It was just another test mission for Capt. Chuck Yeager.
Captain Yeager arrived at Muroc Air Force Base, Calif., the morning of Oct. 14, 1947, for what would be his ninth powered flight piloting the Bell X-1.
Each of the previous flights demonstrated incremental speed increases as the aircraft neared the theoretical threshold known as the sound barrier. No aircraft had ever flown faster than the speed of sound, and it certainly wasn't in the cards on that October morning. The goal of Yeager's test flight was to achieve Mach .97 -- almost 20 mph slower than sound wave velocity.
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