World's Record in a Jet

by JACQUELINE COCHRAN

1

ON JUNE 2, 1953, I had every intention of being in London to see a charming princess being turned into a queen. But Fate had other plans for me. While Queen Elizabeth was riding back from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace in the royal carriage, flanked on either side by crowds of loving subjects, I was having a memorable day of my own. Just 200 feet above a dry alkaline lake bed in the California desert at a speed of about 700 miles an hour I was piloting a Sabre-jet plane back and forth over a measured course in an attempt to set a new all-out speed record. Except for the official timers and a half-dozen friends, desert rats and prairie dogs constituted my only audience. I completed the necessary four runs that morning and returned to the airport only to learn that the timing equipment on the ground had failed to function and all my efforts had been for naught.

Since I started flying in 1932 until the jet phase came along, I had been in the center of aviation. But the jet phase was threatening to pass me by. I wanted a real touch of it. I had searched for a way to get my hands on the controls of a jet plane for some speed bights. A short flight in a jet plane back in 1944 had convinced me that new horizons had been opened. But for a woman to get a good fast jet plane was a difficult business. I first approached the head of Lockheed Aircraft Company, who appeared sympathetic but said every jet in that company’s possession was government properly and therefore Air Force consent would be necessary. I am a pilot in the Air Force Reserve but women are not on flying status. I have been a close friend of every Chief of Staff of the Air Force to date, but for that reason would not ask them for a personal favor.

A Canadian group of acrobatic jet pilots attending the Cleveland Air Show offered to let me fly of an early morning one of their Vampire jet planes, but after deliberation I concluded I might get them into serious trouble with their top brass, so declined with thanks. The head of the French Air Force, also a good friend of mine, invited me to come to France and fly one of their British-built jet Vampires. I was all set to go when my husband stopped me for the reasons that I would be flying during winter season in a strange country, the instruments and controls in the plane would be strange, and my advisers would be speaking either in my language, which they might not speak accurately whem accuracy was essential, or in a language I understood hardly at all. He was right but I was disappointed. Madame Jacqueline Auriol, daughter-in-law of the then President of France, was later allowed to fly that Vampire and with it established a women’s record for the 100-kilometer closed course. Madame Auriol is a friend of mine, and a good pilot who has stayed with flying, not withstanding a horrible crash (with someone else at the controls) which necessitated many plastic-surgery operations to restore her facial beauty. She came to this country in the early spring of 1952 and visited us at our ranch. While in the United States she was given a flight in a Lockheed T33 two-place jet training plane. I thought somehow that would open the door to me, for, courtesy or not, it was an open flight by a nonmilitary woman in a military plane. But nothing happened. So I turned my eyes to other countries.

Canadair, Ltd., was making Sabre-jet planes in Montreal for the United States, British, and Canadian Air Forces. It was the fastest model of the Sabre-jet, the only one that could pass the sonic barrier even in a full-power dive. The Canadian authorities were about to try out a Canadian-designed and -built Orenda engine in the Sabre-jet. I was present at Detroit in 1951 when Colonel Fred Aseani of our Air Force broke the previous 100-kilometer speed record with a speed of 635 miles per hour. After his flight he told me that if I could get the Canadian-built Sabre-jet with the Orenda engine he thought I could beat his record by 15 miles an hour and he would help me do so. That was a sportsmanlike gesture from a great pilot, a fine soldier and gentleman. And it energized me into action.

I wrote a long letter to Mr. John Jay Hopkins, head of General Dynamics, American owner of all the stock of Canadair. I did not mention my desire to beat the speed of sound or to better Colonel Ascani’s record. That might sound too fantastic. So I put it on the basis that I had much experience in high-speed flying, I could probably be of help to them in testing out the Orenda-powered job, and in the process perhaps I could be clocked for a women’s record or two with some resulting benefit to the Canadian firms involved. If he had checked my activities he would have learned that I was opposed to women’s records as such and had not tried for one in several years. I wanted to break men’s records only.

