_Disaster on the Race Track_
The success of the Navy-sponsored Skyrocket caused great
consternation in the Air Force camp at Edwards. Suddenly two of
Bell’s rocket planes were made ready--or _almost_ ready, as it turned
out--for flight. One was the long-awaited X-1, model 3 (called
“Queenie”), with a low-pressure fuel system, thus putting its debut
years behind those of its sister-ships, _Glamorous Glennis_ and
the NACA’s X-1. The second Bell plane was the X-1-D, one of the
second-generation X-1s with the larger fuel tank and the military
cockpit. In the strange way of schedules, the X-1-D was completed
before the X-1-A and X-1-B. The planned X-1-C was never built. Its
parts and funds were cannibalized to complete the A, B and D models.
The X-1-D was a new animal, a strikingly fast, dangerous research
airplane. On paper it could reach Mach 2.5 or maybe Mach 3. Like most
of the planes arriving at Edwards in those tumultuous, fast-moving
days, its design was already outmoded. We knew that the X-1-D would
be unstable at very high Mach numbers. Its new fuel system, nearly
identical to that in Queenie, was untried, and full of bugs. Under
such circumstances, caution was the better part of valor. But no. At
Edwards occasionally the temptation to throw caution to the winds
was overwhelming. As Pete Everest has written in his book, _The
Fastest Man Alive_, mincing no words: “... we had a chance to set
another record that would be much harder to beat.”
Everest goes on: “Bell flew half a dozen tests to prove the new
rocket ship’s flying characteristics and tested the rocket engine
in run-ups on the ground.” The historical accounts show that in
actual fact _two_ test flights were made, neither of them thorough or
conclusive because of pressure of schedule and poverty. On the first,
the X-1-D was carried aloft, empty of fuels, cut loose, and steered
back to earth, as a glider, by Skip Ziegler. On the second, the X-1-D
was fueled for a powered flight with Everest but aborted when the
fuel system malfunctioned. The tests had been, to say the least,
inconclusive.
Then, as Everest writes, “I was selected to take it up and see what
it could do wide open.” In short, Everest elected to take over the
X-1-D, which had never been flown under power, and never flown at all
by Everest, on a maximum-speed run on first powered flight. That he
agreed to this at all, I think, demonstrates remarkable courage. That
the Air Force would sanction such a first flight has always been a
mystery to me. They were smarting badly from Bridgeman’s licking.
That day in August, 1951, was a dark one in Edwards’ history and a
very lucky one for Pete Everest. Al Boyd, then a brigadier general,
and still commander of Edwards, elected to fly chase. Jack Ridley was
co-pilot of the mother ship, a B-50, a more powerful version of the
B-29. At 10,000 feet Everest put on his helmet and crawled from the
mother ship’s bomb-bay into the X-1-D cockpit. He noticed right off
that the rocket plane’s gauges were in the red. There was a leak; the
tank pressures were sagging.
Everest climbed back into the B-50 bomb-bay compartment for a
conference with Jack Ridley. They agreed “reluctantly,” Everest
reports, that the flight should be canceled. Everest returned to the
X-1-D cockpit to jettison fuel. Standing in the seat of the plane,
he reached down to pressurize the tanks. As he did, a bone-jarring
explosion shook the X-1-D and nearly threw Everest to the floor of
the cockpit. A tongue of fire licked into the mother ships bomb-bay
compartment.
Everest leaped from the X-1-D cockpit into the B-50 bomber. Seconds
later Jack Ridley pulled an emergency lever and the burning X-1-D
fell away from the bomber, trailed by bits and pieces of the B-50
which were shattered loose by the force of the rocket-ship explosion.
The $5 million X-1-D crumpled onto the desert floor, a costly
disaster on the race track.
It was lucky for Everest that the X-1-D blew up when it did. In the
haste to launch the flight, the plane had only half a load of liquid
oxygen. Had Everest launched, the X-1-D would have been so much out
of balance that it would have spun in, instantly and uncontrollably.
The ship had no ejection seat.
