Feeling supersonic
Do you feel the need for speed? looks at pioneers who have travelled faster than the sound barrier
ASONIC boom was heard 50 years ago as Concorde 001 broke the sound barrier for the first time during a test flight in France. The sleek craft, with the distinctive needle nose, used cutting edge 1960s technology that allowed it to cruise at 1,350mph, nearly twice the speed of sound.
It could cover a mile in just 2.75 seconds and cross the Atlantic in three and a half hours. Concorde notched up a “faultless” maiden flight early in 1969, but did not go supersonic until October 1.
The world’s first supersonic jet began commercial flights in 1976 and remained a distinctive figure in the skies for 27 years before retiring from service in October, 2003.
Travelling on the jet was not cheap though. The standard cost of a one-way ticket from London to New York, when the plane was retired, was £4,350 and up to £8,292 for a return.
Just 20 were made and the jets could only carry 100 passengers.
The Queen, Joan Collins, Sir Paul McCartney, TV presenter Sir David Frost and Princess Diana were among the famous passengers who travelled by Concorde over the years and enjoyed its five-star cuisine and fine wines.
The turbojet-powered supersonic airliner was developed and produced under an Anglo-French treaty by Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).
The distinctive nose allowed pilots better visibility. However, Concorde could only fly at top speed when it was over the ocean because of the sonic boom.
American test pilot Chuck Yeager has the distinction of being the first pilot to break the sound barrier.
He smashed two ribs before the flight on October 14, 1947, after falling from his horse, but it still did not stop him climbing into the cockpit of the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Edwards Air Force Base to hit
Mach 1.05 over the Mojave Desert.
He later said: “Levelling off at 42,000 feet, I had 30% of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach – then tipped right off the scale. We were flying supersonic. And it was as smooth as a baby’s bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.”
The Mojave Desert was also the setting for Hollywood stuntman Stan Barrett’s 1979 attempt to become the first driver to beat the sound barrier on land.
He used a three-wheeled car propelled by a 48,000 horse power Stan Barrett unofficially broke sound barrier on land in a car, pictured below, using rocket power for the final burst of speed engine, supplemented by a sidewinder missile for the final burst of speed. It was claimed the vehicle reached 739,666 miles per hour – 1.01 Mach – during the drive, but it was never officially recorded.
Thirty years later a Russian
Soyuz TMA-16 rocket broke the sound barrier while carrying Canadian space tourist and Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy
Laliberté, Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and
American astronaut Jeff Williams to the International Space Station.
And the spectacular sight of breaking the sound barrier was captured on camera in 1999 when Lieutenant Ron Candiloro, assigned to Fighter Squadron One Five One, did it in an F/A-18 Hornet, when his squadron was deployed with the USS Constellation battlegroup.
The fascination with travelling faster than sound began even before it was actually possible.
Film director David Lean offered a fictional account about solving the supersonic problem in 1952 movie The Sound Barrier written by
Terence Rattigan and starring Ann Todd, Ralph Richardson and Nigel Patrick.
The movie’s publicity promised cinema audiences that “Nothing on Earth can match its super-sonic thrills!” with Ralph Richardson’s character declaring: “I believe that with the right aircraft and the right man, we can force our way through this barrier. And once through, there is a whole... a whole new world! With speeds of 1,500 to 2,000 miles an hour within the grasp of man.”
Alas, the Vickers-Supersonic Swift aircraft featured in the film was not capable of supersonic flight and Chuck Yeager himself was not impressed.
He later said of the British movie, that if a pilot had tried to break the barrier in the manner shown in the film they would have been killed.
It was left to wartime fighter ace Squadron Leader Neville Duke, the chief test pilot for Hawker aircraft, to fly the flag for Britain and break the world air speed record in 1953.
He had been awarded an OBE earlier in the year for his contribution to supersonic flight and attempted the flight just three months after the royal coronation in a modified Hawker Hunter jet fighter.
He raised his hand in triumph from the cockpit to the waiting crowd after his successful flight at Littlehampton when he reached speeds of 727.6 mph.