Flight Beyond Perfection

When the rocket-powered X2, the world's fastest airplane, crashed on the Mojave Desert (TIME, Oct. 8), it did not plunge to its death unwatched. Trailing behind it through the air were the radio reports of many elaborate instruments. Last week a part of what they reported leaked out of Air Force secrecy.

Captain Milburn G. Apt, who flew the X-2 on her last flight, was new at the job. He was an experienced test pilot and familiar with jet aircraft, but he had never handled the X-2 or any other rocket plane. Air experts have wondered why he was not permitted to take it easy the first time and fly the X-2 slowly (maybe twice the speed of sound) until he got the feel of her.

No such instructions were given. Balding, studious Captain Apt was told to follow an "optimum" flight plan. This meant that if he made no errors and if everything about the X-2 worked perfectly, he would attain the maximum speed of which the airplane was capable at the assigned altitude. No one expected him to do as well as that. The chances were as heavily against it as if he had scheduled a record-breaking auto tour from New York to Los Angeles that depended on reaching every traffic light just when it turned green.

Unintended Record. Captain Apt was too good and also too lucky. He followed the plan with consummate skill, and he hit every green light. The X-2 made a perfect drop from her mother plane. Her rocket engine ignited at exactly the right moment. Milburn Apt put her into precisely the right climb, and when he reached the assigned "bend-over" altitude (70,000 ft.), he leveled her off perfectly and let her rip. Nothing whatever went wrong. The rocket engine burned perfectly, and the fuel lasted nine seconds longer than it had ever lasted before. The speed climbed past the X-2's previous record (1,900 m.p.h.) reached a new record: 2,200 m.p.h., 3.3 times the speed of sound.

When the fuel was gone, Captain Apt reported calmly on his radio: "The engine has cut out and I'm beginning to turn." After six seconds of silence he spoke an unintelligible word, almost a shriek. A few minutes later his battered body was found in the cockpit capsule, which had plunged to the desert far below.

Bucking Airplane. Air Force authorities say that they know pretty well what happened, but that they cannot give much detail without disclosing precious information about the X-2's behavior and design. The broad facts, however, are that both pilot and ship performed far too well. Captain Apt had been told not to watch his machmeter, the common speed-measuring instrument. His accelerometer, the key speed instrument in this case, could not be read directly in miles per hour. So, when he reached peak speed, he probably did not know how fast he was going. After his engine cut out, he must have slowed down, but when he started to turn, he was still moving at such speed that the little-known phenomena of supersonic flight made his controls misbehave. The X-2 bucked and yawed violently, all at supersonic speed.

Inside the cockpit was a movie camera taking continuous pictures of the instrument panel. The film was recovered undamaged, and it showed Pilot Apt leaning forward at about the time that he shrieked his last word. The wild gyrations of the airplane may have been throwing him around, but he may have been reaching for the yellow Dring that would separate the cockpit capsule from the bucking X2. Whether detached deliberately or torn off by G-forces, the capsule did separate, and its small drag parachute opened. Captain Apt must have been hurt or badly disoriented by the shock of separation. He had more things to do to save his life, and he did not do them all in time. He jettisoned the canopy, he uncoupled his lap belt. But before the man who had flown too well could take to his parachute, he ran out of altitude and hit the desert.

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