Breaking the Sound Barrier

On October 14, 1947, a young Air Force test pilot climbed into the Bell X-1—a small, rocket-powered airplane—cradled underneath a modified B-29 flying high above the California desert. As the Bell X-1 fell away from the B-29, Capt. Chuck Yeager, a WWII fighter ace from a small town in West Virginia, fired the airplane’s rockets and flew into history. Moments later Yeager became the first man to punch through the mythical “wall in the sky” and break the sound barrier