WE SAW IT HAPPE

finally in December of 197 the board of fortification granted the interview to Wilber at once he inspired their confidence and Signal core in which they agreed to furnish an airplane that would fly 40 m an hour carry two in the air for 1 hour and strange to really was to have some kind of a by which in the motors landed without crashing in the summer of 198 Corville Wright brought to Fort Meer Virginia the airplane that was to fulfill the specifications of the Contin day after day we watched him fly around and around the field and he's tuning up flights and finally on the 9th of September he broke the world Rec lieutenant Thomas suridge was killed W injured Benjamin fooy had a chance to fly in the right plane at Fort my on the day following the endurance uh test with W right and Lieutenant L uh the or with a quiet little grin on his face uh invited me to be his guest on the U crucial and final cross country and speed tests shortly we straightened out on the course for Alexandria or with this same little grin on his face told me that uh if he had to land anywhere on the route and he'd pick out the thickest tum of trees he could find and land on top of them fortunately the little engine that we had at the time Carri us all the way through without any difficulty and we finally landed back at Fort Mar drill ground with country 10 miles altitude 600 mil an hour the United States Army had an airplane the need now was for Pilots the principles of flight were now widely known and designers were applying them to many types of aircraft Glenn Curtis Glenn Martin and the Canadian J A MCC were designing and flying airplanes in competition and exhibition in Europe the airplanes of blero palm farman and davand were demonstrating obvious advances in both speed and range and in Russia eigor s Corps into the age of flight and I remember very very um interesting period in France in 19 199 and 1910 at that time I had my share of uh failures with the first helicopter which was a fine machine only it couldn't fly Glenn Martin remembers an episode of his pioneering days I've just been reading an old postcard sent by our family doctor to my mother dated September 30th 1910 this is at a time when I just began to leave the ground in a flying machine and it says For Heaven's Sake if I have any influence with that wild eyed hallucinated young man uh have him devote his energies to substantial feasible and leaving dreaming to the professional dreamers for a dreamer Glenn Martin was attracting a remarkable group of Fe thinking young designers as workmen the first to join him was Donald somehow it becomes fun to run this well my first memory of things in aviation was seeing the first right airplane demonstrated for the signal core 198 and that was Wilbur that got into the machine with I guess it was Colonel L they pull the old latch and down this little wooden track it went with those funny old props batting around apparently pretty slow L speed and off she went one of the first pts was Roy knin Sho who was a balloonist even before he became an airplane P my friend dick Ferris remarked to me one time he said I uh have been an impressario I've handled actors and padas but he says these aviators star in where the other fell leaves off and he says it's impossible to do anything with him the Ambitions of some designers went far beyond their skills as eigor Sikorski has said in the history of Aviation there have been many Contraptions which to the Good Fortune of their inventors failed to [Music] fly sometimes were deadly serious in demonstrating the utility man could expect for plane Laur whose contribution aircraft instrument fee were momentous puts a pre-war aircraft through its Pence however often it seemed to lack was contributing in one way or another to the the air was growing cleaner in design its horsepower was more dependable the disparaging term aeronaut was giving way to Aviator a term of respect Aviation was emerging as a science The Pusher engine of early planes had been replaced by the tractor engine installations which allowed higher speeds the rights were foreseeing these helpful aircraft devices and other inventors such as Elmer Sperry were inventing and refining them here a courtesy SE plane flies with the early sper automatic [Music] pilot almost without exception in the first decade of the airplane the designers were pilots they built tested and their own designs rites lario Santos Dumont Curtis Rose sakori deavin and Martin at Glenn Martin's a band of Engineers and Craftsmen had gathered together whose names into anonymous were rank Douglas James H Dutch kindleberger Lawrence Larry Bell Alan Lockheed John northr the United States was the Cradle of flight inventors of a high order had appeared our Pilots were unmatched First Rate designers emerged brilliant men specialized in the components of the airplane but as a Pioneer who specialized in aircraft horsepower Frederick B renchler summarizes prior to World War one our most important contribution to