I was finally hired by Canadair as a flight consultant. It was agreed that when the Sabre-jet with Orenda engine was ready I could put it through some speed tests in Montreal. By way of planning I could survey and have a 100-kilometer course certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. I went to Montreal and put in some flight time and I arranged for representatives of the National Aeronautic Association to go to Montreal and have the course surveyed.

Those representatives reported to me that, because of lack of any nearby points in the government’s official survey into which to tie for exactness the surveyor’s work and certification, the survey would be expensive, and also that the winter weather in Canada would be tough to buck. The general public does not realize that warm air temperature gives increased speed. Heat increases the speed of sound, and the actual performance of a plane is related to the speed of sound, known as Mach 1. The speed of sound can get down as low as 660 miles per hour in very cold air and up close to 800 miles an hour in very hot weather.

The American timing officials asked why I did not do the records where a course was already established, with warmer air available. About this same time I learned that Canadair wanted to send the plane to Edwards Air Force Base in California to have some calibration and other tests done that could not be done in Canada. I had courses already surveyed in the desert near our ranch about 160 miles south of Edwards Air Force Base, so it seemed a great opportunity. I asked that I be allowed to do my speed tests in the plane while it was in California rather than after it had been returned to Montreal.

Canadair agreed. But I subsequently wished many times that I had never thought of this because a simple test arrangement then developed into an international problem and a major project.

2

FIRST of all, there were two facts which prevented my own courses in the desert being used. The available airports had runways too short for Sabre-jet operation and were too far away from the measured courses, inasmuch as the fuel-carrying capacity of the plane would be a limiting factor on speed. In addition, the range of mountains around our valley would prevent the necessary low-altitude high “G” turns on the 100-kilometer and 500-kilometer courses. One G is the force of gravity. When a plane is pulled out of a dive or put into a sharp bank it builds up Gs. The plane is built to stand a certain number of Gs, above which it will pull apart. A pilot without a G-suit is likely to be in trouble with more than four Gs, even for short periods, and with less than four Gs if long continued. My flights would call for turns involving about three Gs.

Rogers and Rosamond dry lake beds adjoin the Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert area and provide ideal emergency landing facilities. These lakes are wet during the winter months but as dry and almost as hard and smooth as a billiard table during late spring and summer months. I approached General Vandenberg to see if the Air Force would permit me to layout measured courses over these lakes, which courses would be available thereafter to the Air Force. They were needed. He agreed and confirmed that as a pilot in the employ of Canadair I could fly a Canadair plane at Edwards just like any other Canadair pilot, and that Canadair, by previously existing arrangement, had the privilege on request of calibrating and testing its new Sabre-jet with Orenda engine at Edwards.

With this everything seemed set except the consent of the Canadian Air Force authorities to let me serve as one of the test pilots. They finally gave approval to Canadair and stated that the plane was in Canadair’s possession and control for a period of ninety days.

I held my breath until the plane left for Edwards. I continued thereafter on the anxious seat until the flight was back of me.

The preliminary tests by the Canadian pilot were finally completed and the following day I was to fly the plane. The weather right then was very good for speed tests. It was discovered, however, that the photographic film used to record the instruments during these preliminary calibration tests, tor some unaccountable reason, had turned out unexposed. All the tests had to be run over. A valuable week was lost. Then bad weather set in. Two weeks more passed before I could get into that Sabre-jet plane. A part of the engine time l had counted on had been used in the retesting. And the three months’ period, at the end of which the plane had to be turned over to the Canadian government, was fast drawing to a close. A newspaper or two learned about my flying plans and I practically begged them on my knees not to publish a story. Publicity would have been fatal to my program.

3

ON MY first flight in the Canadian Sabre-jet I took it up to 30,000 feet and by pulling it into a gentle dive I registered .97 of Mach 1, which is on the edge of trouble. For this kind of flying there is about one hour’s fuel supply. The next day I went to .99 of Mach 1. “Chuck” Yeager, the first man to go past the sonic barrier, was flying not too far away and asked me to look at him and tell him what I was seeing. I could see the shock waves actually rolling off my canopy like a fine film of water on a window. The atmospheric conditions have to be just right to see as well as to feel the shock waves and they were right that day. On the climb to high altitude, which is a fairly slow process, I went down to the Mexican border and back and showed the plane’s contrail over our ranch as greeting to my husband. This contrail is really a trail of ice crystals formed when the hot exhaust gas strikes the cool air at altitude and forms water vapor, which then freezes if the conditions are right.