* * * * *
Joe Cannon, a test pilot for Bell, had been chosen to make the
initial demonstration flights in the Queenie. With the new
low-pressure fuel system and larger fuel tanks, some thought that
Queenie might crack Mach 2. This would put her a shade beyond the
record Bridgeman made in the Skyrocket. Queenie had “U. S. Air
Force” painted in large letters on the fuselage. Whether Cannon or
some Air Force pilot, such as Yeager or Everest, flew it, the Air
Force technically would regain the record. After that, NACA would
take charge of the plane for high-speed instability and aerodynamic
heating investigations. I was to fly the Queenie for NACA.
The new low-pressure fuel system in Queenie gave much trouble. Bell
ground engineer Q. C. Harvey, a fox-terrier type with limitless
nervous energy, was nearly frantic from the thinly-veiled pressure.
The Bell ground crews cut corners. In early November on the second
“heavyweight captive” flight--a trip to launch altitude with fuel
tanks loaded for test purposes--Joe Cannon could not jettison the
plane’s fuel. The B-29 mother plane returned to earth, bearing Queenie
fully loaded with volatile fuel.
It was something of a trick to purge the little planes of fuel on the
ground. The B-29 moved into the dump area, still mated. Cannon began
the ground-jettison routine. Suddenly a tremendous explosion rocked
Edwards. Queenie and the mother plane were enveloped by swirling,
vaporizing liquid oxygen.
Cannon had removed the side door of the X-1. Through the fog the men
saw him come through the opening, feet first. Then they saw his head
and heard him yelling:
“Get the hell out of here! She’s going to go!”
Joe Cannon scrambled down to the ground and ran away from Queenie as
fast as his legs could take him. The concrete ramp was flooded with
the slippery, dangerous Lox. He fell headlong into a puddle of fuel.
The Lox “burned” through his clothing and froze his skin, putting him
out of action for nearly a year. Queenie and the mother ship went up
in a burst of smoke and flames. Fortunately, no one was killed. The
loss of the $4 million Queenie was severely felt at NACA.
The Navy retained the speed and altitude records. The official
investigations into the X-1-D and Queenie explosions went on for
months and ultimately delayed the delivery of the X-1-A and X-1-B
nearly two years. After the official report came out, all rocket
airplanes of this series were extensively modified. At NACA our
own X-1, in which I had completed about a dozen flights since last
overhaul, was considered “fatigued” and was withdrawn from active
flying. We launched a project to redesign and rebuild our X-1. The
plane was redesignated the X-1-E, and years later it got into the
air. But it never really produced again. For all practical purposes
it was retired that fall.
Along about the same time--that grim fall of 1951--we gave up hope
on still another promising airplane. This was the celebrated Douglas
X-3, a weird-looking, needle-nose craft with two jet engines and
brief straight wings. The X-3 was designed to cruise for long periods
at very high speed, hopefully near Mach 2. But she had fallen victim
to the cotter-key crowd. No more complicated, botched-up, dangerous
airplane was ever produced, unless it was the XF-92-A, which I shall
deal with in time.
Bridgeman was waiting patiently at Douglas to make the first
flights on the long-delayed X-3. I talked to him about the plane
occasionally, since like the Skyrocket it was ultimately slated for
NACA. It was possible that I might be named X-3 pilot along with my
other duties. In time, Bridgeman made twenty flights in the plane.
Happy to be rid of it then, he turned it over to Chuck Yeager and
Pete Everest, and never again flew an experimental airplane. Yeager
and Everest flew the plane three times each. “It was one of the most
difficult airplanes I have ever seen,” Everest said.
Apart from its sheer mechanical complexity, the basic trouble with
the X-3 was that it was underpowered. The high-thrust engines, which
had been planned for it, fell behind schedule and then were canceled
because of lack of funds; the interim engines used yielded only about
fifty per cent of the desired thrust. Thus it required every trick in
the book to get the heavy X-3 into the air and keep it there without
falling out. When Yeager and Everest, with few regrets, turned the
plane over to NACA, we tried unsuccessfully to fix it. Walker made
about twenty flights. The X-3 became a glamorous Hangar Queen, useful
mainly for publicity photographs. I never got to fly it.