Aviation as the Flight of the right brothers from December 1999 to March 1911 13 months the entire United States Air Force consisted of one officer myself uhic eight inlisted men one airplane the government earning money loose for flying I had uh a great appropriation of $150 allotted to me to take care of the airplane for the entire year 1910 after each crack up I used to sit down and try to puzzle out what had happened then I'd write to the right brothers and tell them all that I thought had happened they proceed to write back and tell me what I ought to have done in other words I expected I'm about the only man living today who Learn to Fly by correspondence the air arm of the United States Navy began under equal apathetic circumstances Naval aviator number three was Admiral John H tows in the Autumn of 1911 when I was a young naval officer serving aboard one of our battleships I got the idea that I wanted to learn to fly that Naval Aviation would amount to something for Naval purposes I also became a very close friend of Glen Curtis and uh was associated with him throughout his whole life the man had an enormous amount of vision he had already conducted in cooperation with the Navy tests of uh Landing an airplane on a platform on a cruiser and also of taking off what he had in his mind then the idea which later developed into the powerful carriers that we have today the airplane now had official recognition both from the Army and the Navy but it was a cautious acceptance the time forged Armament still held sway when when the fledgling Army Flyers experimented with a primitive bomb site and a Lewis machine gun installed in aircraft at College Park Maryland they landed and foresaw whole battles that someday might be fought in the air the war department promptly pierced that bubble an official spokesman pointed out with finality that the Army had airplanes for just one purpose [Music] reconnaissance from a pistol shot at s Evo the first of the great modern world wars exploded and almost overnight all Europe was engulfed in Conflict the airplane was put to work just as the US war department spokesman haded as observation and scouting craft the source of peril lay in the artillery Machine Gun and Rifle fire scourging the entrenched troops from across the wasted land but in the air Allied and German Pilots often waved to each other as they passed on their observation missions then instead of the courteous wave the opposing Pilots began exchanging pistol fire presently the first crudely mounted machine guns appeared now the Frantic race of inventing improvising adapting and refining aircraft equipment began quickly the Germans countered hand operated machine gun by installing upon their aircraft the invention of Tony fuer a machine gun synchronized to fire through the aircraft propeller a Paramount lesson that the Allies were to remember a generation later was being learned in air Warfare fair for the first time no design capable of still further development could be Frozen and counter measures must be met by counter counter measures it was becoming clear that no Nation or race had a corner on inventive skill while the single engined airplane had been engrossing most designers in Russia eigor Sikorski in 1912 I decided that it time came to build a large machine with several Motors at that time I was certain already that the future Aviation will be connected with fairly large aircraft that the closed cabin with its Comfort protection from wind and so forth represent the must in 13 I completed my first uh four motor airplane the grand the ship Pro it a complete success it LO quite well the gr's military successor the Elia morets was the first four engine bomber in world history it struck time after time at the central powers on the Eastern Front the internal combustion engine now became an instrument of intense the first successful engine had not been developed until 1860 one of the world's foremost engine designers Leonard s Hobs recollects its history it starts out actually with a little known Frenchman by the name of Lenoir who has never gotten the credit he deserved he built and actually marketed the first internal combustion engine and it was from his engine that the wri brothers were able to build one of course the early pre-war power plants are fairly well known the ananis and the Curtis ox's the first world war did Mark a great advance in power plants first there were the rotaries the cles The Gnome runes then there was the Rena engine which was a very good french engine the British RAF engines toward the end of the war came the very beginning of what I think is the is the modern [Music] engine into a conflict in which European antagonists had been tempered by three years of savage battle whose equipment had been perfected by the necessity of survival without regard to cost the United States now plunged it was the world's 14th ranking airow with only 28 airplanes 65 Pilots supplemented by 50 flying students its Navy combat air arm was even smaller its