620 m.p.h.

Last week the Bell Airacobra (P-39), already in production, was ready for its final test dive. For four days Test Pilot Andrew McDonough, on a busman's holiday from Eastern Airlines' Miami-Chicago run, had had her aloft feeling her out, making longer and faster dives as pilot and ship got acquainted. Swaddled in a leather flying suit, stringy, 29-year-old Andy McDonough crawled into the cabin for the last trip, secured his capsule microphone alongside his Adam's apple, quickly checked over his instruments. Across the Buffalo Airport and into the air sped the Airacobra, tucking her three legs into her belly as she began to climb into a bright, blue sky.

At 14,000 feet Andy McDonough put on his oxygen mask, circled to the northeast, making a mental note to stay away from the field so that he wouldn't "mess up the airport" if the dive wasn't a success. At 27,000 feet he was 15 miles northeast of the field. The outside thermometer registered 33 below. To the northwest, 25 miles away, he could see Niagara Falls. He called the ground: "... will dive from west to east." Then he turned on the fixed movie camera, focussed on the faces of his instruments--altimeter, clock, airspeed indicator, thermometer.

Nose-down went the P-39, trailing a white exhaust plume. Her prop, turning just fast enough to keep her Allison engine warm, began to windmill. The airspeed indicator hand began to turn--350 --400. But Andy McDonough kept his eye fixed mostly on the hands of the sensitive altimeter. Around 5,000 he eased the ship out into level flight, called the field again: "Dive completed . . . returning to base." When he landed, a doctor checked him over. Nothing wrong. Mechanics checked the Airacobra for skin wrinkles, other evidences of strain. All O.K. Andy McDonough was on his way back to his airline job in Atlanta by the time technicians had checked his movie film, corrected his airspeed readings for temperature and pressure. Pilot McDonough had reported his speed at something over 500. Actually, said technicians, he and the P39 had hit 620 m.p.h.--more speed than anyone had ever recorded before. Exciting rather than highly significant, the dive was still a stern test of P-39's sleekness, sturdiness.

Said Pilot McDonough: "I keep wondering what the hell would have happened if I could have fired a pistol back over the tail. At that speed* would the bullet have rolled out of the barrel and fallen straight down--or what?"

* At 620 m.p.h. the P39 was traveling faster (909 feet per second) than the muzzle velocity of a .45-calibre pistol bullet (802 feet). With bullet speed canceled out by plane speed, the projectile theoretically would indeed have dribbled, fallen earthward.

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