Thus the Douglas Skyrocket became by default the lone high-speed
workhorse at Edwards. I was the lone jockey for a while. As the weeks
sped by, the NACA Skyrocket team began to mesh with carrier-deck
efficiency. We often flew the Skyrocket every other day--such
“turn-around” time was then considered a near-miracle--probing the
dark mysteries high in the sky. No Skyrocket flight was ever routine.
But I got to know the ship so well that I could land it dead-stick on
the dry lake and coast right up on the NACA parking ramp in front of
the hangar door--without brakes! This saved my hard-working ground
crew the trouble of going out to the lake with a tow-tractor.
* * * * *
The floor of the Bell plant in Buffalo was immaculately clean.
In one corner behind a curtain the shell of the X-2 lay awaiting
inspection. In another corner engineers had rigged a simulated
cockpit and control system. I was there with Walt Williams and other
NACA and Air Force engineers to pass an interim judgment on this
much-delayed airplane. I was especially interested because if the X-2
were ever finished I would fly her after Skip Ziegler had made the
demonstrations.
I walked up to a mechanic, working near a row of dry-cell batteries.
I knew these batteries were to be installed in the X-2 to supply
power for the control system. I picked up a battery.
“What’s this for?” I said to the mechanic.
“My God!” he yelled. His face was white. “Don’t pick that up. It’s
delicate. It’s for the X-2 control system. If you jar it, it might
break.” It was a new and sophisticated kind of battery.
“You don’t mean it?” I said. Then I smashed the battery down on the
bench. Sure enough, five plates broke and the battery short-circuited.
Later I learned from a Bell engineer that the delicate batteries had
been shipped to Bell from the manufacturer in a nitroglycerine truck.
I said to the engineer: “You really expect to put that kind of stuff
in an airplane that will be subject to God knows what kind of loads
and shocks in the air?”
“Don’t ask me, Scotty,” he said. “I just work here and we have a
thousand bosses in every corner of the government.”
While the X-2 control system was a studied attempt to make a
tremendous step, there was much we did not like about it. I noticed
that when I operated the stick in the simulator cockpit, it whipped.
The simulator, for demonstration purposes, was set to operate only
at full design loads, which was far from a realistic measure. At my
insistence the simulator was rigged to carry low-load conditions.
Guessing what force the whipping stick might display, I asked Pete
Everest, a member of the Air Force inspection party, to get in the
cockpit and try it.
The demonstration was far more dramatic than I could have hoped. When
Everest pulled on the stick, the electrical units took hold, the
stick whipped violently, and Everest, a small man, was thrown clear
out of the cockpit.
This highly sophisticated control system, which had already cost $4
million, was symptomatic of the disease that had drained the X-2
program (many programs, in fact) of its vitality. It obviously could
not be made suitable for the X-2 in time, and although it meant some
further delay on delivery of the airplane, Bell was asked to come up
with a reliable and simple control system. Under the revised plan X-2
number 1 was to be hastily equipped with cables, which would not
overly delay the glide tests scheduled to take place at Edwards. X-2
number 2 would have a hydraulic-control system. Similar units would
be installed in X-2 number 1 after the glide tests.
The X-2 with cable controls arrived at Edwards in June of 1952, hung
in the belly of the B-50 mother plane. I should say the shell of
the X-2 arrived. The lagging engine (itself overly sophisticated)
was still on the test bench at Curtiss-Wright. In its place was
concrete ballast. Everybody at Edwards must have turned out to see
the X-2. Few of them realized then that the ship was jinxed. They saw
only a sleek, swept-wing airplane, looking as though it were moving
supersonically while sitting still on the ground.
The X-2 had the conventional nose wheel; and the main landing gear
had been made a broad ski which protruded from the fuselage just
below the wing center-section. The main purpose of the glide test was
to check on the nose-wheel ski concept. Bets were laid when Ziegler
went aloft in the X-2 on his first flight. It was important that the
gear work perfectly. A powerless rocket plane landing dead-stick
cannot go around for another try.
