MILITARY AVIATION EXAM CRACKED

Yeager was sent to Okinawa in 1954 to test a Soviet MiG-15 that a North Korean had used to defect. At 80,000 feet and Mach 2.4, the nose yawed, a wing rose, and the X-1A went out of control. He managed to recover the airplane at 25,000 feet. And on one December day in 1953, he tried to coax an X-1A to Mach 2.3 to break Scott Crossfield’s Mach 2 record attained in the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket. He test piloted the Douglas X-3, Northrop X-4, and Bell X-5, as well as the prototype for the Boeing B-47 swept-wing jet bomber. The aircraft accelerated so rapidly that when the landing gear was retracted, an actuating rod snapped and the wing flaps blew off. “There was no ride ever in the world like that one!” he later wrote.

MILITARY AVIATION EXAM CRACKED

On October 14, 1947, ignoring the pain of two cracked ribs, Yeager reached Mach 1.07. Yeager then went to Muroc Field in California, where Larry Bell introduced him and fellow test pilot Bob Hoover to the Bell XS-1. After the war, still in the AAF, he trained as a test pilot at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, where he got to fly the United States’ first jet fighter, the Bell P-59. Chuck YeagerĪs a young Army Air Forces pilot in training, Yeager had to overcome airsickness before he went on to down 12 German fighters, including a Messerschmitt 262, the first jet fighter. Jimmy Doolittle called Hoover “the greatest stick-and-rudder man who ever lived.” 3. Hoover moved on to North American Aviation, where he test-flew the T-28 Trojan, FJ-2 Fury, AJ-1 Savage, F-86 Sabre, and F-100 Super Sabre, and in the mid-1950s he began flying North American aircraft, both civil and military, at airshows. He flew chase in a Lockheed P-80 when Yeager first exceeded Mach 1. He befriended Chuck Yeager and eventually became Yeager’s backup pilot in the Bell X-1 program. He eventually escaped, stole a Fw 190 (which, of course, he had never piloted), and flew to safety in Holland.Īfter the war Hoover signed up to serve as an Army Air Forces test pilot, flying captured German and Japanese aircraft. Bob HooverĪfter his Spitfire was shot down by a Focke-Wulf 190 over the Mediterranean in 1944, Hoover was captured and spent 16 months in the Stalag Luft 1 prison in Barth, Germany. Though he was crushed by what he called his “failure,” Doolittle was awarded the title Brigadier General and a Congressional Medal of Honor, which, he confided to General Henry “Hap” Arnold, he would spend the rest of his life earning. Most ditched off the Chinese coast or crashed other crew members had bailed out, including Doolittle. On April 18, 1942, 15 B-25s launched from the USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo. In 1929, he flew from takeoff to landing while referring only to instruments - a feat The New York Times called “the greatest single step in safety.”ĭuring World War II Doolittle was sent off to train crews for a mysterious mission, and he ended up leading the entire effort.

Two years later, he performed the first outside loop in a Curtiss Hawk. In 1922, Doolittle made a solo crossing of the continental United States in a de Havilland DH-4 in under 24 hours. The second crash was worse, and when he came to rest there was nothing left to salvage.

He stuck the pieces back together and tried again. At age 15, he built a glider, jumped off a cliff, and crashed.

Jimmy Doolittle felt the test pilot itch very early in his life. Here are six of those who over their test pilot careers proved they were badasses with ample amounts of the Right Stuff: 1. In his classic book The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe puts it this way:Ī career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even–ultimately, God willing, one day–that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men’s eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself. Source: 6 of the most badass US military test pilots of all timeMilitary test pilots are a rare breed, undertaking the responsibility of flying new aircraft to their design limits. Military test pilots are a rare breed, undertaking the responsibility of flying new aircraft to their design limits.

Military aviation exam