industry lacked integration the nation that had allotted Benny fooy $150 in 1910 for maintenance of that Year's Air Force promptly voted $600 million to fulfill a plea by the Allies to have 5,000 airplanes and 4,500 pilots on the Western Front by the spring of 1918 when we entered the war the country knew that the United States already had an industrial capacity double that of Great Britain France and Germany combined we quickly realized that to supplement the meager era itical developments resulting from years of federal indifference to air power we had to obtain licenses for the production of proved British and French airplanes and aircraft engines in our new factories our national mistake was the assumption that an instrument as dynamic as the airplane could be designed tested and developed overnight one of the first young Pilots to see action in France with the first Arrow Squadron was Oliver P eeko we' been equipped with a new type of fr French airplane with a new and very much improved engines these airplanes were assigned to us the Squadron had the strength of 18 airplanes and we were assigned the mission of supporting one of the American divisions one afternoon in the attack our airplanes took off 18 strong during the afternoon all of the airplanes Force landed from engine failure fortunately none of behind the enemy line but out of the 18 airplanes that went out none of them got back the pilots of World War I made the term dog fight synonymous with their work America's top a captain Eddie Rickenbacker of the fame 94 hat in ring Squadron reflects on the different approaches to combat of the pilots of World War I and the pilots of today that individualism uh was possible because the planes were much slower you'd stay in maneuver whereas today it's impossible because of the tremendous speed the difference of 100 m hour and six 7 and 6 or 700 M an hour we had 150 horsepower today if they haven't got five or 6,000 horsepower it's no good we had two little pop guns 30 caliber that would shoot some times 450 rounds a minute today they've got 6 and 850 caliber guns that'll shoot a thousand has bridged two Wars in Aeronautics Admiral dwit C Ramsey Naval Aviation let us say took place in England where during World War I the latter part of it the British converted two ships the Furious and The Argus and buil into them the features which were desirable for aircraft launching and Recovery uh I happen to have been in England about that period and kept our Navy Department informed of the progress of the British in this field as a result the Navy embarked on a initial program of converting the old Collier Jupiter into our first flat talk the langle in 1918 as the War Began to move toward its climax American aircraft equipment still had not entered combat an intensive effort was being made to perfect the Liberty engine before the liberty or any other aerial product of the United States designing boards could be put in action the final critical offensive of World War I had begun millions of men pulled out of trenches to attack or Retreat above them to be sure planes flew in bombing and strafing missions individual Pilots whose names became legendary met in dog fights in retrospect it might be said that Aviation itself and has served a very small part in the result of the World War I conflict a decade was Dawning in American history that was to be known flippantly as the era of wonderful nonsense beneath its surface corruption its wild enthusiasms and its extravagant posturing history now has found that it was a time in which men in many fields of the Arts and Sciences were employing immense physical energy to attain goals of a sober work Aviation had its share of such men the accomplishments of the 20s were pre-aged in 1919 by Man's first flight across the Atlantic Ocean the nc4 a large flying boat whose development had begun during the war was chosen as the Navy's Pioneer pilot Admiral Towers points out for the ambitious task W would go ahead the following spring and uh with as many of these aircraft as could be built by that time that the Navy undertak to be the first to fly the Atlantic luckily for me I was selected to command that expedition it's all history now two of the three a planes uh landing at Sea in very rough water were so damaged they couldn't make it but the nc4 made it from eand to the aors to Lisbon I'm Pilots already had inaugurated air mail service on May 15th 1918 a service that had been under discussion since 1910 William Boeing who had entered aviation in 1916 was instrumental in starting the first international air mail service on the North American continent in 1919 Eddie herard and I took a flight up to Vancouver BC on our return trip the postmaster at Vancouver handed us a mail sack for delivery to the postmaster at Seattle this was the first International Male ever carried B plane into the United States Brigadier General William Mitchell who had had a distinguished War record argued that the Mayan doctrine of C power had been outmoded by the