Voices from the past….

I found this a few months back on the wall of the FBO at Oroville Airport, CA. For those who don’t know Doolittle was the guy who pioneered the use of aircraft in the US Navy. Yeager was the man who first broke the speed of sound in the aircraft pictured below, the Bell X-1. The year was 1947, October 14th. Yeager had fallen from a horse after eating at Panco Barnes’ Fly Inn Ranch and had broken two ribs, so he had a veterinarian tape him up, and his friend Capt. Jack Ridley gave him a 10″ sawed off broom handle so he could reach over and shut the door handle of the X-1 before he was released from the carrier ship.   Now this is what I call applied science! What a step back in time….