Chasing the Demon

by Dan Hampton

  Bell’s X-1 was finally up again in the California sunshine on August 29, 1947. The Reaction Motors rocket engine had been installed and today was the Army’s first powered flight. All pilots flying new aircraft get at least one “Fam flight,” a familiarization flight to put all the ground school instruction into perspective. Yeager had glided the X-1, but never used it under power until today. The B-29 lumbered carefully off the runway and climbed up to 25,000 feet with two chase planes in formation. After all the preflight checks were done, Bob Cardenas nosed the big bomber into a shallow dive, and at 255 miles per hour passing 21,000 feet the little orange rocket plane detached.

  The flight test called for a series of maneuvers within the known flight envelope defined the previous year by Slick Goodlin. Yeager was to get “a feel” for the aircraft under power, and definitely not exceed 0.82 Mach. Bell’s Dick Frost was flying a P-80 in the low chase position when Chuck lit off the first of four rocket chambers. Five seconds later he ignited the Number Two rocket while shutting down Number One, then lit off Number Three after switching off Number Two. According to James O. Young of the Air Force Flight Test Center History Office “to Frost’s utter amazement and displeasure [Yeager] deviated from the flight plan and executed a slow roll.”

  The problem with this, other than intentionally and unprofessionally again violating the test procedure, was that the XLR-11 had a safety cutoff that automatically shut the motor down if pressure in the liquid oxygen (lox) tank dropped beyond a certain level, which it did at zero g’s during Yeager’s roll. Everyone watched as Chuck relit the motor, then rocketed upward to the test altitude of 45,000 feet. After Boyd’s lecture, and following his unplanned flameout, what happened next was truly astonishing. Yeager shut down the motor, rolled over, and dove for the runway seven miles below him. Radios exploded as the other airborne pilots wanted to know what in the hell he was doing. Again, utterly disregarding the test plan, flight discipline, and good sense, Chuck had decided “to show the brass down there a real airplane,” as he later wrote. Leveling off 2,700 feet over Muroc and at 0.8 Mach, Yeager lit off all four chambers again, roared down the runway over lots of wide eyes, then streaked up out of sight. Getting back to 35,000 feet, the rockets ran dry and he then glided down to land.

  No one, except Chuck, was happy about this. The NACA team, especially Walt Williams, and Dick Frost from Bell, thought Yeager was undisciplined. Frost, as a test pilot himself, was thoroughly displeased and chewed the young officer out. Even Jack Ridley, close as he was to Chuck, could not explain away his friend’s recklessness and disregard for test procedures. “He [Yeager] didn’t have a lot of test experience,” Ken Chilstrom remembers. “But Al Boyd thought that didn’t really matter for what had to be done with the X-1. We just needed someone to ride it through the so-called sound barrier, and Yeager could do that all right.”

  Boyd was once again an unhappy man.

  He had previously come all the way out to Muroc to give his pilot a face-to-face lecture and another chance—then Yeager pulled a stunt like this. The colonel insisted on an official explanation, and Chuck actually asked Jack Ridley to write one out: Ridley refused. Yeager later wrote about the phone call he received from Boyd. “Damn it”—the colonel was angry and concerned—“I expect you to stick to the program and do what you are supposed to. Don’t get overeager and cocky. Do you want to jeopardize the first Air Corps research project?” Chuck answered he did not, of course, to which Boyd replied tersely, “Well, then obey the goddam rules.” Yeager tried to explain that he violated the plan and Boyd’s direct orders because he was excited. The colonel might have bought this, or at least understood it coming from a young fighter pilot, because he did not ground Yeager or remove him from the project, which is what most of the others expected.

  But if Yeager had been replaced, then the chief of Flight Test would look foolish for having picked him over more experienced test pilots. It is possible that Yeager was chosen because he was so junior and if, God forbid, something happened, then the pilot would get the blame and not the Flight Test Division, though Boyd’s judgment would be questioned. This could conceivably put the colonel’s plans for a true military flight test program at risk and, equally concerning, were the politics of the situation. If the program suffered any mishap, then the Army Air Force would lose face and Stuart Symington, inaugural secretary of the new Air Force, would certainly not tolerate this or forgive the man who allowed it to happen. The military could even lose the X-1 contract, and responsibility for chasing the demon would fall back to Bell, or the NACA, or be canceled altogether. If that occurred, the United States would lose credibility and its hard-won, albeit temporary, tactical advantage enjoyed over the Soviet Union.