airplane and pleaded for a separate National Air arm he intended in Seeking a $660 million appropriation for Army Air Services or about half the cost of a single Battleship that the United States could begin developing an Air Force which could hold Mastery of both the air and the seeds Larry Bell was still with Glenn Martin when that resulted in Congress bringing about a test wherein one of the targets that we were supposed to sink or try to SN was the famous austar freezeland the pride of the German Navy which we had captured this this ship was anchored about 100 Mil offshore and six of the Martin bombers went out each carrying a 2,000lb bomb they paraded over the battleship and they dropped the six bombs and only one hit it and that was by mistake the rest were time to detonate at 100 ft below the surface and it practically exploded the ustra fredland at least it ripped the bottom of the ship from bow to stern and the ship sank in 4 minutes the Navy had already begun systematically to broaden the scope of its Bureau of Aeronautics many of its men whose views of the need for air power were not as vehement as Billy Mitchell's nevertheless already had envisioned carriers as the heart of future striking forces the nation's first large aircraft carriers the Saratoga and the Lexington were designed and were being built these great ships developing uh approximately 180,000 horsepower manufactured all of the wind that was needed in the absence of a surface wind for flight operations the nation accepted the airplane and tacitly agreed with its Advocates but there was still no federal provision for long range planning and procurement nevertheless a core of designers and manufacturers stayed with a business in the ceaseless drive to attain longer range and more reliable performance the airplane its engine its components and its instruments steadily were growing more complex a great many great men have contributed to Aviation purely as Specialists sper one of the greatest Colonel Clark air foils Sam Heron came along on his cylinders and his Fuel and then Frank mck with his carburation devices and later fuel injection Frank cell with his propeller marck Hobs SP Park Caldwell Heron the singular devotion with which these men and scores of other Specialists pursued their particular Fields leads hm Jack her whose own specialty of aircraft production combined the fruits of all their labors to say that Heritage of research development background work that goes into aircraft has continued throughout the whole existence of aircraft and the great improvements that have come there too after that with flight becoming a little bit more common I think it's important to realize the fervor with which those individuals did carry on their work it was a passion with them then Midway in the 20s came two events that turned the course of American Aviation sharply upward first the government adopted the recommendations of President kou's Morrow board these called for a sustained aircraft procurement program built on the foundation of a privately operated and technically competitive aircraft industry the second event was the successful dream Charles Lindberg made come [Music] true in his single engine Ryan monoplane Lindberg had flown the Atlantic Non-Stop to parents 2 weeks later carrying Charles LaVine as a passenger Clarence Chamberlain flew the Atlantic and landed in Germany first of all we were trying to beat Lindberg away and second we had to keep our plans a deep dark secret because we had overheard Mrs LaVine say if I thought my Charlie was going in that airplane I'd burn it up and as you see we made it lindberg's lonely Adventure gripped the imagination of the world as one of man's most dramatic achievements the nation turned from its casual cynicism to make the shy young pilot together with the airplane a shining symbol of the Horizon still beckoning for Conquest from a military point of view for the first time our various types of combat planes were unmatched abroad moreover we found the solid beginning of Commercial Air transport Jimmy dittle pioneered transcontinental non-stop flight in 1922 I flew from Pablo Beach Florida near Jacksonville to San Diego California a distance of about 2200 miles in 22 hours and 20 minutes in 1931 I flew from Los Angeles California to New York in 11 hours and 15 minutes that first flight was the first first time that the continent had ever been crossed in less than one day second flight was the wor time it had ever been crossed in less than half a day Carl Tui spots and Ira Aker flew seven days in 1929 without Landing the uh question mark flight was an an Endeavor uh to use refueling as a means of keeping the plane in the air for a long time the driving uh uh inspiration behind it I uh believe was acre on the course between Sano and Burbank we passed over the home of Mrs but's father and mother and every time he passed over uh she would take my uh oldest daughter who was then about six or seven out to see us go overhead and on the fifth or sixth