Always Another Dawn: The Story of a Rocket Test Pilot

A misty rain, typical of Seattle in the spring, fell across the lush green campus of the University of Washington that afternoon. It was 1947. I don’t recall the exact date because that whole period of my life remains fixed in my mind as a steady, uninterrupted blur of work and study. I do remember that as I drove through the narrow streets setting apart the ivy-smothered Tudor-Gothic buildings, I proceeded with caution. My car was a veteran of many campaigns in Seattle weather and traffic. It was barely hanging together.

When I pulled into my special parking place behind the University’s wind tunnel, I was quietly angry. I had just come from an advanced class in aeronautical engineering under Professor Frank K. Kirsten, a brilliant but crotchety old martinet. He had devoted the lecture to a discourse on the jet engine, which, he held, had no future because its fuel consumption was too great. I had challenged his assertions and argued forcibly, concluding, with some heat, that other experts in aviation had made such dogmatic statements, only to have them later completely disproved. “Take Monteith,” I had said (actually quoting Kirsten). “He predicted the cantilever wing would not be practicable. Yet almost every airplane flying today has a cantilever wing.” In the aviation world, as anywhere, I concluded, everything is subject to change. We must believe this.

I walked through the power room to a door marked: “Chief Wind Tunnel Operator,” stashed my textbook and notes in a desk drawer, and then scanned the bulletin board. Posted over the tunnel’s Schedule-of-Operations sheet was a photograph of a smashed-up automobile, with “Guess Who?” scrawled underneath. It was an earlier car I owned, a veteran of several brief but devastating engagements. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that both my problem cars had been painted green. I recalled an old race-track superstition against green cars. That was the trouble, I was sure. Overdriving my car and its brakes in Seattle streets couldn’t be the reason, of course.

The wind tunnel of the University of Washington was one of the first—and finest—modern wind tunnels built in the United States. Many major aircraft companies, such as Boeing and McDonnell, contracted work to the tunnel. The tunnel tests and analyses were carried out by students under faculty supervision. I had worked in the tunnel part-time since returning to the University in the spring of 1946. We were then engaged in tests on the Boeing B⁠-47 bomber. Many years later the plane, bought in vast quantity, would become the backbone of the Strategic Air Command, and a direct descendant, the Boeing 707, would become the first U. S. commercial jet airliner. In 1947 the plane’s concept—sharply swept cantilever wings, six jet engines slung on pods beneath the wing—was controversial and exciting.

I joined a fellow student, Joe Tymczyszyn, near the tunnel control panel and greeted him above the noise, the great rushing of wind, and the steady humming of electric generators. Through a glass port mounted on the bottom of the big wind tube, I could see a silvery model of the B⁠-47 rigidly fixed on a pylon. Sensitive force-measuring devices supporting the pylon below the chamber showed the effects of the blast on a row of meters on the control panel. Tym photographed the meter readings every few moments on a special recorder. The panel was marked “Secret” since Boeing and the Air Force considered the data classified.

I plopped into a chair and lighted a cigarette. Then Tym and I fell into avid conversation on the topic that bound us as friends and co-workers: aviation. Tym had a wide acquaintance in aviation. He always had some bit of gossip or vital news to impart.

“Did you hear about Slick Goodlin?” he began. “They say he’s reluctant to fly the X⁠-1.” Slick was a Bell Aircraft test pilot. The X⁠-1 was then the sensation of the aviation world—a tiny, bullet-shaped craft fitted with a rocket engine. It was built for research purposes, to provide high-speed flight data so that we, and others in aviation, could get information we then could not get from wind tunnels. In those days, when we pumped air through a tunnel close to the speed of sound, strange things happened. The air “choked” and the flow was distorted. As a result, most wind-tunnel data near the speed of sound were suspect at a time when they were vitally needed. The X⁠-1 had sufficient power to fly faster than the speed of sound.