On this day in 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier. However, because the project was secret, this achievement was not released to the general public until 1948.
 |
| Chuck Yeager in the late 1940s |
In the years leading up to Yeager's flight, many had speculated that supersonic flight was impossible to achieve without tearing the aircraft apart. Men had died trying to reach "Mach 1". When Yeager went up that day, he was doing something that many people considered to be extremely dangerous. Here's the scene from The Right Stuff, dramatizing the moment.
He broke the sound barrier, and he did it with broken ribs that he concealed from the Army, because he didn't want to get grounded by the doctors. Pretty amazing if you ask me.
No comments:
Post a Comment