I watched from the sidelines. The X-2 was heavy, and the B-50 mother
plane labored to reach launch altitude of 30,000 feet. Then I saw the
X-2, looking like a tiny white toy in the deep blue sky, fall away
cleanly. Powerless, silent, Skip guided the plane toward Rogers Dry
Lake. His flare-out, at 200 miles an hour, looked good. The skid and
nose wheel popped out. The X-2 touched and the nose wheel failed.
When it collapsed, the plane churned around on a wingtip, gouging a
hole in the desert runway.
The plane was repaired and the landing-gear unit improved. They
also added “whisker skids”--smaller skis midway under each side
of the wing. Skip Ziegler tested the new gear without incident.
Then Pete Everest made one hair-raising test--the left whisker ski
extended only after the right ski had jarred the earth--and the
X-2 was shipped back to the factory for installation of the new
hydraulic-control system and the rocket engine.
Months later the plane was ready for “captive” fuel tests. These
were conducted not at Edwards but over Lake Ontario, near the Bell
factory, because of Ziegler’s dedicated zeal to get the program
rolling. On the second captive fuel test in May, 1953, an explosion
ripped through the X-2. The blast and flames reached into the mother
ship’s bomb-bay, killing Skip Ziegler and a Bell crewman, Frank
Walko. The X-2 was cut loose and plunged flaming and exploding into
Lake Ontario. The B-50, blown skyward and gutted by the explosion,
somehow stayed together long enough for Bell pilot Bill Lewshon, with
brilliant flying, to get it back on the ground. Then it was junked.
* * * * *
Dr. Hugh Dryden, one of the world’s leading aeronautical scientists,
was Director of NACA. Technically, Jimmy Doolittle was chairman
of the main National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which
reported directly and only occasionally to the President. But
Dryden was Doolittle’s chief general. Dryden, an older man who wore
thick glasses, ran NACA day by day. He had a slow, deliberate way
of talking. If ever a government agency was the perfect image of
its director, it was NACA. In Dryden’s face you could see it all:
conservatism, scholarship, wisdom, caution. His office in an old
building on H Street in Washington was Spartan. It might have been
the office of a college professor.
I was there on an urgent mission--back on a familiar theme.
“Dr. Dryden,” I said. “This X-2 program is in serious trouble. What’s
lacking is a Bob Stanley or a Skip Ziegler, if you will. The drive
has gone out of the X-2 project. If we’re not careful, sir, it’s
going to wind up like the X-3, a great big expensive Hangar Queen.
“I know this is an Air Force project, that they’re funding it. But
I think it is time we stepped in and took a firm hold. That plane’s
supposed to come to us for serious aerodynamic investigation. There’s
another investigation going on about the explosion. It may take
months. The control system hasn’t been checked out. The engine is so
far behind schedule you can’t say anything good about it.”
“Well, you certainly seem quite interested in this program,” Dryden
said. He weighed each word.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I am supposed to fly the airplane and I would
like to do so before I retire.”
“What do you propose?”
“I propose that I be assigned to the Bell plant on temporary duty.
There I’ll help every way I can to spark the program to completion.
Then I’ll make the demonstration flights for Bell. Then I’ll return
with the plane to NACA at Edwards and complete the flight-test
program. I have talked with Bell people about it and they think the
idea has some merit.”
Dr. Dryden’s answer surprised me, frankly. “Very well,” he said. “If
Williams approves, you may try it.”
I returned to Edwards on Cloud Nine. The X-2 plan, as I had
envisioned it, would be immensely valuable experience and background
for my future. It would give me time in a rocket-plane factory,
flight-test experience in the most advanced airplane man had
conceived, and inevitably a little public notice which, I was
learning, was a necessary part of moving ahead in my field. The X-2
was not the ideal because it amounted, in effect, to bailing out a
sinking boat. But it was a start.
“Damn it, Scotty,” Williams said, “we really need you around here.
The X-2 can wait. That plane may kill more people yet.”
“But Walt,” I said. “When you hired me you said I’d get a crack at
the X-2. That was three years ago and we haven’t got the plane yet.”
“Well, maybe it’s okay with me if it’s okay with Vensel. He’s your
boss. He has the final say-so. Tell him it’s up to him.”
Vensel said no. He implied I was urgently needed at Edwards.