day she pointed us out to taddy and said taddy there's your daddy up there he's been up in the air for five or six days five for five days don't you think it's wonderful and uh T looked up and said no I think it's dumb but the flight did prove that refueling was practical General akre remembers an incident that forecast the need for equipment which would permit blind flying in 1919 flying in the Philippines from Manila to stotsenberg our station at that time I ran into a typhoon and the rain was so heavy that I couldn't see the horiz a spin and only the fact that the Manila Bay was yellow and the rain was darker was I able to recover from the span and fly home now to my surprise I found for the first time that when you can't couldn't see you couldn't fly I described this to Lieutenant longell later General longell in the second world war and we began some crude experiments by hanging a plum Bob down on across the instrument board and by putting a carpenter's level on the LeRon and got so that with these two AIDS we could fly through Cloud through several thousand feet of cloud and that was one of the early days of instrument flying 10 years after General akr's Manila experience Jimmy dittle in association with a spar tackled the problem I made the first blind flight the first completely blind flight taking off under a hood flying a prescribed course and Landing back under the hood without ever having seen out of the airplane the Great Depression had come the industry was hard nevertheless new companies developed to meet the increasing complexity of the airplane and its growing use of metals electronic and automatic controls Dutch kindleberger departed from Douglas to take over North American companies were formed bearing the famous names Bell Fairchild Northrup Beach cesna a World War Navy pilot Leroy Grumman left civil engineering to enter Aviation we knew that a conventional airplane wouldn't uh get us an order we finally ended up with the design of the first military fighter with retracted Landing G for which we got a contract and which proved to be highly successful having a speed forarm acccess of any current army or navy fighter of that time but that's remain it the opposite side of speed namely the aircraft that could fly with no speed at all that could take off from any spot and would not be in need of an airport at all the 30s also were the years in which each summer fierce compet was held to determine the best of the airplane breed proof of the individual airplanes engines and Pilots came in the National Air Races with thousands looking on the legendary Pilots raced dittle hazop Turner Whitman La gach Newman Fuller jacal and Cochran and flyers still flew against the clock across the continent across the seas and indeed around the world itself Falon post gaty bird Hughes Amelia aart and wrong way Corgan as the hour swung late in the 30s the air races were curiously American for in Europe and Asia Aviation was not a case of relatively puny efforts and some such as America was providing much of it from Individual man and companies rather the vast resources of powerful foreign Nations now were thrown behind the construction of Air Forces designed to subdue the world or to defend against such aggression in the United States under the impact of a depression Congress had scrapped the morrow board procurement plan and stopped providing Appropriations for 1,800 military airplanes that had been scheduled on New Year's Day 1936 the Army Air Corp had only 300 planes fit for war Duty a year later we had dropped to sixth place among powers and air combat strength Although our industry was judged to be technically at least 18 months ahead of foreign [Music] [Applause] competition [Music] [Applause] Premier deer lamented if I had had 4,000 airplanes there would have been no Munich France had squandered a First Rate air power while she sat behind the Mao line the British too had let the ta Powers outstrip them frantically both countries turned toward the United States aware that in the very Act of running hard to meet crisis after crisis an emphasis had been placed upon research experiment and development which gave the United States technically Superior Aviation equipment so the Free World turned to the United States not only for airplanes but all of those weapons embodying the modern Arsenal to expand its facilities train workers and to adapt its job shop operations to techniques of mass production took time the tooling was still underway when Germany struck Poland was [Applause] shattered Holland and Belgium were overrun France [Music] [Applause] the [Music] well so much ear by so many to so [Music] [Music] [Music] few [Music] America more Modern War than the sneak punch that Japan into a great tide of swept through the Pacific Jimmy home to them in a joint Navy Air Force operation I've frequently been asked what was the purpose in Tokyo raid well the purpose was to take the war to Japan to show them that their Island was not in violent the effect the effect