Lewiston holding talk about Bell X-1 aircraft
Feb. 22—Seventy-five years ago, the Bell X-1 aircraft developed in Niagara County became the first aircraft to surpass the speed of sound.
Douglas DeCroix, the executive director of Western New York Heritage magazine, will be speaking about the aircraft in Lewiston on Thursday, presented by the Historical Association of Lewiston, going over the people behind this plane and the process that went into created it.
DeCroix described the Bell X-1's development as something that happened in a serendipitous way, as one of the executives at Bell Aircraft had a random meeting with a Pentagon officer which eventually led to discussions of the challenges of post-WWII aeronautics.
"At the end of the conversation, he had promised to build an aircraft to exceed the sound barrier," DeCroix said. "He had to convince Larry Bell it was a good idea."
The process of developing this aircraft, as DeCroix put it, was making it up as they went along since there was little data to go on. It involved a lot of borrowing from other sciences and trial and error, with the shape of the craft based on the shape of a 50 caliber bullet. The testing process for this was depicted in the 1983 film, "The Right Stuff," which DeCroix said gives the sense these people were brilliant engineers, but this was not something they dealt with before.
"Fortunately, the trials and errors worked," DeCroix said.
The pilot who conducted the flight, Charles "Chuck" Yeager, hailed from West Virginia. A fighter pilot during WWII, he became the pilot after the Air Force took over the project from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor for NASA, and wanted their own pilots involved. DeCroix also described him as quite the character.
While the aircraft was designed and built at the Bell Factory in Wheatfield, the test took place on Oct. 14, 1947 at what is now Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert. The plane ended up reaching Mach 1.06, or 700 miles per hour, with Yeager describing it as poking through jello, which is the name of the presentation.
"If you've ever done it, you have a bit of resistance at the initial point," DeCroix said. "When you break through the membrane, it goes 'swoosh.' There's turbulence, but once you exceed it, things go smooth, which was as hypothesized."
DeCroix had written about the Bell X-1 aircraft and everything that went into it for the Fall 2022 issue of Western New York Heritage. A self-described plane nut, he enjoys writing about aviation any time he can as part of his job.
"There's tons of aviation history in Western New York," DeCroix said. "The 75th anniversary gave us an excuse to take a look at it. It's not something we covered in depth before."
DeCroix did all the research for this himself, with the cooperation of the libraries at the Niagara Aerospace Museum.
The talk will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah Fellowship Hall at 915 Oneida St. in Lewiston. It is free to the public and refreshments will be served. DeCroix has spoken at these events in February for the past few years, as their schedule dictates.
