Does Chuck Yeager was really first who broke sound barrier?

[Pawelk198604]

I heard that first was German Pilot Hans Guido Mutke but he fly for the .... and as we know winners wrote history :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Guido_Mutke

[Dkmdlb]

I'd mark it as possible that Mutke was first. One of my favorite skeptical podcasts comes to the same conclusion.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4154

[Kryten]

It's not terribly likely he personally did it, given there's no corroboration of it and it doesn't match with Messerschmidt's own tests of what the planes could do. There was one WWII german pilot who almost certainly did break the sound barrier-Lothar Sieber-but it could be argued that inadvertently doing it while in a vertical dive about a metre off of the ground doesn't really count.

[Camacha]

There have been a lot of pilots that broke the sound barrier before Yeager. Most of those died, as the phenomena was ill understood and aircraft and pilot lost control. Some may have recovered inadvertently and landed (somewhat) safely without ever knowing that they went supersonic, possibly with damage to the aircraft.

[Pawelk198604]

There have been a lot of pilots that broke the sound barrier before Yeager. Most of those died, as the phenomena was ill understood and aircraft and pilot lost control. Some may have recovered inadvertently and landed (somewhat) safely without ever knowing that they went supersonic, possibly with damage to the aircraft.

Maybe is better to assume that Yeager was first because he was "Allied" not "...." if so, why the Yeager is still in history books of aviation?

[Dkmdlb]

if so, why the Yeager is still in history books of aviation?

Because he's got the records to back up his claim.

[GoSlash27]

There were several pilots who broke the sound barrier prior to Yeager according to the records. Some of them even survived.

He was the first to do it in level flight intentionally under controlled conditions. But it wasn't just him. He was part of a team.

Best,

-Slashy

[Nuke]

some ww2 warbirds could break the sound barrier in a dive, though this usually involved running into the ground since the control surfaces weren't designed for it.

Because he's got the records to back up his claim.

science requires evidence, and things that happen during war tend not to be perfect science experiments. evidence is anecdotal at best.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Nuke

[Redjoker]

This article may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_barrier#Early_claims

[WestAir]

As an aside, Yeager is known as the first to break the barrier in "level flight."

You can get pretty broad with sound barrier records, and to claim that the Allies lied and wrote the history books to suite themselves is a very shallow response to the specifics of the US Air Force' claims. Never has anyone with authority claimed the US Air Force was the first to break the sound barrier period, and you're wrong if you think they have.

[Northstar1989]

The key term is "level flight". Breaking the sound barrier in a steep dive is something very different and less impressive (and evidence indicates could have been done with WWII warbirds- for instance Wikipedia cites a test by Munich Technical University in 1999 on the Me262 that indicated Mutke's claim could have been authentic/accurate...)

Note that Mutke never claimed to be the first to break the sound barrier- he made a point of saying if his Me262 could do it that other Me262 pilots had probably already done it before him without realizing...

If it sheds any light on his character, he also entered into a career in medicine later in life (he went to medical school and became a doctor), and donated his body to science when he died later in life during an operation on his own heart...

Regards,

Northstar

[KerikBalm]

You seem to watch a lot of TV that makes unsupported or poorly supported claims.

The first well documented case of controlled flight beyond mach 1, of a piloted vehicle, is that of George Welsch in the XP-86.

Due to this, they've since had to reduce the claim of the X-1 to "in level flight"

[Pawelk198604]

You seem to watch a lot of TV that makes unsupported or poorly supported claims.

The first well documented case of controlled flight beyond mach 1, of a piloted vehicle, is that of George Welsch in the XP-86.

Due to this, they've since had to reduce the claim of the X-1 to "in level flight"

"In level flight"

From wikipedia i heard that those "George Welsch" was first who broke sound barrier for America, but he was forced to be silent, why US Aiforce favoring Yeager so much? why they forbidden other pilots to try to broke sound barrier?

[Razor235]

George Welch was flying an experimental aircraft that would later become the F-86 Sabre. He also only went supersonic in a dive, and there were no speed measurements that could be verified.

[Guest]

Pitot tube measurements become inaccurate at transsonic speeds due to shockwaves forming, but it seems that Me-262 could and did break the sound barrier in a dive (though not in level flight). It's manual correctly describes how an aircraft would behave in such conditions. Try it in KSP with FAR if you don't believe, the description quoted on the Wiki should be familiar to any plane designer who managed to go supersonic with a plane not designed for that. Physics of supersonic flight were not well understood at the time, so it wasn't a theoretical divagation, either. It had to be determined via pilot experience. The aircraft likely didn't take it very well, though.

[Rickenbacker]

It's quite likely that he did indeed exceed the speed of sound in that dive, and several others probably did the same thing. But Yeager was the first to be able to prove that he did it, which is what counts here. Anecdotes =/= evidence.

[KerikBalm]

Well, Welsch had relaible witnesses to the sonic boom, at least more relaiable than WWII tales.

