Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier -- X-1 -- 1947
0:44
Bell X-1 Plane
12:36
Warbirds Over Delaware 2011 - Mac Hodges Bell X-1 and B-29 Show
The Bell X-1 is a rocket engine–powered aircraft, designated originally as the XS-1, and was a joint National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics–U.S. Army Air Forces–U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by Bell Aircraft. Conceived during 1944 and designed and built in 1945, it achieved a speed of nearly 1,000 miles per hour in 1948. A derivative of this same design, the Bell X-1A, having greater fuel capacity and hence longer rocket burning time, exceeded 1,600 miles per hour in 1954. The X-1, piloted by Chuck Yeager, was the first manned airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the X-planes, a series of American experimental rocket planes designated for testing of new technologies and often kept secret.