Cette image peut avoir des imperfections car il s’agit d’une image historique ou de reportage.
Captain Charles E. Yeager, standing in front of the Air Force's Bell X-1. The world's first supersonic aircraft, the Bell X-1, flew faster than the speed of sound on October 14th, 1947. The X-1 was carried into the air under a converted B-29 bomber, and released at an altitude of 6800 meters over Muroc, California. The X-1 was powered by a four-chamber XLR-11 rocket engine that generated 26.5 kilonewtons of thrust. This pushed the aircraft to a speed of 1078 km/h at an altitude of 12, 800 meters - equivalent to 1.015 times the speed of sound. Yeager unofficially named to aircraft "Glamorous Glennis, " after his wife. It is now displayed at the Smithsonian. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager (born February 13, 1923) is a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force and record-setting test pilot. In 2012, on the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, Yeager did it again at the age of 89, riding in a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle piloted by Captain David Vincent out of Nellis Air Force Base.