The Lonely Sky

Ref: 5087

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Price: £15.00

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{detailed description}This is the story of the test pilot who flew the American research plane, the Skyrocket, at over 1,250 miles an hour and, in the next flight, took it in an almost vertical climb nearly 15 miles into the stratosphere. Dropped from the cut-away fuselage of a B29 at 36,000 feet, the Skyrocket, powered by four rockets burning a ton of liquid oxygen and alcohol a minute, could reach supersonic speed in 30 seconds in a breathless climb. It was the unknown region beyond the speed of sound which she had been built to survey, and to Bridgeman had fallen the job of exploring this frightening new world. The series of near-suicidal power dives from over 6o,000 feet at nearly twice the speed of sound, which he describes in detail, must be the most hair-raising account of high-speed flight ever to thrill the flying enthusiast.
Bridgeman began his flying in bombers during the war and became a civil air line pilot when war ended. Seeking more excitement in his flying, he joined Douglas Aircraft as a test pilot and, without even the experience of flying jets, was asked to take over the final testing programme of the Skyrocket. With everything to learn, in a world completely new to him, Bridgeman found the Skyrocket an irresistible, if exhausting, challenge. The story of his day-by-day life with the plane, of his gradual mastery of the intricacies of flying by rocket power and the complexities of controlling it at speeds never before experienced by man, form the substance of this book.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by William Bridgeman and Jacqueline Hazard
published by Cassell 1956 1st edn. 278pp illustrated 15x22
{condition}slight edge wear and bumping otherwise very good in unclipped d/j.
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