When Cardenas reached 12,000 feet I headed for the ladder in the bomb bay. The reason that I didn't sit in the shackled X-1 cockpit was that if we had an accidental shackle release, or had to drop the X-1 anywhere under 10,000 feet, I would end up in a fatal spin. In fact, loaded with fuel, the X- 1 stalled at anything below 240 mph, and the climbing speed of the B-29 was only 180 mph. We figured that it I were dropped at a slow speed in a stall, I would probably have time to recover and fire off the rocket engines, as long as I was above 10,000 feet.
So, at 12,000 feet I headed for that ladder, with Ridley behind me. Climbing down into the X-1 was never my favorite moment. The ladder was on the right side of the bomb bay opposite the entrance door on the right side of the X-1. The wind blast from the four bomber prop engines was deafening, and the wind-chill was way below zero. I wore a leather jacket and my flight suit, but no gloves so I could grip the rungs. I had to bounce on the ladder to get it going, and be lowered into the slipstream. There was a metal panel to protect against the wind blast, but it was rather primitive, and that bitch of a wind took your breath away and chilled you to the bone. I would slide into the X-1 feet first, wearing a seat-type parachute, primarily to sit on, because once you were in, the only way out was to land safely.
With those thin wings only six feet behind the door, Jumping was pointless.
Once I was safely inside, the crew above would lower the door on a pulley to Jack, who had followed me down the ladder. Jack would hold the door in place while I locked it from the inside. Still shackled to the B-29, it was dark as night in that cockpit.
I'd put on my helmet and oxygen mask and hook into the communications systems so I could speak with the mother ship and the two Shooting Star chase planes that were only now taking off from Muroc. Dick Frost flew low chase, sticking with me for the drop-out because he knew the systems so well. Hoover flew high chase. In powered flights he'd position himself about ten miles ahead at 40,000 feet, giving me an aiming point. Once I ignited the rockets, I whistled past him in a few seconds, but he tried to keep me in sight as long as he could in order to position himself as an escort when I glided in for a lakebed landing.
On this first flight, I was going over my checkhst, when that damned Hoover buzzed me! He Qew by so close that his jet exhaust almost knocked me loose from the B-29. Christ, I was rocking and swaying scared to death. "Hoover, you bastard!" I was really hot. I said, "If this thing carried guns, I'd shoot your ass out of the sky." 0l' Bob laughed. "Come and get me," he said. Well, I didn't try on this first glide flight. But on the third, when I saw him turning toward me, I turned into him and we had a dogfight down to the deck, just like at Wright, only this time I almost stalled the damned X-1 waxing Bob's fanny true and good.
Man, the adrenaline was pumping as I sat in that cockpit, waiting to be dropped for the first time. The cockpit floor sloped up toward the ship's nose so I sat on my seat-type parachute to get as high as I could to see out. The plexiglass windshield provided only marginal visibility on landings because it was flush with the fuselage, to eliminate drag. Squeezed in there, my knees were higher than my shoulders, and my feet rested on the X-1 rudder pedals. I drove with an H-shaped control wheel on which the rocket thrusters and key instrumentation switches were located, I didn't have to move my hands at critical moments, which is the reason I was able, later on, to fly with broken ribs.
"All set, Yeager?" Ridley asks.
"You bet," I reply. "Let s go to work."
At altitude, Cardenas begins a shallow dive and starts his countdown from ten. Inside the X-1, I brace myself.
"…Two. One."
The sound of a sharp pop, like snapping cable, and a jolt that lifts me off the seat and strains my shoulders against the safety harness. The X-1 falls free.
Bright sunlight blinds me. I blink rapidly, my eyes shocked after long minutes in the dark hole of the bomb bay. I push the control wheel out of neutral, and without even thinking, do two pretty slow rolls. Larry Bell was right: the X-1 glides like a bird. I'm flying in total silence, aware only of the sound of my own breathing through the oxygen mask, and my ship is graceful, responsive, and beautiful to handle. it's a fabulous ride that I wish would never end, but in less than three minutes, I begin a banking turn at 5,000 feet above the lakebed, and with Bob Hoover riding on my wing, lower the landing gear at 250 mph and line up with Rogers Dry Lake, which stretches before me almost to the horizon. Lakebed landings can be damned tricky; they weren't marked in those days, and without experience, a pilot's depth perception ran into trouble against all that open space-like landing on a calm ocean. But I had been landing on these lakebeds since 1945. I whistle on in, delaying touchdown as long as possible, and grease it down at 190 mph. When I crawl out into the hot sun, I'm wearing a grin that almost breaks my face. "Best damn airplane I ever flew," I tell Dick Frost.
I'm ready to load her with fuel and go for the sound barrier that afternoon.
On the second glide flight, she handles so wonderfully that I actually allow her to fly herself, and startle Frost, looking down at me from the chase plane above, by raising my arms in the air and exclaiming, "Look, Ma, no hands." The final glide test the following day, I dogfight Hoover down to the lakebed, merciless in an airplane that is lighter than his and more maneuverable.
Now we are ready for the "big boy" flights: load her with fuel and take off like a bullet for the dark part of the sky.
We needed a week to prepare the X-1 and plan our first powered flight. Colonel Boyd came out from Wright to confer with us. "Start out easy," he said. "Don't stretch the program by getting too eager on this thing. Find out what the hell is going on with the airplane." Ridley and I had already talked it over and agreed that since Goodlin had taken the X–I to .8 Mach, we would start by going out to .82 Mach. The old man approved. "Okay," he said, "we'll let you go up in increments of fifteen or twenty mph on each fl'ght, but no more than that."
I felt almost cocky about my ability to master the orange beast and make her do exactly what I wanted. What I knew for certain was that the X-1 would never play any dirty tricks on me without giving me fair warning. And I was right about that in terms of flying her. But I was wrong about other unexpected problems that gave me nightmares.
AGAINST THE WALL
Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but when Chuck was sent out to Muroc, it was a turning point for us. Instead of being three hundred miles apart, we were three thousand miles, and trying to get home on weekends was practically killing him. We just decided that this was it, even though he was out there temporarily, with no idea whether it would be a few months or years, I was coming out with the children. After two years of marriage, we had lived together only a few months, and that was no way to build a solid foundation. So we agreed not to be practical, not be frugal, and just do it.