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| Author | : A. M. "Tex" Johnston |
| Publisher | : Smithsonian Institution |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2014-12-02 |
| Genre | : Technology & Engineering |
| ISBN | : 1588344479 |
One of America's most daring and accomplished test pilots, Tex Johnston flew the first US jet airplanes and, in a career spanning the 1930s through the 1970s, helped create the jet age at such pioneering aersospace companies as Bell Aircraft and Boeing.
| Author | : A. M. Johnston |
| Publisher | : Smithsonian Books (DC) |
| Total Pages | : 328 |
| Release | : 1991 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : |
Foreword by William Randolph Hearst, Jr. One of America's most daring and accomplished test pilots, Johnston helped develop the jet age at Bell Aircraft and Boeing. At Bell, he tested the XS-1, and at Boeing the XB-47 (the first six-jet engine bomber), the XB-52 bomber, and the 707 series of jets -- including a famous barrel-roll above a crowd gathered for the Gold Cup Hydroplane Races in Seattle, Wash.
| Author | : Colin Higgs |
| Publisher | : Air World |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : 2019-11-19 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9781526747754 |
Today, as we board our flights to Adelaide, Zurich, and all points in between, we give little thought to the jet power that will take us there. But, this is only possible because just over 70 years ago a select band of British test pilots was prepared to risk all in the quest to fly further, faster and higher than ever before. Their quest was fraught with danger; disaster and death were never far away. This book captures eleven of those stories as told by the pilots themselves - their words as to how they took British aviation to the forefront of a new era, the 'Jet Age'. Britain's aircraft industry was booming in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War and the demand for test pilots seemingly limitless as new aircraft types rolled off the drawing boards. Meteors, Vampires, Hunters, Comets, Victors, Vulcans and Harriers were some of the aircraft that became world-beaters. Today, these names and the role played by the test pilots in bringing these projects to fruition are all but forgotten. The stories were filmed over a number of years and it is the edited transcripts of those interviews that form a unique and rare perspective on such a pivotal era in aviation. Most were veterans of the Second World War with illustrious service records. Now they faced new battles as they flew new airframes and engines to the limit and sometimes beyond. First, they had to conquer the 'sound barrier' which to many, scientists and the public alike, had assumed almost mythic status. Having done that, they were soon flying at twice the speed of sound, such was the rate of progress. It took discipline, technical know-how, an above average level of flying skill and according to some, a lack of imagination to make a good test pilot. Their stories are often insightful, always modest and often tinged with humour.
| Author | : Alvin M. Johnston |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 326 |
| Release | : 1991 |
| Genre | : Aeronautics |
| ISBN | : 9780553295870 |
| Author | : Colin Higgs |
| Publisher | : Air World |
| Total Pages | : 266 |
| Release | : 2021-07-21 |
| Genre | : Technology & Engineering |
| ISBN | : 1526747766 |
Eleven daring test pilots recount their experiences at the forefront of aeronautical innovation in this oral history of the Jet Age. In the years after World War II, a select band of British test pilots risked everything in the quest to fly further, faster, and higher than ever before. Their vital work made our modern age of air transport possible. This book captures the stories of eleven such pilots, as told in their own words. Britain’s aircraft industry was booming in the late 1940s, and the demand for test pilots was seemingly limitless as new aircraft designs—some legendary and others nearly forgotten—were being built. Royal Air Force veterans who had distinguished themselves in the war suddenly had a vital new mission. First, they pursued the almost mythic goal of breaking the sound barrier. But once this was accomplished, they found themselves approaching speeds no one imagined possible. Their stories of that time are both colorful and insightful—and often tinged with humor.
| Author | : George J Marrett |
| Publisher | : Naval Institute Press |
| Total Pages | : 263 |
| Release | : 2014-07-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 161251426X |
In Contrails over the Mojave George Marrett takes off where Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB only two weeks after the school’s commander, Col. Chuck Yeager, ejected from a Lockheed NF-104 trying to set a world altitude record. He describes life as a space cadet experiencing 15 Gs in a human centrifuge, zero-G maneuvers in a KC-135 “Vomit Comet,” and a flight to 80,000 feet in the F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager’s “Charm School,” he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations, where he flew the latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft as they set world speed and altitude records. Marrett takes readers into the cockpit as he “goes vertical” in a T-38 Talon, completes high-G maneuvers in an F-4C Phantom, and conducts wet-runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. He writes about Col. “Silver Fox” Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Bob Gilliland testing speed stalls in the SR-71 spy plane, but he also relives stories of crashes that killed test pilot friends. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. A mysterious UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, known as “The Edwards Encounter,” also receives Marrett’s attention. Whether the author is assessing a new aircraft’s performance or describing the experiences of test pilots as they routinely faced the possibility of death, this look at the golden age of flight testing both thrills and informs.
