Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis
Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis achieved the first human-crewed supersonic flight in 1947. Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager piloted USAF aircraft #46-062, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis for his wife.
The airplane was drop-launched from the bomb bay of a modified B-29 Superfortress bomber and reached Mach 1.06 or 700 miles per hour (1,100 km/h). Following burnout of the engine, the plane glided to a landing on the dry lake bed.
The Bell X-1 was a rocket engine-powered aircraft, conceived in 1944 and designed and built-in 1945.
The X-1, piloted by Chuck Yeager, was the first crewed airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the X-planes, a series of experimental planes for testing of new technologies and often kept secret.
This X-1-1, Air Force Serial Number 46-062, was flown to Washington, D.C., beneath a B-29 and presented to what was then the American National Air Museum in 1950.
Its color is “International Orange,” a color used in the aerospace industry to set objects apart from their surroundings, similar to safety orange, but deeper and with a more reddish tone.
Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis
- Title: Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis
- Date: 1945
- Crew: One
- Length: 30 ft 11 in (9.4 m)
- Wingspan: 28 ft (8.5 m)
- Height: 10 ft (3.3 m)
- Loaded weight: 12,225 lb (5,545 kg)
- Powerplant: one × Reaction Motors XLR-11-RM3 liquid-propellant rocket,
- Max speed: 957 mph (Mach 1.26) (1,541 km/h)
- Range: Five minutes (powered endurance)
- Museum: National Air and Space Museum
Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier — X-1 — 1947
Tour of the National Air and Space Museum
- The Spirit of St. Louis
- Apollo 11 Command Module
- The Wright Flyer
- Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis
- SpaceShipOne
- Apollo Lunar Module
- Skylab 4 Apollo Command Module
- Airbus A320 Simulated Cockpit
A Tour of Air and Space Museums
- National Air and Space Museum
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum
- Aviation Museum Hannover-Laatzen
- Royal Air Force Museum London
- Australian Aviation Heritage Centre
The Bell X-1 (XS-1) “Sound Barrier” October 14, 1947
Science and Technology Museums
- Science Museum, London
- Queensland Museum & Science Centre
- National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo
- ArtScience Museum, Singapore
- Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
- Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York
- National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
- National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo
- Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)
- Science and Technology Museums
- Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Plane Was Designed like a Giant Bullet to Break Sound Barrier: X-1 Bell History
Military and War Museums and Memorials
- Imperial War Museum, London
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York
- Australian War Memorial
- Darwin Military Museum, Australia
- Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia
- Changi Museum, Singapore
- War Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Churchill War Rooms, London
- Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand
- Household Cavalry Museum, London
- National Army Museum, London
- MacArthur Museum Brisbane
Bell X-1 Ground Launch, January 1949
~~~
“Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years,
just so we could discover them!”
-Orville Wright
~~~
Photo Credit: 1)By Joyofmuseums (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 2) Ad Meskens [Attribution, CC BY-SA 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
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