Rocket Explosion

The fastest (1,650 m.p.h.) and highest-flying (90,000 ft.) airplane on record came to a violent end last week. The chunky, rocket-powered Bell X-1A was fastened in its perch on the belly of its B-29 mother ship, and carried 30,000 ft. for a series of routine rolls, climbs and pushups above California's Mojave Desert. As usual, a Sabre jet fighter flew behind as a watchdog "chase" plane.

Only 70 seconds before the B-29 crew was to release the plane, an explosion ripped through the X-1A. The blast shook up Pilot Joseph Walker, but he carefully turned off cockpit switches, began jettisoning the rocket's highly volatile fuel (hydrogen peroxide, liquid oxygen, alcohol, water). Then he crawled groggily up into the belly of the B29. The B-29's civilian skipper, Stan Butchart, hoped to land his valuable cargo without further trouble, but the chase plane's pilot saw that there was still some dangerous fuel in the X-1A's tanks. To avoid a major calamity back at home base, Butchart reluctantly decided to jettison his cargo, and the $1,000,000 X-1A dived clear, to crash to fragments on an Air Force desert bombing range.

Though the X-1A was the only one left of its kind, the Air Force still has two modified versions of the record-shattering plane in the X-1B and X-1E, and only three days after the mishap, it announced that its far more advanced experimental Bell X2, already tested in glides from 30,000 ft., is now ready for even faster powered flight through the "thermal thicket." Launched, like the X-1A, from a mother plane, and pushed by a rocket engine designed to give a 16,000-lb. thrust, the slim-nosed, stainless steel X-2 will be used mainly to explore the effects of high speed and air friction on the metals used in aircraft building. In an emergency the capsule-enclosed cockpit can be ejected from the new plane; after it falls by parachute to a safe altitude, the pilot can bail out as if from any more conventional craft and float to earth with his own chute. With the X-2 flying in the air perhaps as fast as 2,250 m.p.h., the old X-1A will probably never be missed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.