Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis®

Description

X-1 Model complete with General Yeager’s trademark Glamorous Glennis

This model is true to the detailed configuration of the Bell Aerospace research plane that Capt. Yeager became the first pilot to break the “impenetrable” sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
The diminutive Bell X-1 became forever identified with Yeager. Shortly after returning from his Republic assignment, the young test pilot volunteered to test the rocket research plane up to and perhaps beyond supersonic speeds the feared sound barrier. Yeager was selected from a large pool of trained test pilots, teamed with backup pilot Bob Hoover and flight engineer Jack Ridley, and sent to Muroc to see what could be accomplished.
Their program was not a romantic dash into the supersonic realm, but a systematic, step-by-step approach that yielded the maximum amount of aerodynamic data. When Yeager finally slipped the X-1 into supersonic flight on Oct. 14, 1947, he made the event seem almost anticlimactic. Gliding back to the lake bed, he would tell Ridley in the B-29:  “I’m still wearing my ears, and nothing else fell off, neither.” Those waiting on the ground, however, were keyed up because of the uncertainties about the flight, and the world’s first sonic boom took most of them by surprise. They didn’t understand. They thought something had blown up.