October 15, 2009 — This week marks the 62nd anniversary of the first flight of an airplane to exceed the speed of sound. Retired Gen. Charles “Chuck” Yeager accomplished the feat in 1947 flying the Bell X-1. Yeager was the vanguard of a long and storied history of pilots and engineers that turned Edwards Air Force Base (Formerly Muroc) into the center of military and eventually civilian aeronautical research. Last month also marked the 50th anniversary of the first powered flight of the X-15 another rocket powered research aircraft that ruled the skies over Edwards. This Saturday, during Flight Test Nation 2009 - Edwards Air Force Base open house and air show - Yeager and fellow test pilot colleague, Retired Maj. Gen. Joe Engle, will fly together again in a pair of F-16 fighters, announcing the opening of the show with a sonic boom to commemorate Yeager’s historic flight. Engle and Yeager, who are longtime hunting and fishing buddies try to make time once each year to meet in the air, “This is the only time each year that we get to fly together in supersonic fighters - but it’s at the top of my bucket list and right after we crawl out of the airplanes, it floats right up to the top of my list again.
Engle first flew with Yeager in the late 1950s when he was assigned to Yeager’s F-100 squadron in California. Engle would build his own storied test pilot career at Edwards by becoming one of two Air Force pilots to fly the X-15, the youngest to qualify as an astronaut due to the high altitude flights in the X-15 and commanded many of the Space Shuttle Enterprise gliding test flights, and one of the early Columbia shuttle missions.