What Comes Naturally

ARMY & NAVY

Just before noon one day last week a B-29 labored into the skies over California's Muroc Army Air Base. To its duralumin bosom it clutched a precious burden: the Bell Aircraft Corp.'s rocket-propelled XS-1, a plane designed to fly more than 1,000 miles an hour. At 27,000 feet, the stub-winged, orange-colored XS-1 was released to begin its first power flight. It dropped heavily--300, 600, 800 feet. Then the rocket engine in its tail belched flame and it spurted ahead.

For 19 minutes handsome, 23-year-old test pilot Chalmers ("Slick") Goodlin felt the plane out, reporting steadily by radio to observers on the ground. Once, he shot up to 550 miles an hour, prudently throttled back to avoid crashing into the danger zone of compressibility near the speed of sound (763 m.p.h. at sea level). Then, with his fuel gone (at top speed the XS-1 would gulp up its four tons of ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen in 2 1/2 minutes), he glided down.

Jubilantly he climbed out to tackle an enormous roast beef dinner and tell of his weird and wonderful sensations:

"I knew I was moving when I saw the B-29 back up on me. But it was so quiet that I could hear the clock ticking on my instrument panel. It was eerie. The plane was so sensitive that I had to handle the controls like a surgeon. When I turned on all four cylinders I felt as though somebody had kicked me in the rump with a lead boot. I kept thinking of the terrific power I was sitting on."

Easy Does It. Many a citizen, geared to the automotive age, found this enthusiasm a little unreal. Slick Goodlin seemed oddly like a man begging to be shot out of a cannon. But Slick didn't think so. Like Columbus, Magellan and the Wright brothers, he was just doing what came naturally. He had been flying almost continuously for seven years, first by dint of washing planes at an airport near his grandfather's Greensburg, Pa. farm, then as a flying officer in the R.C.A.F., then as an ensign in the U.S. Navy and finally as a member of Bell's test staff.

Though he had missed death by inches several times (once the XS-1's cabin pressure system went wrong, subjected him to skull-cracking pressure), he showed no nervousness or apprehension over his job. Between flights at Muroc he lounged comfortably in an adobe cottage at nearby Willow Springs. He swam, read, listened to Rachmaninoff and Chopin recordings, dreamily contemplated his fondest ambition: exploring the Amazon with a helicopter. From time to time he climbed into a conventional P-51, flew to Los Angeles to look in on his girl friends.

No daredevil or exhibitionist, Slick Goodlin took over the job of testing the XS-1 on the understanding that he would fly it no faster than 82% of the speed of sound unless he was convinced that it would safely go faster. Approximately 20 more preliminary flights are planned between now and next summer; Goodlin has the privilege of recommending that the XS-1 be flown pilotless by radio control in its supersonic test. But last week, after months of devouring engineering and wind-tunnel reports, and after handling the plane under power, he said: "I know what this airplane can do. I think it will fly a thousand miles an hour and I think I'll live through it."

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