Legendary Test Pilot, Engineer Found In Wrecked Plane
Scott Crossfield was a name that every boy in the fifties and
sixties knew. He was one of several legendary test pilots who
regularly swapped positions as the fastest men alive during that
period of technological upheaval. But while obituaries and
encomiums today will polish the legend of "Scott Crossfield, Test
Pilot," he wasn't just a test pilot. As an engineer and engineering
manager, he was standing in the back rank of the technical
revolution at the same time he was strapped into its hurtling nose
cone.
But some lucky aviators saw another side to Crossfield's
multifaceted life: he loved to fly and to share his enthusiasm for
flying. He was a regular at Oshkosh and other large airshows; he
was always willing to lend his famous name to a worth cause. He
even signed autographs and posed for pictures, a side of celebrity
that gets old quickly, with good grace for over forty years.
Crossfield was a man whose skill, accomplishments, and stories
cannot be told in short sound bites and polished phrases... which
is why we've split this retrospective into two parts.
In today's segment, we'll tell of Crossfield's days as a test
pilot at NACA's High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB, flying a
new breed of experimental jets and rocketplanes. Crossfield was the
first man to fly at twice the speed of sound... but as you'll see,
whether or not he could also claim the title of world's first Mach
3 pilot is the subject of some debate.
NACA
Born Albert Scott Crossfield in Berkeley, CA, in October, 1921,
Crossfield grew up in California and Washington during a period
when it seemed that airplanes could do anything, and were going to
change the world. As a boy, he sold newspapers and washed planes
for flight time; one of his early instructors was a Wyoming cowboy
who had survived teaching himself to fly. He had started
aeronautical engineering studies at the University of Washington,
when Pearl Harbor changed young men's plans nationwide. Crossfield
joined the Navy as an air cadet. Trained as a fighter pilot, he
spent six months overseas but saw no combat. Instead, he spent most
of the war as a flight instructor, training others.
After the war he joined the legions of GI Bill students -- in
his case, back to the University of Washington. He spent the next
three years gaining his Bachelors of Science degree in aeronautical
engineering, hanging around the Frederick K Kirsten Wind Tunnel, a
groundbreaking engineering aid that remains in heavy use today. On
weekends, he still flew for the Navy Reserve and was a member of a
display team flying FG-1D Corsairs -- a somewhat unconventional
part-time gig for an undergraduate. He followed that with a year of
graduate study and a Masters degree, and then took the job that
would catapult him from obscurity to legend practically
overnight.
It's not hard to imagine how the managers of the National
Advisory Committee on Aeronautics felt about Crossfield's resume --
naval aviator and graduate-level aero engineer, and still not yet
thirty. They snapped him up to work as an aeronautical research
pilot at the High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB in the Mojave
desert -- since renamed the Dryden Flight Research Center, for the
since-renamed National Aeronautics and Space Agency. And Crossfield
was soon strapping into the fastest machinery on the planet.
At the High-Speed Flight Station, Crossfield flew the X-1, X-4
and X-5 research planes, and the experimental delta-winged Convair
XF-92, that was based on the aerodynamic theories of Alexander
Lippisch. But his work with two Douglas research planes built for
the Navy, the D-558-I Skystreak and the D-558-II Skyrocket, made
him famous. There was considerable rivalry between the Air Force
and Navy high-speed flight programs, and while Chuck Yeager was
proud to be doing high-speed test on an Air Force officer's pay,
many of the NACA guys came, like Crossfield, out of naval
aviation.
The jet-propelled,
straight-winged Skystreak didn't have the glamor of its
contemporary. the Air Force X-1, but it had the jet's advantage
over the rocket plane: it could sustain high-speed flight. By the
time Crossfield joined NACA, the #1 plane had been retired after
being flown only by Douglas and military pilots (it sits in the
National Museum of Naval Aviation), and the #2 was destroyed by an
uncontained compressor failure and crash on takeoff, killing Howard
Lilly. Crossfield was one of eight NACA pilots (including Lilly)
who flew 78 test flights in the #3 plane, collecting high-subsonic
data. It is at the Marine Corps Air/Ground Museum in Quantico.
The rocket-powered Skyrocket was a different machine. With
35-degree swept wings based on German wartime research, and jet, or
mixed jet and rocket, or rocket-only power, it was capable of much
higher speeds. It conducted high-transonic research but it is best
remembered today for being the first plane to fly at Mach 2. With
Crossfield at the controls, the plane made exactly one Mach 2.005
flight on November 20, 1953. Previous flights had peaked at the
1.8-1.9 speed level; to get to Mach 2, Douglas and NACA engineers
extended the rocket nozzles, chilled the alcohol fuel so a few
seconds' more could fit in the tank, and -- like any good So-Cal
hot rodders -- gave the ship a really, really good wax job.
