken over the famed Douglas Skyrocket, first flown by Test Pilot Bill Bridgeman in 1947. Last week the Skyrocket, with Crossfield at the controls, was dropped from a B-29 at 32,000 ft. above Muroc Dry Lake. After following a careful flight plan (climbing so as to reach high altitude with a minimum expenditure of fuel), Crossfield nosed over and flew practically level under full power. The machmeter, which measures speed in multiples of the speed of sound, went slightly above Mach 2. With...
...Dayton, Ohio, Major William T. Whisner Jr., 29, flashed his F-86F Sabre-jet past the finish line 3 hrs. 5 min. 25 sec. after his takeoff from Muroc, Calif, to win the 1953 Bendix Trophy race by 4"8 sec. His average speed for 1,900 miles: 603.547 m.p.h., some 50 m.p.h. faster than the record...
...pilot was the Air Force's Major "Chuck" Yeager (TIME, April 18, 1949), the first man to fly faster than sound. He would fly "chase" on the X3, watching for the beginnings of trouble. As he taxied up to the line, other jets took off, and soon Muroc echoed with the clattering scream of their engines...
...Then came the most dangerous part of the flight. The X-3 lands well above 200 m.p.h., and its little, faired-in windows give its pilot almost no view of the ground as it flashes below. When Bill Bridgeman squared away and headed on a straight-in approach into Muroc, he cautiously opened his landing-gear doors. They buffeted alarmingly. Then he lowered his wheels. The X-3 obviously didn't like...
...assignment did not change his personal way of life, except that it gave him considerably more money ($20,000 instead of the $9,000 that production test pilots make). When not busy at Muroc, or studying the mathematics, aerodynamics and other subjects that modern test pilots need, Bill is what Californians approvingly call a "beach bum." He lives in a small, pleasant shack squeezed between the Pacific Coast Highway and the rocky shore two miles north of Monica. He swims, water-skis, sails, chases fish underwater with a spear, dives for spiny lobsters in the kelp beds, pries abalones...