File:Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket - Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - 2012-05-15 (7239238340).jpg
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Side view of the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket (NACA Aircraft 144) -- the first aircraft to fly at Mach 2. Scott Crossfield did so on November 20, 1953. It is on display in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The Douglas D-558 Skyrocket was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company for use as a research plane by the U.S. Navy. The Skyrocket program was a three-phase research project. Phase One (the D-558-1) was a straight-wing jet aircraft designed to test flight capabilities at high speeds. Phase Two (the D-558-2) was a 35-degree swept-wing aircraft. Phase Three (which was never built) would have tested a combat-ready version of the 558-2. The D-558-3 design was similar to the North American X-15. The Skyrockets were all tested by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the federal agency responsible for developing and testing high-speed aircraft and spacecraft. (NACA would be dissolved and its programs turned over to NASA in October 1958). NACA aircraft 143 was turbojet powered. NACA aircraft 144 was also turbojet powered at first, but in 1950 Douglas replaced the jet engine with an LR-8 rocket engine. It set an unofficial world altitude record on August 15, 1951. The rocket engine meant that the aircraft now had to be attached to a Navy P2B (a variant of the B-29 bomber) and then released. The aircraft suffered from pitch-up and rolling problems, so NACA engineers altered its configuration slightly to study these problems extensively. It set another unofficial altitude record on August 21, 1953. NACA later outfitted the engine with nozzle extensions, which helped reduce instability and increase speed and power. Aircraft 144 few many more times as a research plane, but its last flight was on December 20, 1956. |
| Date | |
| Source | Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket - Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - 2012-05-15 |
| Author | Tim Evanson from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by Tim Evanson at https://flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/7239238340 (archive). It was reviewed on 11 February 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0. |
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| current | 07:25, 11 February 2018 | | 1,000 × 667 (510 KB) | Donald Trung (talk | contribs) | Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons |
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