A carefully worked-out flight plan depended on Crossfield's
ability to fly precisely. Climbing to 72,000 feet, the plane made a
gradual 10,000-foot dive under power, turning height into more
velocity. Mach 2.005 is 1,291 miles per hour (2,078 km/h). The
plane never flew that fast again -- at NACA, the name of the game
-- then-- was gathering data, not breaking records.
Two very valuable D-558-2 programs Crossfield worked on were
meant to validate wind-tunnel data on high-lift devices such as
leading edge chord extensions (which were found to work in the
tunnel, but not on the plane) and the effects of external stores at
supersonic speeds (which confirmed tunnel data suggesting that
bombs and fuel tanks for Mach 1.5 and up needed redesign from their
World War II shapes).
All three Skyrockets survived and can be found on display today
-- Crossfield's Mach 2 mount is in the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, DC, and its two sister ships are at Planes of
Fame and on a plinth at Antelope Valley College, both in
California.
Crossfield also flew all the other seminal X-planes of the
period. He flew the X-1 (XS-1), 46-063, for ten flights (this was
the sister ship of Yeager's Mach 1 46-062). He flew the tailless
Northrop X-4, which had hairy stability problems nearing the Mach
line (Principal lesson learned: don't build planes like this for
this speed range). And he flew the swing-wing Bell X-5, progenitor
of a generation of variable-geometry aircraft. But then he made a
career move which increased his speed, altitude -- and pay.
North American and the X-15
North American Aviation
had the inside track to produce a new research plane, although NACA
and the Air Force considered proposals from Bell, Convair and
Douglas also. The object of the new plane was unprecedented speed
and altitude. With his engineering credentials and 87 to 99
high-speed rocketplane flights -- the number varies depending on
whether you want to count Skyrocket flights using only the jet
engine, but either way, more than any other individual pilot --
Crossfield was a natural for the Inglewood, California-based
company.
It didn't hurt that NAA could, and did, pay a great deal more
than government service, including bonuses for particularly risky
undertakings such as first flights.
With the X-15, for the first time Crossfield wasn't receiving a
basically sorted-out airplane from a contractor and then using it
in basic research. He was the contractor helping to develop the
airplane. His ideas helped shape many of the stability, control,
and safety innovations of the Mach 6.7 aerospacecraft that was the
X-15. Fellow X-15 pilot Milton O. Thompson credits Crossfield
particularly with the speed brakes and the skid-type landing gear,
or as NAA termed it, "alighting gear," as it was not used on
takeoff (like the X-1, the X-15 air-launched from a mothership, in
this case, a B-52).
While Crossfield assumed that he would fly in the whole program,
NASA wanted its own pilots to fly the high-speed program. "Paul
Bikle, Dryden's director, had the unpleasant task of informing
Scott that his participation would end once the aircraft were
delivered to the government," Milt Thompson records. And
Crossfield's X-15 flying ended in December, 1960, with the delivery
of the machines to NASA.
Mach 3, Or Did He?
The NASA-Crossfield relationship is at its testiest over the
issue of Mach 3. Pro-Crossfield sources, for instance the AIAA,
indicate that Crossfield was the first man to fly three times the
speed of sound on November 15, 1960. But NASA records, while
recording that as Crossfield's fastest X-15 flight, record it as
Mach 2.97 or 1,960 mph. It was the first flight validating the more
powerful XLR-99 engine (previous flights used clustered XLR-11s)
and Crossfield was only supposed to go to Mach 2.7 and 60,000 feet
(he went to 2.97 and 81,000).
On all of Crossfield's last three flights, using the powerful
XLR-99, he exceeded the planned Mach number and altitude. Was he
trying to set a record? If so, he was at least bending the rules --
the X-15 contract specified that the manufacturer would do
demonstration flights only -- the government that was paying the
tab was going to get the glory.
Even if Crossfield's claim, and not NASA's data, is correct,
then he was not, as often claimed, the first man to travel Mach 2
and Mach 3.
Air Force Captain
Milburn G. "Mel" Apt was credited with breaking Mach 3 on
27 September 1956 in the Bell X-2 (Apt subsequently lost control of
the aircraft and did not survive), and Joe Walker flew the X-15 to
Mach 3.19 on May 12, 1960 -- years, and months, respectively,
before Crossfield's claim.
A prominent X-Plane researcher thinks he can explain the
discrepancy as an honest error. "I believe [the credited 2.97 Mach]
is accurate," NASA Contract Historian Peter Merlin told Aero-News.
"I think Crossfield probably read an indicated airspeed of Mach
3.0, but the data later yielded a calibrated airspeed of Mach
2.97."
So the record seems clear... Crossfield was "only" the first man
to Mach 2, and he didn't quite get to Mach 3 before Uncle took the
keys of the rocketplane away. For those of us punting around in the
weeds at Mach 0.1, that's still quite a record.
Part Two of our retrospective on the life of Scott
Crossfield will be featured Saturday