FASTER THAN SOUND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 14

FASTER THAN SOUND

Be: LONELY SKY, by William Bridgeman; Cassell and Co, Ltd., English price 16/-. OWARDS the end of the last war a number of fighter pilots experienced a strange and frightening change in the handling of their aircraft when in a high speed dive. The aerodynamicists knew the reason for the peculiarity-it was the effect of "com- | Pressibility," an aerodynamic phenomenon associated with movement through air at a speed approaching that of sound waves. Just why and how, nobody knew -how to overcome it was anybody’s | guess. One thing was certain; unless man |was prepared to admit he had reached the limit of speed someone had to find out all about this compressibility. Both the "Douglas and Bell concerns in America designed an aircraft with but one purpose-to fly faster than the, speed of sound. Without a complete understanding of the problem, it is difficult to grasp the immensity of the step it was planned | to take. It fell to Bridgeman’s lot to fly

the Douglas product. At the time he can hardly have ranked among the top flight of test pilots as he had never flown a jet. He was a bomber pilot in the last war, an airline pilot and, later, a production test pilot on single-engined conventional aircraft. When he accepted the challenge of the Skyrocket he had to

learn to fly jets, pick up as much as he could of the problems "of high speed flight and then get familiar with rocket motors, This book takes the reader step by step with the author through the transition from being an unknown production test pilot to being the man who had flown higher and faster than any other man living. It is a story of superlative skill and the kind of courage few men possess. Anyone with any interest in flying will find it thrilling-anyone with experience of test flying will lose himself in admiration for the author and his

colleagues.

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