Fifty years ago, a test pilot with the right stuff changed the future of aviation forever.
Editor's Note: This article originally ran in our November 1987 Popular Mechanics issue. It was the 40th anniversary of the day Gen. Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 and became the first man to...
The first American to orbit the earth, and later a four-term U.S. senator from Ohio, died Thursday.
John Glenn died at the age of 95. One of the Mercury 7, he left the space race to pursue his political passions and became a U.S. senator. He finally returned to space...
During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and...
On October 14, 1947, US Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager flew a Bell X-1 experimental plane at Mach 1 some 40,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, becoming the first human to travel faster than the speed of sound.
The journey to that flight started in...
Source: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Charles "Chuck" Yeager stopped by the Museum last Friday to visit with the Bell X-1, the airplane in which he broke the sound barrier 68 years ago last month.
"Flier Bags 5 Nazi Planes To Vindicate Ike’s Ruling"
A ruling by Gen. Eisenhower last July cancelling the orders which would have returned 1/Lt. Charles E. Yeager, Mustang pilot from Hamlin, W. Va., to the U.S. after being shot down and wounded in enemy territory and getting back to England...
On December 12, 1953, Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1A 1,650 mph, becoming the first man to fly two and one-half times the speed of sound.
At Mach 2.4 at 80,000 feet the aircraft spun out of control, spinning on all 3 axes. G-forces sent Yeager's head into the canopy,...
Slide inside the cockpit with this gallery of the famous "Glamorous Glennis" Bell X-1 rocket plane that first broke the sound barrier.
Most of us are familiar with the bright orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocketship that legendary test pilot Chuck...
While NASA has had a long and storied history of building and testing experimental aircraft – called X-planes -- it has been almost a decade the space agency has developed any new aircraft.
an initiative announced earlier this year as part of the new budget has NASA back designing, building...
Aerospace engineers went from the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 to supersonic flight in just 43 years, thanks to two world wars and the accompanying advances in metallurgy, motors, and controls. During the subsequent 60 years, more than 120 different planes have flown faster than the speed of...