XBradTC

In the years immediately after World War II, the advent of the jet engine meant vastly improved performance was a real possibility. You’ve certainly heard of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in the first of the X-Planes, the X-1. That plane spawned a whole series of ever faster rocket powered test planes, up to the X-1E, and then onto the X-2 and eventually the X-15. Along the way, NACA, and its later iteration, NASA, would take over from the Air Force for much of the pure research role. But in the early years, the Air Force had the obvious need to understand the aerodynamics of high speed flight, and so they ran the show.

Mostly.

Because the Air Force wasn’t the only service deeply interested in the possibility of supersonic flight. The Navy was ready to jump on the jet powered bandwagon as well. And it has to be remembered, in 1947, with World War II over, and the Iron Curtain not quite descended on Europe, as far as the Navy was concerned, the Air Force was the only enemy worth fighting. And to some extent, the Air Force regarded the Navy the same way. So the Navy set up its own high speed flight research program, contracting with Douglas to build the D588 Skyrocket. The first D588 was a rather uninspired jet with a straight wing. Something more was needed. And so the contract was “modified” and the next iteration, the D-588-II Skyrocket, was born.

The very sleek D-588-II had an interesting propulsion system. It was originally intended to take off under its own power for most tests. The early rocket motors of the day simply didn’t have enough firing time to make that practical. And the early jets of the day didn’t have nearly the thrust to meet the performance potential of the airframe. So the Skyrocket had both.

In the end, most tests were air drops from a modified Boeing B-29, where, after the drop, the jet would take it up as fast or high as it could, and then the rocket would lit off to increase the performance.

NACA and the Navy decided that, of the three aircraft built, one would have its turbojet removed, and operate solely on rocket power. On November 20th, 1953, NACA pilot Scott Crossfield took off with the objective of reaching Mach 2. Mind you, no one had ever done that before, in any plane at all. Furthermore, the Skyrocket wasn’t really designed to reach that speed, being intended more for a top speed of about Mach 1.8. But some very creative, but simple tricks, like simply giving her a good wax job, and chilling the rocket fuel (alcohol) to allow more to be onloaded, allowed Crossfield to juuuuuuuust barely eek out 1291 miles per hour, or Mach 2.005.