Chuck Yeager - Blog Posts
Photograph of the XS-1 in Flight
On October 14, 1947, Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager became the first human to break the sound barrier during powered level flight while flying the experimental Bell X-1 aircraft.
File Unit: X-1 Photographs, 12/11/1946 - 10/21/1947. Series: Flight Test Project Files, ca. 1945 - ca. 1959. Record Group 255: Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1903 - 2006 .
Photograph of Captain Charles E. Yeager, 5/1948
Read Chuck Yeager’s notes from the moment that he broke the sound barrier:
“The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach i was attained at this time.”
Pilot’s Notes from the Ninth Powered Flight of the XS-1 (First supersonic flight)
Read more Pilot’s notes from these test flights in the X-1 Correspondence file in the National Archives catalog.
Ernst Mach, Chuck Yeager, and supersonic flight
Today is the 70th anniversary of the first supersonic flight. On 14 October 1947, Air Force Captain Charles Yeager piloted the experimental Bell X-1 plane named Glamorous Glennis and “broke the sound barrier,” reaching what scientists call “Mach 1.”
Yeager’s historic flight came thirty-one years after the death of Ernst Mach, the Austrian physicist and philosopher whose research on sound particles remained obscure until aviation capabilities began to approach the speed of sound. Mach lends his name to Mach numbers, used to describe faster-than-sound travel, and Mach angles, which measure the angle of the shock waves caused by flight. In addition to his work with sound, Mach’s rejection of Newton’s ideas on space and time influenced Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Image credits: 1) Chuck Yeager next to experimental aircraft Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, 1940s. US Air Force, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2) Ernest Mach from the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Volume 40, 1902. H. F. Jütte. Uploaded by Armin Kübelbeck, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3) Chuck Yeager at Nellis Air Force Base on the 65th anniversary of his flight, 14 October 2012. Master Sgt. Jason Edwards, US Air Force, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.