was to cause them to divert some of their military strength that was needed in the South to the protection of the home Islands the actual damaging effect was very little our airplanes were on the Hornet we were intercepted just after daylight 42 off immediately proceeded to Target and all but one of the planes carried on to co of China we carried 16 airplanes we dropped 16 tons of different targets when you realize that from the Marianas and the later State much as 6,000 tons of our effort was the nation began to regain control of the air and the Sea lanes that it had lost in the Pacific the first great victory was the captain thatch one of the Navy's ablest flyers and tacticians Battle of Midway if your principle of concentration of force for to work with other people and have good system of teamwork but the enemy concentrated on the dive bombers at the same time that let the torpedo planes in and they did most of the damage on the other hand in the Battle of Midway later the enemy Fighters concentrated on the torpedo planes and the dive bombers came in almost unmolested I could see them coming down like a huge waterfall and there were practically no Miss they were the on in the Battle of Midway with its growing stream of trained soldiers Sailors and Airmen equ with improved weapons the United States and driven from Africa Sicily and Italy were invaded from their bases in England American bombers began to strike at the heart of Germany under the direction of General spots strategic bombing was one of the ways of winning the war and uh our fighter operations in a large measure developed into uh covering operations for the bombers in order to do that we had to have uh the development that had taken place good radio so the leader of the fighter outfits could not only talk to his own men be in communication with the bombers and uh in turn get some guidance from uh Ground Control stations on the ground by radio uh this resulted in a different type of fighting and a different type of operation but it proved conclusively in World War II two that the airplane had developed to such an extent that air Warfare became a different War allog together than Land and Sea Warfare Wellwood Beal a member of the team of designers who created the B7 saw the airplane altered from a defensive offensive weapon the conception of Strategic Air bombing uh uh was not uh fully developed at that point but uh when we got to England uh it was obvious that uh to use these bombers uh to the greatest advantage that we would have to uh not only get the enemy's uh supply lines but uh the places where he manufactured uh his military equipment the British thought it would be easier to do it at night it'd have much greater chance of success and would be less vulnerable to enemy Fighters and they call their bombing saturation bombing they dropped large numbers of bombs on uh a large Industrial Area the Americans however uh decided that with the B17 and the B24 that they could pinpoint a specific Target for instance the ballbearing factory at swinford uh they uh in order uh to do the job properly decided that it should be done at daytime where they their bomb site was the most effective step by step the Allies began sweeping back across the reaches of the [Music] Pacific at terrible cost we took to rawa sipan qualine Guam banville and the Philippines setting the stage for the aial assault on Japan [Music] [Applause] itself [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] la [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] la no one in aviation believes that Aviation alone won the war we do believe that the war might not have been won by ourselves and our Alles except that we had control of the air the massive intricate highly trained combat team that America had put together at a stupendous cost Des dissolved almost overnight a free people yielded to a free impulse they demobilized their man and discarded much of their equipment in the field of Aviation alone they had built an incredible 963118 airplanes in the war year of 1944 2 years later the production had 1,000 n plane from fewer than 6,000 passengers the airlines had hauled in 1926 they quickly Rose to where in 1952 They Carried 24 million passengers 12 billion passenger miles Wright brother's Vision was still the goal of virtually all men in aviation such as Robert Gross whose industrial team produced the constellation series of course it's obvious to I guess everyone that the airplane has been preponderantly military since it's start many years ago but there are signs particularly in the last few years that must go forward hand in hand Germany had employed guided missiles brutally decisive effect simultaneously England had put a few planes in the air powered by a radical new type of engine the jet turbine the jet became really important in aviation the accumulated engineering knowhow that this country had built up with its piston engine equipment suddenly became very much less important Russia's abrupt belligerence forced