Yeager wasn't the first.

[A Squared]

OK, all of you folks who say Welch's flight didn't exist because it wasn't in an instrumented test aircraft with official observers; I assume that you all agree that Santos-DUmont in his 14bis was the first person to acheive powered, controlled, heavier than air flight, in 1906? I assume that you agree with all the french who claim that whatever the Wrights did or didn't accomplish was unimportant, as there were no *official* observers, so it didn't happen?

 

[Sig]

Prop planes can't break the sound barrier because the prop starts spinning so fast it basically becomes a giant disc in front of the airplane.

Not exactly true, jedi. The P38 would go trans-sonic in a dive and mach tuck (before they knew what it was) would getcha. The recovery, according to Captain GF C---, my grandfather with north of 1,300 hours in his logbook (in my lockbox upstairs back home) of Lightning time as an IP... was intense.

It was theory back then. You had to wait until the atmosphere was dense enough that yaw would air brake the plane and you wouldn't shake the fillings out of your teeth trying to pull out of an inverted dive with the shock waves still messing with the control surfaces. Yaw? FEATHER ONE. He "explored" the dynamics from a high altitude steep dive, and the tuck was very... scary as he!!, as he put it. After successfully doing that, he was ordered to take three IPs up in diamond for some whacked reason, he was tail end charlie calling the maneuver, and he watched three planes go BOOM. It affected him very deeply- he was in the booby hatch on Capri for 14 days. They never "explored" it again. He also disproved the P40's inability to snap roll with a belly tank- and not lose the tank. Piece of "schitt", as he called it. And the Mustang was for chicks.

As long as Cutty Sark is sold by the handle and cheap cigars are available at the Gator Hole (if it's even around) in Myrtle Beach, he ain't dyin.

 

[Papps]

Yeah i think most of the prop fighters that could get into the higher indicated speeds could get transonic in a dive, but all the mach tuck and compressibility stuff happens pretty low in the mach numbers on those wings, like just over .7ish.