Dan Hampton - Chasing the Demon. A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier 2018

Contents

Contents

Nonfiction

The Flight

The Hunter Killers

Lords of the Sky

Viper Pilot

Fiction

The Mercenary

For Colonel Ken K. O. Chilstrom and

his 114 fallen brothers-in-arms

F or simplicity, I have generally used the U.S. military equivalent when discussing foreign military ranks and command structure. Use of German, Italian, or Japanese words and phrases has been reduced to the bare minimum as they tend to confuse most readers, though certain distinct unit names have been retained. Much of this book concerns the U.S. Army Air Corps and the USAF test program, so I must ask forgiveness from my brothers with gold wings for limiting the numerous contributions of Navy and Marine aviators. There have been scores of superb pilots from both services involved with flight test, but as carrier aviation is essentially tactical in nature, flying supersonic did not obsess naval aviators as it did the Air Force.

I also beg forbearance from Second World War historians for my abbreviated treatment of pivotal operations in the Pacific, Mediterranean, and the savage fighting throughout Europe toward the close of the war. These were history-altering events about which scores of superb books have been written, but I would remind my colleagues that in this work the war is the historical backdrop that created the men and fostered the aviation advances that make this story possible.

Yet we must not forget that progression into the supersonic age of flight was undeniably facilitated by World War II, and the men who chased this particular demon were products of that war and the unsettled decades preceding that conflict. So to know them, and to understand the technology and challenges they faced in attempting to fly past the speed of sound, it is necessary to understand something of their world and its consequences, both personal and public. In bringing this to life I have had an incalculable asset: Colonel Ken Chilstrom. World War II fighter pilot and veteran of the North Africa, Sicily, and Italian campaigns; graduate of the initial U.S. test pilot course; and chief of the Wright-Patterson Fighter Test Division when the XP-86 and Bell X-1 were being put through their paces. As an author, having a firsthand, eyewitness source to the times and events that shaped our world is phenomenal. As a fighter pilot myself, to sit and listen to an aviation legend who has truly been there and done that was awe inspiring. To call him my friend is an honor I will always cherish.

Keep in mind also that just as the birth of modern flight is certainly not a single event, neither is the advent of supersonic flight. True, it was the Wrights at Kitty Hawk on that cold December morning in 1903 who first achieved powered, controlled flight in a heavier-than-air machine, but note the qualifiers. Many other men had flown in one fashion or another, and for centuries they had used gliders, with various types of rudimentary control, to achieve a type of flight. Still others were able to power their craft off the ground but had no control whatsoever over the craft once it was airborne. Later, men attempted to blend what they had learnedto use self-produced powerand it was at this point, along with positive control, that true flight was finally achieved. It is precisely the accomplishment of controlled, manned flight under power that justifiably gave the Wrights claim to the title. Other titles and popular claims to fame may be less certain and we shall take an objective look into this.

Throughout the book I have endeavored to distill aerodynamic concepts into a digestible form for those readers without aviation or engineering backgrounds, and I have included the historical aspects of mans quest to fly past the speed of sound for those without historical inclinations. My hope is that there is a story here for all of us who share a fascination with aviation.

As for the demon...

It existed, and still does. It lives out just beyond the thin air, elusive and tempting, drawing us further and deeper into his domain. A world of unknowns and lofty, dangerous pursuits such as high-altitude flight, global circumnavigation, and, yes, the so-called sound barrier. The latter term is a romantic label for flight beyond the speed of sound, and as such it is attractive to moviemakers or publishers. It has a ring to it, an air of satisfying finality, nearly an absolute, which can only be overcome through extreme courage and skill. There is truth in this, yet the term is utterly artificial for aviators, engineers, or historians, at least in the intellectual sense: no such barrier actually existed.

Or did it?

From another viewpoint the barrier and its demon lived in mens imaginations and would continue to do so until both man and machine evolved sufficiently to dispel the myth. Indeed, there was a physical barrier, but it was of mans own making through his misunderstanding of transonic aerodynamics, and the propulsion systems required to push him faster. Once these were achieved the actual event of muscling through Mach 1 was anticlimactic: an inevitable moment in time. But it is here, in the shaping of the men and the struggle to develop the science, that the real story lies. The story of those who chased the demon, in any of his forms, far out into the unknown only to see his shape fade elusively into another undiscovered realm of his world. The demon beckoned men to follow, and still does today, to continue chasing him toward whatever else is out there.

W hy were men striving to fly past the speed of sound, past a known, calculated point that, for many, had become a barrier to further flight? How did such a time in history arise that would permit such an endeavor? What caused the very fertile ground of the 1930s and 1940s to be so fertile, and how did the global stage come to be the stage upon which this drama was set? Simply phrasedwhy then? And equally important, how did the men who chased the demon become the men they were? What events shaped their inherent talents and abilities to the point where the demon of speedand otherscould be successfully pursued?

Lots of questions.

To answer them we must look well beyond the very short, four-minute rocket burst that officially took man beyond the speed of sound during October 1947, into what made that flight, and very likely others before it, possible. We must look at war and peace, politics, science and technology, to examine factors that molded the world we inherited and that still impact our lives today. As with other seminal developments we take for granted today, the origins and motivations have often become obscured, idealized, or, worse still, forgotten altogether. At several points in the history of flight and its subsequent quests, credit has not been given to those it is due, but rather to those with the best publicity. I certainly do not impugn those who have gone before; they were brave men who purposely took extraordinary risks, albeit for reasons as different as the pilots themselves.

This work will simply lay out various facts, unburnished by time and without the glitter of legend, to at least encourage readers to pause for thought. To reflect that just because we were taught a thing it does not necessarily mean it is true, and perhaps to remind ourselves that much of what is accepted as historical fact is, in fact, neither history nor fact. Such a luxury is only possible because others have gone before us and done the dirty work, so to speakmen who offered their reputations, suffered the slings and arrows of their peers, and often lost their lives in the pursuit of the unknown.

The unknown; it is an ideal to some, a demon of sorts to others, and always a challenge. There were those who believed the demon in the thin air past the speed of sound did not exist at all, but