There was nothing left for me to do now on the third flight in that Sabre-jet except to pass Mach 1. Because no one on the ground knew my plan the explosions would give them a surprise. There are two clear ones in sharp succession and usually a third that is sometimes referred to as an echo of one of the others. In effect, one is flying inside an explosion at Mach 1 or above, and when the plane is slowed down and pulled out of the dive this explosive shock wave carries on to hit the ground in what had been the line of supersonic flight of the plane.

I climbed to about 45,000 feet. Then I did a “split. S” to start the full-power and almost vertical dive and headed straight down for the airport as my target. I counted aloud the changing readings on the Mach meter so that Chuck, who was in the air in another plane, could hear them over the radio. Mach .97, Mach .98, Mach .99, Mach 1, Mach 1.01. At Mach .98 the wing suddenly dipped. Then it overcorrected and the right wing dipped. At that point the nose tried to tuck under, which means that the plane wanted to fly on its back in the first phase of an outside loop. The turbulence was great and the shock waves violent. I started to pull out of the dive gently so as to level off before getting below 18,000 feet altitude. Down there, in that heavy air, a pull-out might tear the plane apart; also, below 18,000 feet a flight under certain conditions can result in a compressor stall in the engine. The pull-out causes a slow-up of speed which means coming back past the sonic barrier again with a repetition of the shocks and the turbulence and the strange antics of the plane.

As I climbed for this dive past the barrier, I noticed that the sky above was growing darker until it became a dark blue. The sun is a bright globe up there above but there are no dust particles at that height to catch and reflect the sun’s rays, so there is not what we know as “sunshine” down on the surface. Yellow has given way to blue. The gates of heaven are not brilliantly lighted. The stars can be seen at noon.

I landed wit h one more barrier behind me and was much pleased. As my friends congratulated me I felt as if I were walking about 10 feet above the ground. The men on the flight line heard the two explosions but they had not been recorded in the control lower. What should be done about that? The answer was easy. I would do it over again.

So, at the end of an hour, I went up once more, only this time I wanted to do a little better, so I climbed to 46,000 feet. Cp there I felt as if I were teetering on the top of a rubber ball just before I did that split S to start the dive. A split S maneuver keeps a positive force related to air and the pull of gravity working on the plane toward its underside at all times. A negative force could result from just pointing the nose of the plane over into a dive and such negative G might disrupt the fuel and hydraulic systems, apart from its possible serious effect on the pilot. It is being found out that a pilot can stand little more than three negative Gs and then only for a few seconds. Blood is forced into the head and what is known as a red-out results with almost immediate occurrence of numerous small hemorrhages in the whites of the eyes. There is also such a thing as a “zero gravity” and when in that stale the pilot just floats in the air with no weight whatsoever. How long a pilot could carry on with zero gravity is not known. It has been done by Chuck Yeager for forty-five seconds as an experiment. That is about as long as it is possible for even a great expert to hold a plane in the exact flying attitude that will give zero gravity.

This time I stayed with the dive until I registered well above Mach 1 on the plane’s Mach meter. The tower reported it recorded the explosions and heard me counting the progress of the needle on the Mach meter. So I was highly satisfied.

I was a part of the plane in these flights. I was, in fact, attached to it ten different ways, for strapping on of the parachute, for strapping of myself to the seat, for oxygen, and for listening and speaking. If something had gone wrong, it would have been impossible to open the canopy manually and bail out. The speeds are too great for this. So in such an emergency there is a lever to pull which sets off an explosive charge and blows the canopy off. Then another lever is pulled and pilot, seat, and parachute are exploded out of the plane upward and toward the rear. All the pilot has to do after that is to maintain his composure and count to a certain number while falling and disengaging himself from the seat. Then he can open the parachute and start a slower drop to earth. That is, he can if he has taken his small bail-out bottle of oxygen with him, for the air up there is too rare to maintain consciousness. But the pilot won’t have use for the bail-out bottle unless, before pulling the trigger that sets off the explosive charge, he has propped his head back against the head rest and propped his feet into special bail-out pedals because the force of ejection would otherwise injure him severely. Furthermore, if the parachute is opened at high altitude, quick freezing will be the result to any part of the body not well protected. It is best to make a “free” fall until close to 15,000 feet of altitude.

