break the Sound Barrier !

[raafif]

Was Chuck Yeager the First to Break the Sound Barrier? http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4154

What if the Bell X-1 was a failure -- what other US-designed plane could do it ?
(the pilot of the XP-86 chase-plane claims to have done it minutes before Yeager was launched from the B-29).

Mike West (of LSM models) wondered about other countries breaking the sound barrier first ...

What would have launched the British Miles M.52 on their version of such a flight ??


France had the Leduc which may have been their version ...


For Germany, Hans Guido Mutke claims to have done so in a Me-262 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Guido_Mutke

Mike suggests slinging a red Arado E-381 under a ME-264 for the Nazi version.
or a DFS 346 ?


What about the Soviets ?  They developed a better version of the DFS-346 - anyone build a model of a different soviet sound-breaker ?

Could make an interesting group build ...

[jcf]

George 'Wheaties' Welch never claimed to have broken the sound barrier with the XP-86, that claim was
made decades later by a long retired North American Aviation employee. As engined in October of 1947 the XP-86
didn't have enough grunt to exceed Mach 1, claimed shallow dive be besides the point. The aircraft did exceed Mach 1
in early 1948 after an engine change and a number of other changes.

The XS-1 was the Air Force's project, the US Navy's D-558-2 was being designed in the same period, first flight Feb. 4, 1948,
and was capable of Mach 1 with only it's jet engine in ground take-off configuration, indeed in 1953 in air-dropped rocket
form it was the first aircraft to reach Mach 2.

The Miles M.52 was designed to take-off from the ground under it's own power, Miles engineer Don Brown pushed for
air-drop but was overruled.

The Leduc .10 and .21 were slow (500mph and 560mph max respectivley) and not intended to be supersonic. While intended
to be supersonic the much later (1956-57) 0.22 was unable to break Mach 1. Overall, the Leduc ramjet planes were flops.

The E381 would never have been capable of Mach 1 flight, it simply wasn't designed for that flight regime.

The DFS.346 did go transonic in the Soviet built 346-3 version, but not until 1951 and it crashed.