this country's attention of on the air power we had let melt away for the third time in little more than a generation the nation set about building a modern air arm this one to be shaped around the Fantastic speeds the gas turbine engine provided then in 1948 when the Russians sealed off the land corridors leading to Western Berlin the United States England and France countered with a famous Berlin airlift from their bases outside the Iron Curtain a steady stream of airplanes flew night and day supplying West Berlin's 2 million residents with food Fuel and Medicine finally the Communists capitulated and reopened the land Corridor then they sent their minions into war in Korea there the United Nations chose to stand and fight it was a strange bitter circumscribed War the Air Force's Prime striking weapon its Strategic Air Command was ruled out of bounds the first stained jet combat in history took place in a quadrangle of Sky up to 40,000 ft above the Earth but always south of the Aloo River Russia sent aoft to First Rate jet fighter the M only the Air Force saber from the United Nations array of fighter planes could match it it was a war in which transport airplanes flew 7,000 miles to deliver material and to return sick and wounded men and it was a war in which the helicopter with its ability to fly by standing still and land anywhere did a multitude of jobs among them transporting literally thousands of wounded from the battle area hospitals for prompt surgical attention under the impact of Korea the nation had begun again to turn out modern aircraft in quantities Mundy Peele the chairman of the industries Association that we as an aircraft industry are at the present time turning out about 14,000 airplanes at the moment we are a healthy industry we have to pour back tremendous amount of funds into research and development funds that we earn when we make the airplanes this is a very healthy thing it creates competition we want competition Dutch kindleberger whose organization built the saber pictures the sky 10 mil high as man flies at a speed approaching that of sound today we're flying at very great speeds and at very high altitudes as a matter of fact up in the area at which a lot of the fighting is being being done around 50,000 ft we have a different world it's a thin blue dark blue Air the sun doesn't shine so brilly because there nothing to reflect it there's no PL of reference for the pilot such as Hills or clouds or sky in such an atmosphere as this even a bomber is hard to see and the trouble that we are facing the future is not the sound barrier we know how to fly through that now the thing that is bothering everybody is the thermodynamic barrier the air flowing over an airplane at these very high speeds by friction will heat up the surface of the airplane as a matter of if we go to mock number two a sound at sea level the surface of the airplane will get hot very rapidly and will stabilize at 100° since ordinary aluminum alloy loses half its strength by 350° and that even titanium and Steels begin to give trouble at 500 and 600° it's obvious that we are in a great deal of difficulty in the future there also are many things like hydraulic fluid we don't know how to make hydraulic fluid that won't boil away at this temp we don't know how to make get soft and would lose its shape and disappear at 300° so we have ahead of us a great deal of research and a long long time of trouble before we're going to be going anything like the speeds at which our magazine supplement writers seem to think we're ready for tomorrow modern test pilots needs and incredible altitudes taken equally factual view of their calling Chuck Jager the first man to fly through the Sonic barrier and Bill Bridgeman a test pilot who has flown almost twice the speed of sound and has piloted a plane at an altitude of 79,000 Ft discussed their calling in language peculiarly their own certainly enjoyed the work I think launching is the only safe way to get into that kind of plan it's I get a lot safer take off yeah and you burn so much fuel when you take off before you get up to the altitude where the airplane can drop you and I actually I personally think that's the most fun involved in a flight is when the guy cut you loose you're just hanging and it just like on a rolling coaster yeah you were pretty close to stall too when you came out of there weren't you 29 we stalled at around 240 indicated uh with full fuel load so one time I remember Jack Ridley we had a release failure and he dropped me out at about 180 indicated and I didn't know which end was up for a while well I I noticed on the Skyrocket that when we first dropped out you could kind of feel the stall by watching the boom out there when the boom begin to Shake while she was on the nipple I don't know you see it B see well see it o a little bit yeah and so the airplane has evolved from the rights whose FR Kitty Hawk where it speeds hardly faster than an athlete can run Horizons far beyond today's achievements still beckon