Pioneers Mark Jet Age 50th Anniversary

Aviation pioneers gathered Friday to observe the 50th anniversary of the jet age in America at the windy desert base where it began and where the space shuttle now lands.

The dozens of members of the Jet Pioneers Assn. who met on the hard, cracked clay of Rogers Dry Lake no longer resembled the rugged young pilots memorialized in “The Right Stuff,” the book and film about test pilots.

Instead, the white and silver-haired group looked like they were enjoying their status as senior citizens on a day’s outing.

But in 1942, in the middle of World War II, many men in the group were involved in the top secret project to usher in the dawn of jet flight.

Chuck Yeager, the retired Air Force general who first broke the sound barrier in 1947, congratulated the group as they watched supersonic aircraft zoom by in the azure desert skies.

“You gave America a quantum leap into aviation technology,” said Yeager, whose mach-busting exploits were recounted in “The Right Stuff.”

In the final year of World War II, the Nazis used early jets to attack Allied bombers. Yeager quipped that he shot down the first jet he ever saw, a German Messerschmitt 262.

“That was when I was a young pilot flying Mustangs,” Yeager, 69, recalled. He referred to the U.S. propeller-powered fighter, one of the best of its time.

The British and Germans developed the first jet engines. The technology was a closely guarded secret, but U.S. Army Air Corps Gen. Hap Arnold persuaded the British to share the engine.

The first American prototype was developed with the engine built by General Electric and the airplane by Bell.

On Oct. 1, 1942, cloaked in wartime secrecy, the XP-59A Airacomet piloted by Bell test flyer Bob Stanley took off from the dry lake bed of Murock Field, later to become Edwards Air Force Base.

Later that month, Maj. Gen. Laurence Craigie became the first American military jet pilot.

On Friday, Craigie, now 90 years old, recalled his exploit.

“It was not as emotional a flight as you’d expect,” he said. He flew for about 25 minutes at half power just “to get the feel of the aircraft,” he said.

Tests revealed what the military and engineers believed--that jet power would make propeller flight obsolete. The engine performance delivered by turbojets was more efficient, faster and powerful.

The Americans never got a jet fighter into combat in World War II, but jet power became the wave of the future, leading the way to civil aviation progress and space travel.

Engineer Harry Clyton, 74 said, “The nice thing about the recognition as jet pioneers is that we got recognized while we are alive, that something historical had taken place. Jets into rockets, and rockets into space. It all came from jet propulsion. We changed acceleration very radically.”