  Then there was North American Aviation. The entire Flight Test Division was aware of the XP-86’s potential, but from Boyd’s point of view it was essential that the X-1 get through the Mach before the Sabre. If a jet fighter could take off conventionally and exceed Mach 1, even in a dive, then several years and millions of dollars would have been wasted. North American would get the credit, not the Air Force, and that would cause Al Boyd serious career problems. The Sabre was also at Muroc and had completed its high-speed taxi tests the same day Yeager flew the rocket, so time was very short. No, it had to be the X-1, and without the delay incurred by replacing the pilot so, in effect, North American’s XP-86 saved Yeager from obscurity.

  During September the X-1 flew four additional powered flights and Chuck, mindful of Colonel Boyd’s warning, attempted to follow the flight test plans. The NACA wanted transonic stability data from an actual aircraft, not a wind tunnel, for the 0.80 to 0.85 Mach regime. This was provided, and buffeting accompanied by a wing drop was consistently recorded, although Yeager was able to maintain control. By September 10, his fourth powered flight, Chuck was able to get past 0.9 Mach for the first time, and two days later the X-1 hit 0.945 Mach, which provided the engineers a superb opportunity to assess stabilizer and elevator effectiveness. Another wing drop occurred, but at this speed it was accompanied by severe buffet so Yeager cut the power and glided back to Muroc.

  What happened was as fascinating as it was dangerous, but once again proved that wind tunnel tests and unmanned aircraft were no substitute for a test pilot. The shock wave had, as predicted, moved aft as the Mach number increased and was hovering over the horizontal stabilizer, directly over the hinge line, unfortunately. Like the Me 262, the X-1 horizontal stabilizer could be manually adjusted via a trim switch on the control column, which was set to move at 1 degree per second, and that was fast enough. The solution: a faster actuator that corrected at 3 degrees per second, and on future flights the pilot would use normal controls until elevator effectiveness was lost, then use the trim switch to move the stabilizer and regain some pitch control. Yeager’s ability to keep control at all confirmed that raising the tail, just like the Germans had done, was effective in keeping the control surfaces generally clear of transonic burble. On September 18, 1947, six days after this flight and while the faster actuator was installed, the National Security Act took effect, and the Army Air Forces officially became the United States Air Force.

  On Monday morning, September 29, 1947, George Welch walked out on Muroc’s flight line toward a jet waiting in the sun. North American’s elegant XP-86 had been reassembled two weeks earlier but, during an engine run, an unwary crew chief had been sucked into the intake and killed. The jet needed a new engine and had to be thoroughly checked before testing could proceed, but that was done and the Sabre was now ready for the its high-speed taxi test. This was normal, a chance to check out all the systems, controls, and engine without getting fully airborne. The sleek, silver prototype was gleaming in the early light, and the idea was to finish by midmorning before the dry lake really got hot. Wearing a blue flight suit and a bright orange Lombard helmet, Welch used an external power cart to start the General Electric J35 jet engine, then taxied out to begin testing.

  The jet was beautiful and
the cockpit was a pilot’s dream. Both side consoles contained noncritical controls like the radio and temperature switches while everything he needed to fly the fighter was right in front of him. Forward of the stick the main panel was T-shaped, with the primary control instruments in the center, and the engine gauges in plain sight along the top. Worlds away from the P-40 and P-38 cockpits he had lived in just a few years earlier. The throttle was actually an upright grip mounted on quadrant by his left knee, and he slid it forward, accelerating multiple down the dry lake. Welch would let the nose wheel lift off then bring the power back to idle, checking and rechecking all the systems. One objective was to verify that the recording oscillograph and cameras were functioning; another was to fine-tune the horizontal stabilizer setting for takeoff. Welch did all this and taxied back in by ten o’clock to debrief, confer with the engineers, and write his report. Based on all this, the NAA team could decide when the first flight would be scheduled, and in the meantime George would remain at Muroc.

