faawrenchbndr wrote: Yeager was the 1st man to break the sound barrier in an aircraft.
As for the Spam,.......True
The KC-135 Stratotanker holds 30,000 gallons of fuel with a max load.
T or F?
The Official Air Force line is that Yeager was the first to break the sound barrier "in level flight", but its likely that George Welch broke it first in an F-86 (in a dive) multiple times before Yeager. He had created a sonic boom over Edwards previous to Yeager's attempt and was told by the brass to knock it off as they had a tremendous investment in the X-1 program. Welch would have none of it and did it again the morning of Yeager's historic flight. Of course, it wasn't official, but many people heard the sonic booms and it was done routinely with F-86's afterward. It was well known enough for the Air Force to change the language and it can be found on the USAF historical studies website. This takes nothing away from Yeager's skill of course, but it's seems pretty obvious it happened. Welch died later testing the F-100 and hasn't been able to defend his claim to fame.
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