Faster than the speed of sound. It streaks across the stratospheric sky like a comet. Is it Superman? No. It is the Bell-built rocket ship, the Supersonic XS-1.

This bullet-like plane has pierced the highly-feared "barrier" at 760 miles per hour, accelerated upward to close to 1,000 miles per hour. Theoretically, it is capable of 1,700 miles per hour.

The publicity recently released on the XS-1 is actually old stuff, for movie-handsome Slick Goodlin has made many flights in the XS-1, some of them 12 months ago. I was in the Bell plant at Buffalo last summer when the news came through that the navy had broken all existing speed records at Muroc dry lake, flying a jet-job at 640 miles per hour.

Watching the crew of the XS-1 when this news was announced, they had that "cat-that-ate-the-mouse" look. They were busy upon the tiny plane at the time, for it had recently caught fire during the speed trial. I came away with the impression that this ship had already flown in the high 700 or 800 miles per hour-and it is now confirmed that it had.

 

Strangely enough, the much-feared barrier was not found to amount to anything in this ship, especially designed to travel through it.

What is this XS-1 rocket airplane? It is a polished smooth bullet with winds so small they look like ironing-boards. The landing speed of the ship, still highly secret, makes me shudder. It is loaded with a highly-explosive fuel mixture of ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen.

It is a rocket rather than a jet, because it carries its own "atmosphere" with it. That is, it does not depend upon the air sucked in by super-chargers or any other means to operate.

The jet and rocket motor utilize the same law of thrust for their "go-power," but the jet depends upon the air around it for its final fuel mixture, while the rocket is self-sustaining in flight. In other words, it could fly right out of our atmosphere. At 70,000 feet during trials, it darned near did it.

One of the strange facts to emerge from these flights of the XS-1, is that you can hear the rocket motor warning up on the ground for 35 miles. It makes an eerie wail like a deep-throated siren gone mad. In the cockpit while in flight, the pilot hears nothing. It is ghostly quiet as he rushes through space at nearly 1,000 miles per hour. Why? He is out-running the speed of sound. the noise of the rocket is left far behind him. This is really the ship you see but don't hear--or hear but don't see.

XS-1 stands for (X) experimental, (s) supersonic, (1) the first one ever built. You may now make another big white chalk mark for our Mentone-born Larry Bell. This common small town boy, with unsurpassed ingenuity, having free reign under the democratic system, rose from a bare-footed kite-flying lad with no money, to one of the world's greatest aircraft pioneers, a single-handed tycoon of the plane-making industry. To Lawrence Bell, we can and do "Sky-Write, "Well done!"

In Miniature
In leafing through an aviation magazine the other day, I first became aware of the enormity of the model-aircraft business. The boys and men who really follow this hobby, wrap up important money in their diminutive ships and motors They follow all the conventional designs, have gasoline motors, special fuel motors and jet-jobs.

Motors for these tiny crafts cost from $4.95 to more than $100 and they develop speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour. They were advertising tachometers that work on the principle of vibration to test the running efficiency of their tiny craft. Propellers were hand-built, weighed and balanced with all the loving care that went into the XS-1. Special fuels were offered these midget fans, as well as jet-engines for as little as $35. Kids must have money these days to keep up with our mechanical-age hobbies.

At any rate, I'm certainly glad to find such subjects as the XS-1 which files above the weather, and model airplanes, which fly under the weather. For this columnist has been "weathered-in" for more than week. When there is no flying, there isn't any fresh news--and I assure you it makes writing very rough.

Pilots could stand a break in the weather. I haven't been off the ground for more than a week. Like the dope fiend when his supply is shut off, I've go the ground-bound jitters!

Warsaw Daily Times, Mon. Jan. 5, 1948

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