I believe Welsch also had radar tracking data and his own instrumentation to back up his claim, but it wasn't as rigourous and precise as the measurements used on the X-1.

But the gist of it is that Chuck and the X-1's acheivements weren't nearly as groundbreaking as they were made out to be.

[rpayne88]

As an aside, Yeager is known as the first to break the barrier in "level flight."

You can get pretty broad with sound barrier records, and to claim that the Allies lied and wrote the history books to suite themselves is a very shallow response to the specifics of the US Air Force' claims. Never has anyone with authority claimed the US Air Force was the first to break the sound barrier period, and you're wrong if you think they have.

And survive. IIRC, another plane was designed to break the sound barrier and succeeded before Yeager. It disintegrated a few seconds latter.

[Beowolf]

Based on the many stories I've heard, none of the pilots before Yeager have a good claim at "breaking" the sound barrier. But several pilots got well into the transsonic zone where airflow over parts of the plane were supersonic. Sadly, the first parts of a plane to normally do that are the tips of the wing and tail, and the angled shockwave builds up right where control surfaces usually are. That pressure locked them in-place and, since the pilots were all diving, resulted in dead pilots.

Now Mutke's description of how his plane acted does indeed sound like got past the transsonic turblulence, but there's no way to know. He had no instruments that could accurately report his airspeed once he reached transsonic, and nobody was measuring from the ground.

So there's no possible way to verify it, and Pawelk, they just don't award records based solely on someone's verbal claim, for reasons I hope are obvious. So no. If nobody witnessed and measured it, he doesn't get the record...not even if he did it. It's not because he was German. If the ground radars broke during Yeager's flight, he wouldn't have been awarded an official record that day either. All he'd have had was what the airspeed indicator said, and we already knew they got really inaccurate as you approached transsonic, so it wouldn't have counted.

[GoSlash27]

Well, Welsch had relaible witnesses to the sonic boom, at least more relaiable than WWII tales.

I believe Welsch also had radar tracking data and his own instrumentation to back up his claim, but it wasn't as rigourous and precise as the measurements used on the X-1.

But the gist of it is that Chuck and the X-1's acheivements weren't nearly as groundbreaking as they were made out to be.

I disagree. The X-1 program was the first to methodically and scientifically study the sound barrier and defeat it, generating the knowledge base necessary to build generations of supersonic (and eventually hypersonic) airplanes.

You could dive Me-262s and make sonic booms forever and not learn anything about the sound barrier.

The X-1 was the first airplane designed to explore the transsonic and supersonic regimes and survive it. Yeager was the first to accomplish it.

That's about as "groundbreaking" as it gets in my book.

Best,

-Slashy

[KerikBalm]

I wasn't talking about the ME-262 specifically. You'll note I referenced a test pilot for the XP-86

The XP-86 could also do that, sure it had to dive first, but it could repeatedly break the sound barrier and survive it.

[Kryten]

There are also reports from Me-163 pilots that are rather more credible than those in the 262s; nobody's really sure what that could do when pushed, particularly the later prototypes with more powerful engines.

[GoSlash27]

I wasn't talking about the ME-262 specifically. You'll note I referenced a test pilot for the XP-86

The XP-86 could also do that, sure it had to dive first, but it could repeatedly break the sound barrier and survive it.

XP-86, Me-262, or whatever. That's not my point.

The X-1 program wasn't merely about strapping a guy in a rocket and exceeding the speed of sound. It was a scientific endeavor to explore and understand the sound barrier and ultimately conquer it. It was by it's very definition groundbreaking.

Best,

-Slashy

[Nibb31]

The Russians had a program similar to the X-1, based on a capture German prototype, the DFS 346. The prototype, program, and the German team (including engineers and test pilots) were transferred back to Russia.

It is possible that they actually flew a supersonic flight before the US, but they never claimed the record, maybe because the pilot and the technology was German and not Russian.

The first Soviet airplane to go officially supersonic was the Lavochkin La-168 in December 1948, one year after Chuck Yeager's flight.

They also had an earlier domestic program, called the LL-1, but I was unable to find anything about it beyond the few lines in astronautix.com...

Edited September 28, 2014 by Nibb31

[Kryten]

The Russians had a program similar to the X-1, based on a capture German prototype, the DFS 346. The prototype, program, and the German team (including engineers and test pilots) were transferred back to Russia.

It is possible that they actually flew a supersonic flight before the US, but they never claimed the record, maybe because the pilot and the technology was German and not Russian.

The first Soviet airplane to go officially supersonic was the Lavochkin La-168 in December 1948, one year after Chuck Yeager's flight.

They also had an earlier domestic program, called the LL-1, but I was unable to find anything about it beyond the few lines in astronautix.com...

The DFS they took from the germans didn't have an engine; it was only glider flight until they built their own in '51. That aircraft crashed after a few transonic flights, and the program was cancelled.