  Due to the accident with the crew chief, he had spent most of the month working two other projects: the P-82 Twin Mustang, and accomplishing spin demonstrations for the XSN2J-1, a new Navy trainer. Something had happened in connection with the Navy plane that intrigued him greatly. While ferrying the plane back east to Patuxent River, Welch stopped in Deming, New Mexico, to spend the night. At a local bar he was invited by some locals to participate in what passed for entertainment in Deming, driving out to the San Andres Mountains near Las Cruces and watching rocket launches. Captured German V-2 rockets were fired from Las Cruces northward over the mountains into the White Sands area and, about thirty seconds after launch, a huge shock wave was felt. The locals got a kick from the rush of pressure and, more to the point, thought the thunderclap ba-boom was exciting.

  Though he did not go with them, George apparently perked up at the mention of noise. It was well known that the V-2 could go supersonic, so the noise had to be what Theodore von Kármán long predicted: that the shock wave from a supersonic object, not just a wing but the whole aircraft, would generate a wave that rolled out and down and be audible to those on the ground. Now, late in the month, Welch was back and would remain at Muroc until the tests were complete, and he was still thinking about the noise.

  In a little British MG, he could make it through the San Gabriels by way of Soledad Canyon in ninety minutes from his home in Brentwood, and he usually stayed in one of the twenty guest cabins at the Happy Bottom Riding Club. In Pancho’s bar that night, he heard about the X-1 trim issues and knew they were close to fixing it. He also knew Yeager and was aware that the Air Force pilot had gone past Mach 0.92 and would very likely try to go supersonic in the next few weeks. A thinker and engineer as well as a pilot, Welch spent a great deal of time with the NAA designers: Larry Greene, the chief of aerodynamics; Ed Horkey, the performance engineer; and Walt Williams. They all agreed that if the swept-wing XP-86, even with the J35 engine, began at least a 30-degree dive from 35,000, then the jet would accelerate through the speed of sound. They believed this had also been possible for the Me 262, though there was no record of it, and the Sabre was much, much stronger. Tony Weissenberger’s structural design was extremely good; the wing was tough and stiff without a lot of extra weight so it could handle the stress. George Welch and the XP-86 were scheduled for their first flight on Monday, October 1, and according to one source, George had said, “I don’t know what Yeager’s waiting for, but I’m ready.”

  Besides the highballs, scotch, and barbecues, the Happy Bottom Riding Club was famous (or infamous) for the hostesses who worked in the lounge. “My girls are sugar to catch the boys,” Pancho once said, and meant it. Periodically returning to Los Angeles, she interviewed models or actresses who were down on their luck in Hollywood, then selected the most attractive girls to work in Antelope Valley. Rumor was each girl was given a “Smith” surname, and a day of the week or a month as a first name. Regardless of the talk, she did have house rules posted and among them were:

  1. We’re not responsible for the bustling and hustling that may go on here. Lots of people bustle, and some hustle. But that’s their business, and a very old one.

  2. We permit you to accept tips and gifts while performing your regular duties. But NEVER are you to accept money in remuneration for the more intimate aspects of romance.

  Wives—usually they were military wives because the civilians were there alone or drove in from Los Angeles—took a dim view of the Happy Bottom Club. Glennis Yeager called it “a desert whorehouse,” and likely gave her husband a great deal of grief about the time he spent there. A local school principal apparently spent early Monday mornings walking the road with a stick to spear all the used condoms before the kids rode by on their bus. Chuck Yeager wrote that “her [Pancho Barnes’s] place was a big part of the sixteen years I spent out on the Mojave . . . she would never use a five- or six-letter word when a four-letter word would do. Flying and hell-raising . . . one fueled the other. And that’s what Pancho’s was all about.”

