Tank Slap - Motorcycle Forum

All round bad-ass has passed away.

97 years and he packed a lot in it. WW2 fighter ace, test pilot and a member of the Right Stuff. The first man to break the sound barrier.

May your skies be clear.

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Damn - brave man that.

What a 97 years though

A true aviation legend......RIP.

Do you think God is issuing him with a speeding ticket this morning?

He probably gave him a high 5 for cheating death for so long.

What a life, RIP

I am not sure that he was the first man to break the sound barrier. I have read in the distant past that it was broken at the end of WW2 near Hong Kong by an RAF pilot. The Yanks are great at rewriting history though.

John Derry:

He is widely believed to have exceeded the speed of sound on 6 September 1948, when he lost control of his aircraft and the Mach meter supposedly 'briefly showed' supersonic speeds in a shallow dive from 12,195 m (40,000 ft) to 9,145 m (30,000 ft).[citation needed] Despite lack of substantial evidence (the recording apparatus was switched off during the flight), the news was promoted by the British press as having broken the sound barrier.

Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,700 m) over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. The success of the mission was not announced to the public until June 1948.

I can't find anything to suggest Yeager wasn't the first pilot to do it.

He was definitely the first to break it intentionally.
The very end of a bullwhip can reach supersonic speeds when wielded correctly , the crack you hear is actually a mini sonic boom .

Bob T wrote:I am not sure that he was the first man to break the sound barrier. I have read in the distant past that it was broken at the end of WW2 near Hong Kong by an RAF pilot. The Yanks are great at rewriting history though.

People are under the mis-interpretation of what breaking the sound barrier actually is. If an aircraft is not designed specially for supersonic flight they can not truly break the sound barrier as there will be local mach numbers around parts of the aircraft that will be below 1. A prime example of this is a bow wave of slower air that builds up in front of a traditional wing. Supersonic aircraft have knife edge leading edges to their wing to get the supersonic wave to emanate correctly. Pressure waves change there profile dramatically past Mach 1.

So some pilots have in the past claimed to have an indicated speed greater that Mach 1, but in fact they are technically only trans sonic not supersonic.

Just for background Bob, I’m an ex RNZAF Aircraft tech and worked on fighters for 11 yrs.

Thanks for that information. I started as an aircraft tech in 1975 in the RAF. I finished in 2004 as an aircraft engineer in charge of the UK Tornado fleet maintenance policy as an MOD civil servant.

Bob T wrote:Thanks for that information. I started as an aircraft tech in 1975 in the RAF. I finished in 2004 as an aircraft engineer in charge of the UK Tornado fleet maintenance policy as an MOD civil servant.

Check mate

Bob, Theory of Flight module was 30 yrs ago and I never worked on supersonic aircraft at all as you have. So if anything I’ve said is inaccurate, please correct me.

I've been in 20 years and I've just about worked out which way the pointy end goes!

Itchy wrote:I've been in 20 years and I've just about worked out which way the pointy end goes!

In fairness, that's going to come in pretty handy when you have to strap something on!

I tried out for airframe and propulsion artificer and they offered me dog handler. I'm 99.99% certain it was because I'm dyslexic and I fecked up the tests, I only finished half the test in the allotted time.

Not RAF related, but the MOD eventually let me get involved with Trident as a private contractor.

Monty wrote:

Itchy wrote:I've been in 20 years and I've just about worked out which way the pointy end goes!

In fairness, that's going to come in pretty handy when you have to strap something on!