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Mach 2 test pilot Scott Crossfield dies
Friday Apr 21 06:30 AEST
Scott Crossfield, a pioneer test pilot who was the first to fly at twice the speed of sound, died when his single-engine plane crashed in Georgia, the Civil Air Patrol reported.
Crossfield, 84, was flying from Alabama to Virginia when his plane disappeared from radar on Wednesday.
On Thursday the air patrol's Georgia Wing located the wreckage of the plane and confirmed the death in a statement.
NASA also noted the death on its website, www.nasa.gov.
One of the titans of test flight, Crossfield made aeronautical history on November 20, 1953, when he reached a speed of Mach 2 - twice the speed of sound, more than 2,124 kph - in a D-558-II Skyrocket aircraft.
Between 1950 and 1955, Crossfield flew the X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-92A, and D-558-I and -II aircraft.
He made these flights as a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the forerunner of NASA, where he was one of the so-called "right stuff" pilots based at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Another legendary pilot in this group was Chuck Yeager, the first to fly faster than the speed of sound in the X-1 on October 14, 1947.
Crossfield left NACA in 1955 to work at North American Aviation on the X-15 rocket-powered airplane, where he was responsible for many of the new aircraft's safety features.
He eventually flew the X-15 to an altitude of more than 26,820 metres, and a speed of 3,154 kph, nearly three times the speed of sound.
More recently, Crossfield was a technical adviser for the Countdown to Kitty Hawk project, which built and flew an exact reproduction of the 1903 Wright flyer.
The original Wright flyer was flown by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
The reproduction of the Wright flyer was present at the national centennial of flight celebration at Kitty Hawk in December 2003.
Born in California in 1921, Crossfield attended the University of Washington and served in the Navy during World War II before joining NACA.
