The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

At altitude, engineer Jack Ridley and I would stroll back to the bomb bay, trying not to look through the gap between the mother ship and her tiny orange offspring, named Glamorous Glennis after my wife, who had happily suffered the standard deprivations as an Army Air Corps wife. It was cold and windy as I made my way to the small steel ladder mounted on slides that would descend to the X-1’s cabin door. I’d bounce on it a little and it would drop into position.

Then the fun would start. I’d place my right hand up inside the door and hold on tight to the top of the frame inches away from all that sky. Then I’d slide in feet first with my left hand still holding the ladder behind my back. I’ll never forget that bad moment when I’d have to release my right hand and shift my weight from the ladder to the plane. This was the moment – half in and half out – when I always figured the X-1 would get inadvertently released (crack!) from the cable attachment point overhead. Once inside the plane, I’d have to bend around double to turn and slide into the pilot’s seat. But it wasn’t over. I’d still have to contend with the parachute (as much good as it would do in an emergency) and retrieve my helmet and oxygen mask from behind the seat – I’d stuffed my helmet and oxygen mask behind the seat of the X-1 before takeoff, two less items to worry about.

When I’d settled, Ridley would lower the cabin door on a small cable and position it over the doorframe. He’d push from the outside and I’d latch from the inside and somehow, in the icy wind, with thinning oxygen and mounting anticipation, we’d get the X-1 ready for flight.

The drop itself was the next big obstacle, and like entering the bird, it’s something that I never really got used to. During preflight checks, I’d practice neutralizing the controls and brace myself for the release. Cardenas would go through the countdown, finishing with an emphatic “Drop!” The X-1 would float from the B-29 and I’d get launched right up to the cockpit overhead, caressing the canopy with my helmet in the sudden swell of microgravity. My heart was in my mouth, stomach right behind it.

The pilot’s reports I wrote afterward were devoid of these sensations – as a professional test pilot, you were expected to maintain a dispassionate tone. Consider these excerpts from the report following the eighth powered flight: “After pilot entry in the usual fashion at 7000 ft, the XS-1 was dropped from the B-29 at 20,000 ft and at 260 m.p.h. indicated airspeed… Immediately after the drop, all cylinders were started in rapid sequence, and with all four in operation it was noted that No. 1 and No. 3 had 210-psi chamber pressure, No. 2 and No. 4 having 220 psi, with approximately 290-psi LOX and fuel line pressure… The climb was made at .85 to .88 Mach until 40,000 ft was reached.”

That flight, on Oct. 10, signalled enormous progress in the X-1 program. We thought it was only a matter of time before we’d push through the sound barrier. What would it be like? A pebble in the road of aviation we had merely to step over? Or an insurmountable Chinese Wall that would destroy the X-1 – and me with it? Naturally, thoughts at these moments turned to Glennis and my boys, who sacrificed plenty out in the desert in those brightly lit days of the late 1940s. I wanted to fly, wanted to take my shot at the speed of sound. And they were my own personal cheering section.

As I stood looking at my carrot, my glasses and my rope on the morning of Oct. 14 – broken ribs secretly knifing at my side – I thought that this just might be the day. The eighth powered flight had gone exceedingly well. We had flown as fast or faster than anyone ever had before. And it looked as though we only had to step over the line to enter aviation’s new age. The day of the ninth powered flight began in the usual way. I fried the eggs while Glennis got ready to drive me over to the airfield. I’d had a bad night’s sleep – from the pain in my side, but also from the indecision about whether or not to fly the mission incapacitated. Tossing and turning, I decided to make up my mind in the air. If it became physically impossible to climb into the X-1, then I’d scrub the mission. If I could get into the pilot’s seat, I knew I could fly.