Pressurization in the cockpit can be lost as a result of a break in the canopy or otherwise. Then it is necessary, short of a bail-out, to dive fast to lower altitude because it takes both oxygen and pressurization to keep one going very long above 30,000 feet.

4

I HAD five short flights in that Sabre-jet plane before I flew it around the 100-kilometer course for a new world’s record — for man as well as woman. The course was circular and around twelve pylons. For purpose of measurement, it was in a series of straight lins from pylon to pylon to aggregate 100 kilometers, which is about 63 miles. The circumference of the circle was therefore necessarily longer than the series of straight lines, and also each pylon had to be passed on the outside, all of which added to the flight course. The height, of flight above the course was 300 feet —this low in order that the photographic timing device could catch me accurately as I passed the start and the finish points of the circuit. But there were hills at one side of the course which I had to skim over by rising a bit at that point. Two observers were at each pylon. Two sets of judges were on hand, each with an automatic electric timer, accurate to one ten-thousandth of a second, and with cameras that allowed even this timing to be corrected by fixing the position of the plane with respect to the start and finish line at instant of timing. Official observation planes were in the air with barographs. There was a sealed barograph in my plane. Chuck Yeager was in a chase plane to act as observer around the course. I had fuel enough at full power to fly the course twice, provided I would turn onto course promptly after take-off and land immediately after completion of the speed run. That would give me a margin of two minutes of fuel.

The plane in its calibration and other tests showed that at full power it had a top speed of 675 miles per hour. But this was in a straight line over a short distance. What could it do in a banked position of thirty degrees over a 63-mile circular distance? There were varying opinions among the Edwards test pilots. They ranged from 630 miles per hour to a maximum of 650 miles per hour.

On my first run I obtained 652 and a fraction miles per hour. On my second run I was a mile per hour slower. The first run was naturally taken for certification of record to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Paris. Their representative in the United States is the National Aeronautic Association and Mr. Charles S. Logsdon, Chairman of the Contest Committee, was on hand as chief judge. All in all there were about forty judges, timers, and observers.

The first to congratulate me was Colonel Ascani, whose record of 635 miles per hour I had broken. The next day he sent me the following letter: —

21 May 1953
DEAR JACKIE,
Even though you visit us here at Edwards almost daily, I feel the need of writing these few lines to offer my sincerest and warmest congratulations on your new record. I genuinely am tickled pink that it was you who broke my record and know of no more emphatic way to convince you other than this simple statement. Naturally, we have been a little concerned about the 100 km, not about your ability or capabilities, but about the possibility of any little thing going wrong.
I realize that Chuck Yeager has been of considerable assistance, but I want you to know that I feel very strongly you did this all by yourself and all the credit is yours. This proves you don’t have to take a back seat to anyone, male or female.
I have missed the television newscasts, Jackie, but I have heard that you said some nice things about me. I appreciate it and again would like to say that the credit all belongs to you. You have done a tremendous thing with your many accomplishments in a jet airplane, including your high Mach dives, and I rank you on a par with our best Air Force pilots. There still are literally hundreds of our own jet pilots who haven’t dived through Mach 1. In my book, you have accomplished the impossible and have shown what a little determination can do.
Hats off to a wonderful pilot and I’ll pray for your continued success.
Sincerely,
(signed) FRED

The telegrams started pouring in from Air Force people and other friends abroad and at home. But I appreciated the Ascani letter most because he knew what I had gone through.

The following week a morning opened up with conditions satisfactory, except for a 15-knot wind, and I went around the course five times for a 500kilometer record of 590 miles per hour. The plane, without the carrying of external tanks, had fuel for only seventeen minutes of full-power low-altitude flying, so for this longer run I had to carry the external tanks, which slowed the plane down by about 40 miles per hour. Even so, I had only fuel for twenty-seven minutes of full-power flying, which was insufficient, so had to make the runs pulling 94 per cent of full power rather than full power. I landed on the dry lake bed just as I did after the 100-kilometer run and again with two minutes of fuel remaining.

