Reply #17: Famed test pilot Scott Crossfield dies in air crash, family says

[Stinky The Clown]

<on edit ... note to VolcanoJen: I missed your post when I started my post. Didn't mean to step on your toes.>

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/14388616.htm

RANGER, Ga. - Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said.

Searchers discovered the wreckage of a small plane about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta, but the Civil Air Patrol didn't immediately identify the body inside.

<snip>

Crossfield, 84, had been one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA, in the early 1950s at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager had already broken the speed of sound in his history-making flight in 1947. But Crossfield set the Mach 2 record - twice the speed of sound - in 1953, when he reached 1,300 mph in NACA's Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.

All media are now confirming that the crashed plane was Crossfield's.

This guy and Chuck Yeager were among my childhood heroes. The zoom-zoom guys who flew the skies above Edwards AFB in the early 50s, defying conventional wisdom and the demons that supposedly lived up in the clouds above the machs.

A fair bit of his story was told - along with Yeager's and the Mercury astronauts - in the book and later the movie The Right Stuff.


With the X-15 strapped to his butt .......


.... and recently, watching the second flight for the X-prize.