Pancho's place was a dude ranch, so after dinner we walked over to the corral and had them saddle up a couple of horses. It was a pretty night and we rode for about an hour through the Joshua trees. We decided to race back. Unfortunately there was no moon, otherwise I would have seen that the gate we had gone out of was now closed. I only saw the gate when I was practically on top of it. I was slightly in the lead, and I tried to veer my horse and miss it, but it was too late. We hit the gate and I tumbled through the air. The horse got cut and I was knocked silly. The next thing I remember was Glennis kneeling over me, asking me if I was okay. I was woozy, and she helped me stand up. It took a lot to straighten up, feeling like I had a spear in my side.
Glennis knew immediately. "You broke a rib," she said. She was all for driving straight to the base hospital. I said, no, the flight surgeon will ground me. "Well, you can't fly with broken ribs," she argued. I told her, "If I can't, I won't. If I can, I will."
Monday morning, I struggled out of bed. My shoulder was sore, and I ached generally from bumps and bruises, but my ribs near to killed me. The pain took my breath away. Glennis drove me over to Rosemond, where a local doctor confirmed I had two cracked ribs, and taped me up. He told me to take it easy. The tape job really helped. The pain was at least manageable and I was able to drive myself to the base that afternoon.
I was really low. I felt we were on top of these flights now, and I wanted to get them over with. And as much as I was hurting, I could only imagine what the old man would say if I was grounded for falling off a horse. So, I sat down with Jack Ridley and told him my troubles. I said, "If this were the first fight I wouldn't even think about trying it with these busted sumbitches. But, hell, I know every move I've got to make, and most of the major switches are right on the control wheel column."
He said, "True, but how in hell are you gonna be able to lock the cockpit door? That takes some lifting and shoving." So we walked into the hangar to see what we were up against.
We looked at the door and talked it over. Jack said, "Let's see if we can get a stick or something that you can use in your left hand to raise the handle up on the door to lock it. Get it up at least far enough where you get both hands on it and get a grip on it." We looked around the hangar and found a broom. Jack sawed off a ten-inch piece of broomstick, and it fit right into the door handle. Then I crawled into the X-1 and we tried it out. He held the door against the frame, and by using that broomstick to raise the door handle, I found I could manage to lock it. We tried it two or three times, and it worked. But finally, Ridley said, "Jesus, son, how are you gonna get down that ladder?"
I said, "One rung at a time. Either that or you can piggyback me."
Jack respected my judgment. "As long as you really think you can hack it," he said. We left that piece of broomstick in the X-1 cockpit.
NINTH POWERED FLIGHT OCTOBER 14, 1947
Glennis drove me to the base at six in the morning. She wasn't happy with my decision to fly, but she knew that Jack would never let me take off if he felt I would get into trouble. Hoover and Jack Russell, the X-1 crew chief, heard I was dumped off a horse at Pancho's, but thought the only damage was to my ego, and hit me with some "Hi-Ho Silver" crap, as well as a carrot, a pair of glasses, and a rope in a brown paper bag-my bucking bronco survival kit.
Around eight, I climbed aboard the mother ship. The night plan called for me to reach .97 Mach. The way I felt that day, 97 would be enough. On that first rocket ride I had a tiger by the tail; but by this ninth flight, I felt I was in the driver's seat. I knew that airplane inside and out. I didn't think it would turn against me. Hell there wasn't much I could do to hurt it; it was built to withstand three times as much stress as I could survive. I didn't think the sound barrier would destroy her, either. But the only way to prove it was to do it.
That moving tail really bolstered my morale, and I wanted to get to that sound barrier. I suppose there were advantages in creeping up on Mach 1, but my vote was to stop screwing around before we had some stupid accident that could cost us not only a mission, but the entire project. If this mission was successful, I was planning to really push for a sound barrier attempt on the very next flight.
Going down that damned ladder hurt. Jack was right behind me. As usual, I slid feet-first into the cabin. I picked up the broom handle and waited while Ridley pushed the door against the frame, then I slipped it into the door handle and raised it up into lock position. It worked perfectly. Then I settled in to go over my checklist. Bob Cardenas, the B-29 driver, asked if I was ready.
"Hell, yes," I said. "Let's get it over with."
He dropped the X-1 at 20,000 feet, but his dive speed was once again too slow and the X-1 started to stall. I fought it with the control wheel for about five hundred feet, and finally got her nose down. The moment we picked up speed I fired all four rocket chambers in rapid sequence. We climbed at .88 Mach and began to buffet, so I flipped the stabilizer switch and changed the setting two degrees. We smoothed right out, and at 36,000 feet, I turned off two rocket chambers. At 40,000 feet, we were still climbing at a speed of .92 Mach. Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride.
Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach-then tipped right off the scale. I thought I was seeing things! We were flying supersonic! And it was as smooth as a baby's bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade. I kept the speed off the scale for about twenty seconds, then raised the nose to slow down.
I was thunderstruck. After all the anxiety, breaking the sound barrier turned out to be a perfectly paved speedway. I radioed Jack in the B-29. "Hey Ridley, that Machmeter is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me."
"Fluctuated off?"
"Yeah, at point nine-six-five."
"Son, you is imagining things."
"Must be. I'm still wearing my ears and nothing else fell off, neither."
The guys in the NACA tracking van interrupted to report that they heard what sounded like a distant rumble of thunder: my sonic boom! The first one by an airplane ever heard on earth. The X-1 was supposedly capable of reaching nearly twice the speed of sound, but the Machmeter aboard only registered to 1.0 Mach, which showed how much confidence they had; I estimated I had reached 1.05 Mach. (Later data showed it was 1.07 Mach-700 mph.)
And that was it. I sat up there feeling kind of numb, but elated. After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a let-down. It took a damned instrument meter to tell me what I'd done. There should've been a bump on the road, something to let you know you had just punched a nice clean hole through that sonic barrier. The Ughknown was a poke through Jello. Later on, I realized that this mission had to end in a let-down, because the real barrier wasn't in the sky, but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.
I landed tired, but relieved to have hacked the program. There is always strain in research flying. It's the same as flying in combat, where you never can be sure of the outcome. You try not to think about possible disasters, but fear is churning around inside whether you think of it consciously or not. I thought now that I'd reached the top of the mountain, the remainder of these X-1 experimental flights would be downhill. But having sailed me safely through the sonic barrier, the X-1 had plenty of whiteknuckle flights in store over the next year. The real hero in the flight test business is a pilot who manages to survive.