5

THERE were two more records I wanted to try for — the 15-kilometer straightaway and the 3-kilometer straightaway. The first was important to me; the second was comparatively unimportant because I doubted that the plane for this distance could beat Captain Slade Nash’s record of 699 miles per hour made in December, 1952, in a similar Sabre-jet but equipped with an after burner to give it more power.

Edwards Air Force Base is in the desert where the nights are cold and the days hot. With the rising sun the heat thermals started up from the desert terrain, causing by noon air turbulence to such a degree as to make full-out close-to-earth speed flying dangerous.

Record speed runs therefore had to be made in the late morning after air temperatures had risen to give better speed but before excessive turbulence had set in. But day after day passed with unsatisfactory conditions. Finally June 2 opened up with weather that was not good but was flyable. I had intended, as I have said, to be in London that day for the Coronation. I decided to do both runs this morning because only four days were left before the plane had to be returned to Canada.

At ten o’clock m the morning I started the 3kilometer run. The passes were at 200 feet above the course and all the turns had to be made at low altitude and high speed, either to meet, the rules or to keep up high-speed momentum. I did the 3-kilometer first because I could take a little more turbulence on the 15-kilometer later in the day. I could make that later run at 500 feet and also I could rise higher during the longer turns. Hack and forth 1 went over the 3-kilometer course four times, having the greatest difficulty in holding the plane on course in level flight, because of a wing roll tendency at top speed, aided and abetted by turbulence. To get even 200 feet on one side of the course or the other meant that the cameras could not clock me. I had made the record and landed, only to learn that the timing equipment had broken down. The four supplemental stop watches had timed me at about 690 miles per hour but stop watches are only accurate to one tenth of a second and are not officially accepted. The air was already too rough to try the 15-kilometer that day, so I was pretty disheartened. Furthermore, the rough air had tossed me so badly on the first pass over the course that the connection between my G-suit and the plane’s pressure system was jerked loose and in consequence I felt rather pulled apart after the flight.

That 690 miles per hour, which could have been as much as 697 miles per hour with accurate timing, led me to believe I had at least a chance to beat Captain Nash’s record. So up the next morning I went for another try. I made two passes, under very trying conditions, and when it was evident that I could not better the 699-mile-an-hour mark, I aborted the flight and returned to base. I did not want a women’s record, which I could easily have had, mixed in with the men’s records I was after.

The plane was immediately refueled and the timing devices were shifted to the 15-kilometer course. That took about two hours and the roughness in the air was building up by the minute. A pass in each direction over the 15-kilometer course was needed for an average speed, as against four passes over the 3-kilometer course. I had fuel enough for four passes. The average of any two consecutive passes could be taken. The first pass from south to north was at a speed of 680 miles per hour. That result was relayed to me by air from my own Lodestar, which was parked on the lake bed near the judges’ equipment. The second pass from north to south, with the wind against me, was at a speed of 670 miles per hour. I determined to make a third pass, even though the plane had developed a bad left-wing down roll at high speed and was in consequence next to unmanageable over the level flight course and its approaches. On this third pass I decided to take a long dive at the conclusion of which I would level out before reaching the approach to the course. I did this but, on leveling out, the controls again “froze" on me with the plane determined to roll over to the left. I used both arms to pull on the controls and one knee as well for leverage but with no effect. Another second or two and the plane would have been over on its back and into the ground. I prevented this only by slowing it down. At the moment I pulled back on the power there was an automatic temporary overcompensation of the direction of the plane to the right of the course and, as a result, the timing camera did not catch me on that third pass.