  No question the place was wild and raunchy, but why not? These were men who had lost their childhood to the Depression, their young manhood to the Second World War, and were generally married to women who did not understand them. Only combat veterans can really talk to other combat veterans, and fighter pilots to fighter pilots. Everyone else really doesn’t get it, and never can. Add to it that these guys were under enormous stress, chasing the demon into the unknown with no real assurance they would live to tell about it. Their excesses, real or imagined, are not for us today to judge.

  And it wasn’t just the young captains and majors who were interested in the place. Colonel Al Boyd loved Pancho’s, and her barbecues and pool parties. One day a pair of generals from Wright Field called the club to tell her they were coming in for the weekend. They wanted steak, scotch, and a little female company. Pancho had her cooks make huge sandwiches—with two naked girls as the stuffing—and her ranch hands carried the platters out to the generals. It was a world far removed from what most of these officers endured every day, when the threat of another world war was becoming quite real and diversion was much needed from the pressures of a new military service, a new Red Scare, and a perilously fragile political situation.

  George Welch, after all he had been through, was no different.

  He had a hostess friend named Millie Palmer and, according to one source, had dinner with her at Pancho’s the evening of his successful high-speed taxi tests. Millie was a very good source of information about the X-1 program, not that there were any secrets kept at Muroc anyway. Her cousin was a flight engineer aboard the C-54 Skymaster that handled logistics for the X-1 program. The cargo plane was based out of San Francisco and a frequent VIP aboard was none other than Major General “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing, who planned the airborne phase of Operation Husky four years earlier. A classmate of Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, Swing was extremely well connected and widely admired for his combat prowess. He had chased Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916, then fought in France with the U.S. 1st Division during the Great War.

  After Operation Husky, Swing led the 11th Airborne through the invasion of the Philippines and flew his own reconnaissance aircraft around the island during the fighting. He also parachuted into Luzon with his men and freed 2,134 American prisoners of war from the notorious Japanese Los Banos prison. Swing and his men killed all the Japanese and saved every POW; he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to accompany his three Silver Stars and, rare for an Army paratrooper, two Air Medals. In addition to his courage and athleticism, Swing was extremely intelligent (he graduated higher than Eisenhower) and thoroughly understood both aviation and aerodynamics.

  A great friend of Pancho’s and Welch’s, Jumpin’ Joe was a true soldier who despised prima donnas and subterfuge, though he understood the political realities during the fall of 1947. The general liked to get out to the Happy Bottom Riding Club whenever he could, ostensibly to ride horses as he had been an accomplis
hed polo player at West Point, but the scotch and hostesses no doubt added to his attraction for the place. Fortunately, the C-54 made the trip often; San Francisco to Muroc to Buffalo and back—as many times as necessary, filled with equipment, parts, and people who talked too much. Through Millie Palmer and the crowd at Pancho’s, Welch would have been well aware that the X-1’s pitch control issue was nearly solved, and that the Air Force was pushing hard. Yeager would certainly attempt Mach 1 within weeks, if not days.

  George was also quite intelligent and he understood aerodynamics, both in theory and practice. He was certain that the frequent thunderclaps heard around Las Cruces were caused by supersonic V-2 rockets; it fit with what experts like von Kármán long predicted. North American had constructed a very strong, swept-wing, jet-powered aircraft that was, according to Larry Greene and Walt Williams, quite capable of exceeding the speed of sound in a dive. If he did it, and given his temperament he was certainly considering it, Welch knew it would have to be done unofficially. North American, specifically Dutch Kindelberger, had been good to him and he had no intention of causing a problem by incurring the wrath of the U.S. Air Force. The military paid the bills, and the Sabre contract was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

  It was also easy to figure out why the new USAF needed the publicity of breaking the so-called sound barrier before anyone else, especially a civilian company. In fact, Kindelberger had been warned in September by Secretary Symington that Bell and the Air Force would be first, no matter what. Larry Bell had heard the rumors about the XP-86’s capability and was apparently furious; he knew very well what another failure would mean for his company, and he used his considerable political influence through President Harry Truman to pressure NAA into laying off.