Bell X-1A Flight Test 1954 USAF (JQ Music)

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The Bell X-1 (XS-1) at Muroc, California, where Edwards AFB and Dryden [now Armstrong] Flight Research Center are located.

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The film was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-1
Wikipedia license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Bell X-1, (Bell Model 44), is a rocket engine–powered aircraft, designated originally as the XS-1, and was a joint National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics–U.S. Army Air Forces–U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by Bell Aircraft. Conceived during 1944 and designed and built in 1945, it achieved a speed of nearly 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 km/h; 870 kn) in 1948. A derivative of this same design, the Bell X-1A, having greater fuel capacity and hence longer rocket burning time, exceeded 1,600 miles per hour (2,600 km/h; 1,400 kn) in 1954. The X-1, piloted by Chuck Yeager, was the first crewed airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the X-planes, a series of American experimental rocket planes (and non-rocket planes) designed for testing new technologies...

The XS-1 was first discussed in December 1944. Early specifications for the aircraft were for a piloted supersonic vehicle that could fly at 800 miles per hour (1,300 km/h) at 35,000 feet (11,000 m) for two to five minutes. On 16 March 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces Flight Test Division and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) contracted with the Bell Aircraft Company to build three XS-1 (for "Experimental, Supersonic", later X-1) aircraft to obtain flight data on conditions in the transonic speed range.

The aircraft's designers built a rocket plane after considering alternatives. Turbojets could not achieve the required performance at high altitude. An aircraft with both turbojet and rocket engines would be too large and complex. The X-1 was, in principle, a "bullet with wings", its shape closely resembling a Browning .50-caliber (12.7 mm) machine gun bullet, known to be stable in supersonic flight. The shape was followed to the extent of seating its pilot behind a sloped, framed window inside a confined cockpit in the nose, with no ejection seat.

Swept wings were not used because too little was known about them. As the design might lead to a fighter the XS-1 was intended to take off from the ground, but the end of the war made the B-29 Superfortress available to carry it into the air. After the rocket plane experienced compressibility problems during 1947, it was modified with a variable-incidence tailplane following technology transfer with the United Kingdom.

Following conversion of the X-1's horizontal tail to all-moving (or "all-flying"), test pilot Chuck Yeager verified it experimentally, and all subsequent supersonic aircraft would either have an all-moving tailplane or be "tailless" delta winged types.

The rocket engine was a four-chamber design built by Reaction Motors Inc., one of the first companies to build liquid-propellant rocket engines in the U.S. After considering hydrogen peroxide, acid and aniline, and nitromethane as fuels, the rocket burned ethyl alcohol diluted with water with a liquid oxygen oxidizer. Its four chambers could be individually turned on and off, so thrust could be changed in 1,500 lbf (6,700 N) increments. The fuel and oxygen tanks for the first two X-1 engines were pressurized with nitrogen, reducing flight time by about 1 1⁄2 minutes and increasing landing weight by 2,000 pounds (910 kg), but the rest used gas-driven turbopumps, increasing the chamber pressure and thrust while making the engine lighter...

The first manned supersonic flight occurred on 14 October 1947, less than a month after the U.S. Air Force had been created as a separate service. Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager piloted USAF aircraft #46-062, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis for his wife. The airplane was drop launched from the bomb bay of a B-29 and reached Mach 1.06 (700 miles per hour (1,100 km/h; 610 kn)). Following burnout of the engine, the plane glided to a landing on the dry lake bed. This was XS-1 flight number 50...

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