Word: muroc
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...chill of the desert dawn, a weird airplane, painted as white as a new refrigerator, was wheeled out of a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and towed at funeral-slow speed toward the level, eight-mile runway of Muroc Dry Lake. The plane was the Douglas X3, a radical, dangerous experiment in sustained supersonic flight. Most of the small gallery of onlookers-pilots, engineers and Douglas executives-had seen it many times before, and presumably most of them had confidence in it. But few could have escaped some twinges of misgiving as the strange, sharklike craft (see sketch...
...site. But Swirbul persuaded the Navy to build Grumman a $22 million plant and test field on 4,500 acres 50 miles farther out on Long Island. There Grumman may build a successor to its Cougar, a new FioF jet fighter, now being tested at Edwards Air Force Base (Muroc), Calif. Says Swirbul: "It may revolutionize fighter design...
Streaking across the Air Force proving grounds at Muroc Lake, Calif., Northrop Aircraft's new fighter seemed for a moment to explode in the air. From the big pods at the wing tips, great puffs of smoke and flame shot out. The explosions were the blasts from showers of rockets shot from the pods. They gave the "Scorpion," said the Air Force, the heaviest firepower of any U.S. fighter. Although the big, heavy Scorpion is full of radar equipment, it can climb higher than 40,000 ft. Its radar eyes can search out an enemy plane in night...
...morning of Aug. 15 (as the Navy told about it last week), William Barton Bridgeman, Douglas Aircraft Co. test pilot, climbed into a B29, sat down in its crew's quarters as it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on Muroc Dry Lake, Calif. Under the bomber's belly hung Bill Bridgeman's own baby: the milk-white Douglas Skyrocket, slim, needle-nosed, with four rocket motors...
When Bridgeman landed on Muroc Dry Lake (at 180 m.p.h.), his work with the Skyrocket was done. She had passed her last test and would now be turned over to the Navy and National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for research. He is sorry that he must leave her. "I believe she can go much higher," he said affectionately, "and fly much faster...