Yeager Chased That Ol'Demon

Yeager kept his cool and deselected the plane’s rockets in an attempt to slow the X-1 down and dump the remaining fuel. After regaining control at lower speeds, Yeager glided his now unpowered rocket plane back in to the dry lakebed to an uneventful landing.

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Engineers expected that as the rocket plane reached the sound barrier, its nose would pitch up or down, but at .94 Mach, Chuck had lost any authority over the plane’s elevator. Without it, he could not correct for whatever pitch change might occur at Mach 1. It was Jack Ridley who came up with the solution that by changing the X-1's moving horizontal tail angle of incidence in small increments, he could potentially control his aircraft without having to rely on the elevator. This had never been attempted at extreme speeds, but Yeager was willing to give it a try on the next flight... where Yeager did in fact beat that Ol' demon. October 14th 1947 and earned that steak dinner at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club.

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"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, 750 miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it: The sound barrier. Then, they built a small plane, the X-1, to try and break the sound barrier. And men came to the High Desert in California to ride it. They were called test pilots. And no one knew their names." - The Right Stuff

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