Isn't today the anniversary of the day George Welch broke the sound barrier in the prototype F-86? For the second time? Two hours before Chuck Yeager did it in the Bell X-1? He did it by putting the XF-86 into a shallow dive. Yeager reached it in level flight, which is how the official record reads.

Yes, today is 'Sound Barrier' day. October 14th, 1947 is when Chuck Yeager officially broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. Unfortunatley, claims of others doing it are impossible to verify or lacked proper recording methods to prove it beyond any doubt. Actually, the sound barrier may have been broken looooong before that. It's postulated by some paleobiologists that certain long-tailed dinosaurs were able to break the sound barrier by flicking their tails, similar to some bullwhips that can 'crack' off a sonic boom type sound. This may have resulted in a form of booming sound that may have served some herd purpose. This is highly speculative, impossible to verify and likely hotly disputed in the paleobiolagical circles.

It's quite likely that some high performance propeller aircraft in WWII were able to accidentally break the sound barrier in a dive, but this would have almost certainly resulted in the destruction of the aircraft. Unfortunatley, no one will know.

I've even heard of a WWII German pilot claiming he broke the sound barrier in an Me 262, but his claims are disputed I think.

What I am really fascinated by were the attempts to break the sound barrier on land. The team that successfully did it in the Thrust SSC car are now going after the 1000 mph mark on land by developing a jet car that will use an Aston Martin V12 engine as.....get this.....a fuel pump!!

cheers

Bob