| Author | : Bob Gilliland |
| Publisher | : U of Nebraska Press |
| Total Pages | : 247 |
| Release | : 2021-06 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 1640124691 |
On December 22, 1964, at a small, closely guarded airstrip in the desert town of Palmdale, California, Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland stepped into a strange-looking aircraft and roared into aviation history. Developed at the super-secret Skunk Works, the SR-71 Blackbird was a technological marvel. In fact, more than a half century later, the Mach 3–plus titanium wonder, designed by Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, remains the world’s fastest jet. It took a test pilot with the right combination of intelligence, skill, and nerve to make the first flight of the SR-71, and the thirty-eight-year-old Gilliland had spent much of his life pushing the edge. In Speed one of America’s greatest test pilots collaborates with acclaimed journalist Keith Dunnavant to tell his remarkable story: How he was pushed to excel by his demanding father. How a lucky envelope at the U.S. Naval Academy altered the trajectory of his life. How he talked his way into U.S. Air Force fighters at the dawn of the jet age, despite being told he was too tall. How he made the conscious decision to trade the security of the business world for the dangerous life of an experimental test pilot, including time at the clandestine base Area 51, working on the Central Intelligence Agency’s Oxcart program. The narrative focuses most intently on Gilliland’s years as the chief test pilot of the SR-71, as he played a leading role in the development of the entire fleet of spy planes while surviving several emergencies that very nearly ended in disaster. Waging the Cold War at 85,000 feet, the SR-71 became an unrivaled intelligence-gathering asset for the U.S. Air Force, invulnerable to enemy defenses for a quarter century. Gilliland’s work with the SR-71 defined him, especially after the Cold War, when many of the secrets began to be revealed and the plane emerged from the shadows—not just as a tangible museum artifact but as an icon that burrowed deep into the national consciousness. Like the Blackbird itself, Speed is a story animated by the power of ambition and risk-taking during the heady days of the American Century.
| Author | : Donald S. Lopez, Sr. |
| Publisher | : Smithsonian Institution |
| Total Pages | : 254 |
| Release | : 2012-01-11 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1588343626 |
Fighter Pilot's Heaven presents the dramatic inside story of the American military's transition into the jet age, as told by a flyer whose life depended on its success. With colorful anecdotes about fellow pilots as well as precise technical information, Donald S. Lopez describes how it was to be “behind the stick” as a test pilot from 1945 to 1950, when the U.S. military was shifting from war to peacetime operations and from propeller to jet aircraft. An ace pilot who had served with Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tiger Fighter Group, Lopez was assigned at the close of World War II to the elite Proof Test Group of the Air Proving Ground Command. Located at Eglin Field (later Eglin Air Force Base) in Florida, the group determined the operational suitability of Air Force weapons systems and aircraft and tested the first operational jet, the P-80 Shooting Star. Jet fighters required new techniques, tactics, and weaponry. Lopez recounts historic test flights in the P-59, P-80, and P-84, among other planes, describing complex combat maneuvers, hair-raising landings in unusual positions, and disastrous crashes and near crashes. This memoir is peppered with lively accounts of many pilots and their colleagues, revealing how airmen coped with both exhilarating successes and sometimes tragic failures.
| Author | : Sam Howe Verhovek |
| Publisher | : Penguin |
| Total Pages | : 289 |
| Release | : 2011-08-02 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 158333436X |
The captivating story of the titans, engineers, and pilots who raced to design a safe and lucrative passenger jet. In Jet Age, journalist Sam Howe Verhovek explores the advent of the first generation of jet airliners and the people who designed, built, and flew them. The path to jet travel was triumphal and amazingly rapid-less than fifty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, Great Britain led the world with the first commercial jet plane service. Yet the pioneering British Comet was cursed with a tragic, mysterious flaw, and an upstart Seattle company put a new competitor in the sky: the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner. Jet Age vividly recreates the race between two nations, two global airlines, and two rival teams of brilliant engineers for bragging rights to the first jet service across the Atlantic Ocean in 1958. At the center of this story are great minds and courageous souls, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who spearheaded the development of the Comet, even as two of his sons lost their lives flying earlier models of his aircraft; Sir Arnold Hall, the brilliant British aerodynamicist tasked with uncovering the Comet's fatal flaw; Bill Allen, Boeing's deceptively mild-mannered president; and Alvin "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's swashbuckling but supremely skilled test pilot. The extraordinary airplanes themselves emerge as characters in the drama. As the Comet and the Boeing 707 go head-to-head, flying twice as fast and high as the propeller planes that preceded them, the book captures the electrifying spirit of an era: the Jet Age. In the spirit of Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, Verhovek's Jet Age offers a gorgeous rendering of an exciting age and fascinating technology that permanently changed our conception of distance and time, of a triumph of engineering and design, and of a company that took a huge gamble and won.
| Author | : Rebecca Wallick |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 342 |
| Release | : 2014-02-07 |
| Genre | : Airplanes |
| ISBN | : 9780991364800 |
Part memoir, part biography, Growing Up Boeing tells the story of the pioneers of the Golden Age of commercial jet transports from an insider's perspective. Take a nostalgic flight back in time to the dawn of the jet age-1950s through 1980s-when the best experimental test pilots flew by the seat of their pants, putting new commercial jets through tests that stressed and pushed the edge of performance envelopes, discovering their limits and tolerances. Fly along on demonstration and proving flights as the test pilots help Boeing sell the airplanes to airlines around the world, meeting a few celebrities along the way. See how they lived their lives in the air and on the ground-their adventurous spirits, need for speed, leisure activities and families. Secrets big and small are revealed, as are hair-raising moments when the hazards, the incidents, near accidents, and tragic events inherent in exploring the limits of aeronautical technology and new airplane designs are described. This artfully narrated account breathes life into the extremely personal and human experiences that have, in some magical way, been shared at some level by so many, and provides more than a hint of what has made this aircraft manufacturer legendary.
