bellxs1

Great pic. Haven’t seen this one in the Glamorous Glennis lineup before! 👍

On September 18, 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 created the United States Air Force (USAF) as a separate military branch. The USAF traces its roots to the early 1900s and the United States Army and the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps. One month later, Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager would break the sound barrier flying the Bell X-1, which he named "Glamourous Glennis" after his wife.

I met Chuck Yeager in the wee hours of the morning at Burbank Airport, in an FBO. He and I were the only two people there. That was Saturday, February 8, 1986, when he piloted a Piper Cheyenne 400 LS from Burbank Airport to La Guardia Airport in New York in 5 hours, 23 minutes. The man I met was a very approachable, humble guy. I wished him luck, as we parted.

The Bell X-1, designated originally as XS-1, was a joint National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics-U.S. Army Air Forces-U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by the Bell Aircraft Company. Conceived during 1944 and designed and built during 1945, it achieved a speed of nearly 1,000 miles per hour (1,600 km/h; 870 kn) during 1948. A derivative of this same design, the Bell X-1A, having greater fuel capacity and hence longer rocket burning time, exceeded 1,600 miles per hour (2,600 km/h; 1,400 kn) during 1954. The X-1 was the first manned airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the so-called X-planes, a series of American experimental rocket planes designated for testing of new technologies and often kept secret

Obviously a great publicity shot of some of the team involved with breaking the sound barrier over Muroc AAF in Oct 1947 in front of Bell X-1 No. 2 (46-063) and the B-29 mother ship. Think then-Captain Chuck Yeager is second from right (kneeling). Wow.

This is the Bell X-1 46-062 (No. 1) nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis" and flown by Chuck Yeager breaking thru the sound barrier in level flight over Muroc (later Edwards AFB) on 14 Oct 47.