That ended the flight. I made the long turn for a landing and Chuck Yeager, in his chase plane, closed in behind me. He instructed me to leave the throttle untouched as much as possible and to land on the lake bed. I wanted to put the plane down on the runway where the ground crew was waiting but Chuck insisted that I put it down on the lake bed where I could take a high-speed landing and long roll. I took off my oxygen mask and smelled fuel in the cockpit. When the wheels touched ground and the roll had about stopped, Chuck told me to cut the throttle and switches and get out as quickly as possible because I had a bad fuel leak which he had seen from his plane. A stream of fuel about the size of one’s thumb was gushing out of the bottom of the main section of the left wing. A sergeant ran up just as I was about to jump (a short stepladder would ordinarily be used) and I asked him to come close and break my fall. He replied he was not going to get near a hot plane with that much fuel gushing out of it. But I finally convinced him the greatest danger had passed. Just as the sergeant helped me down from the wing a National Broadcasting Company camera truck drove up. I moved around to the nose of the plane and let them photograph and interview me without limitation so that their attention would be diverted from the leak.

It looked as if a fuel line had given way or a tank had cracked open. That would mean a repair job taking several days and a delay in delivery of the plane to Montreal. Therefore I immediately released the plane to the Canadian Chief of Crew. A close inspection in the hangar disclosed that the continual vibration caused by the high speed in rough air had opened a wing fuel tank. It was a close call for me. If that loose fuel had gotten back into parts of the fuselage behind me, where an engine was turning out in thrust the equivalent of 12,000 horsepower, there would have been a violent explosion. That would have been the end of the plane and the end of me. Someone would probably have blamed it on the fact that a woman was doing the flying.

6

THE Sabre-jet is a good plane. The Orenda engine is a fine engine and one of the smoothest jet engines I have ever flown. The things that happened in my flights by way of wing roll and frozen controls were the direct result of trying to push the plane beyond its design limits.

The timed flights by me in that plane took a total of about one hour. For these flights the insurance on the plane cost $10,000. Had I embarked on these flights as a considered risk? I certainly had. I knew that Lloyds were pretty accurate in figuring risks. I knew that statistically I had fifty thousand times the chance of a mishap in every flight of that plane that I would have in every flight of a Convair Liner or Constellation. I knew that at two or three hundred feet above the ground, if anything happened, it would be next to impossible to get out through the explosive ejection of-the canopy and seat. One considers these things and prepares ahead for emergencies, but getting on with the flying is more satisfying than contemplation of risks.

For every hour in the air I have put in at least two hours on the ground in preparation. In this case the ratio of ground hours to air hours was nearer one hundred to one. It took two years of planning and work to make thirteen flights in that jet for a total of six hours’ flying time, during which I established three men’s speed records, tried for a fourth, and dived three times past the sonic barrier to beat the speed of sound. But I flew at least 10,000 miles back and forth across the country, to Washington, to Montreal, and to New York, to make these few short flights possible. And then I had to put in weeks of study of the pilots’ operating manual to familiarize myself in advance with every detail of that complicated piece of fine precision mechanism known as a Sabre-jet. What the test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base had well absorbed over years of jet flights I had to absorb, at least to a workable degree, in a very short time. These pilots were extremely helpful to me. Without their help it. would have taken much longer to carry out my program. They are the greatest pilots in the world, in my opinion, and do the most difficult test flying of new experimental aircraft as a part of the day’s routine.

I am often asked what sensation of speed one gets in fast, low flights. It is terrific. Consider yourself in an automobile going not 80 miles per hour but about 700 miles per hour and you will have a fairly good idea of the flight sensation, particularly if you lift the automobile off the road and hold it level about 200 feet high above the ground. Now tip the automobile into about a thirty-degree bank and hold it there for a number of minutes while flying a perfect circle. In these maneuvers you have duplicated the flight pattern of the closed circuit flights discussed above. Don’t think that, your automobile is too heavy to fly as I have suggested. Even your heaviest car, say a Cadillac limousine, has a lighter wing loading — that is to say, number of pounds of weight per square foot of flying surfaces — than the Sabre-jet. The flying surfaces of the Cadillac consist of the underside of the body and the mudguards. Give that automobile power enough and structural strength enough and it would fly. Of course the underside would be smoothed out a bit and a part of it pressed out at the sides as wings and another little part extended at the back as a tail. Thus the car would be given control surfaces as well as lifting surfaces.

I have had my fling in the jet phase of aviation. The rocket is just around the corner. Will Father Time let me wait for this? I hope so.