Seventy-five years ago the sound barrier was broken by Chuck Yeager. It is October 14, 1947, over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. A former WW2 flight officer named Chuck Yeager (1923-2020), a test pilot with the US Air Force sitting at the controls of a Bell X-1 rocket plane drops from the modified bomb bay of a large Boeing B-29 Superfortress and changes aviation forever after.
Prior to this, scientists and aviators initially believed that flying faster than the speed of sound would cause the aircraft to break up due to the shockwaves or become uncontrollable by a pilot at that speed.
Muroc Army Air Force Base, California. October, 1947. Capt. Charles E. Yeager is in the cockpit of the Bell X-1 supersonic research aircraft. He became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound in level flight on October 14. Photo: Underwood Archives/UIG 
Dayton, Ohio: March 24, 1950. Student test pilot Lt. Richard Dennen gets a send off in an F-80 Shooting Star at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from two of the Flight Test Division’s top pilots. At left is Major Leonard Wiehrdt, former test school chief, and at the right is Capt. Charles E. Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. Photo: Underwood Archives/UIG 
1947-1948 – “Chuck” Yeager, Gus Lundquist, and Jim Fitzgerald wearing a flight suit, standing next to the Bell XS-1 rocket research airplane “Glamorous Glennis”. Photo: GG Vintage/UIG 
Edwards Air Force Base, California: November 9, 1951.Bell X-1-3 being mated to the B-50 mothership for a captive flight test. While being de-fueled after this flight it exploded, destroying itself and the B-50, and seriously burning Bell test pilot Joe Cannon. The X-1-3 had completed only a single glide-flight on July 20. Photo: Underwood Archives/UIG 
Muroc Army Air Force Base, California. October, 1947. Capt. Charles E. Yeager standing next to the Air Force’s Bell X-1 supersonic research aircraft. Yeager named it the Glamorous Glennis after his wife. He became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound on Oct. 14, 1947. Photo: Underwood Archives/UIG 
Photograph of a U.S. Air Force Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird from the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing near Beale Air Force Base, California. Dated 1988. Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG 
Using the solar disk as a backdrop, its details revealed by a calcium-K optical filter, researchers processed this image to reveal shock waves created by a supersonic T-38C. Photo: WHA/UIG 
British Airways Concorde supersonic passenger airplane, JFK International Airport, Queens, New York, USA. Bernard Gotfryd, May 1985. Photo: Circa/Glasshouse Images/UIG 
1981 – An air-to-air left side view of a QF-100D Super Sabre aircraft. Photo: HUM Images/UIG 
US Air Force F-35A Lightning II. Photo: Jason Wells/Loop Images/UIG
The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” (after Yeager’s wife), was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modelled after a .50-caliber bullet.
Yeager continued to make test flights for the Air Force, and he set a world speed record of 1,650 miles (2,655 kilometres) per hour on December 12, 1953, in an X-1A rocket plane.
Development of supersonic aircraft continued with military jets such as the F-100 Super Sabre (the first jet powered military aircraft to exceed the sound barrier), the Concorde that could carry 100 passengers at Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound), the legendary Lockheed SR-71 (could fly at Mach 3!) and on to today’s modern military aircraft such as the F-35.
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Sources:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/yeager-breaks-sound-barrier
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Chuck-Yeager/277834