What was the first manned supersonic aircraft that could take off under its own power?

[dtilque]

@kunilou

Here’s a pretty comprehensive article about the early attempts to break the sound barrier.

This article above, which I read yesterday, has a lot of stuff about the aerodynamic problems with the sound barrier. The problems start at about .8 Mach up to about 1.2 Mach, the transonic region. One of the main problems is that, in that region, some of the air going past the plane is flowing supersonic and some subsonic.

[Corry_El]

@Asuka

Here’s a Skeptoid article all about it

One of the best known claims to the sound barrier comes from German WWII fighter pilot Hans Guido Mutke, flying perhaps the most devastating fighter of the war, the Messerschmitt Me-262. The 262 was the first true operational jet powered fighter plane in the world, sporting twin BMW 003 turbojet engines mounted below the swept wings. Although the 262 entered the war too late to have any real impact, it boasted a 5:1 kill ratio against allied fighters.

The designer of the Me-262, Willy Messerschmitt, always stated emphatically that the 262 was incapable of supersonic flight. In flight tests, he found that at Mach 0.86, the 262 experienced Mach tuck: It lost control and assumed a nose-down attitude that could not be corrected by the pilot, and throttling down was the only way to resume control. The 262 only had conventional elevators on the trailing edge of its tailplane, like all aircraft of the day, so these would have shock stalled and not been able to correct the Mach tuck. But the 262 also had an additional feature: The tailplane was actually all-moving for trim purposes. This was a separate electrically operated control, and it was normally used to keep the plane level as its fuel supply was consumed. Mutke reported that he actually employed this all-moving trim control in order to get out of the nose-down state, a technique which may not have been considered in Messerschmitt’s own tests. *

Taking the second first, the pilot’s manual for the Me-262 said to trim the tailplane for a dive so releasing the stick (returning the elevators to neutral) would initiate a pull out. So IOW that control was definitely known by everyone and factored into the official view that the plane had a dive speed limit around M 0.86.

On the first though not directly relevant to dive speed the Me-262 had a distinctly unfavorable kill ratio against Allied fighters. Me-262’s shot down more total Allied a/c than losses, probably, but Allied fighters shot down around 120 Me-262’s according to German accounts (not just Allied claims) and a much smaller number of Me-262 claims check out as actual losses of Allied fighters to 262’s, very likely a higher than 5:1 ratio in favor of the prop fighters, not the Me-262 favor.

[dropzone]

A fascinating documentary is The Sound Barrier (1952) which tells us that a Brit was the first person to fly supersonically in a shallow dive and survived by reversing the controls when he neared the barrier. However, some like Chuck Yeager question its accuracy.

[Atomic_Alex]

@carnivorousplant

The Wiki article mentions a DC-8 breaking the sound barrier. Does anyone know how that happened? I would think a DC-8 would fall apart at Mach 1.

Well according to this article it was done specifically to prove that a commercial aircraft could break the sound barrier without falling apart. Though it doesn’t sound like something that should be tried every day.

The First Commercial Jet To Go Supersonic Was Not the Concorde

@Asuka

Here’s a Skeptoid article all about it

Interesting, and that does sound plausible.

@kunilou

Here’s a pretty comprehensive article about the early attempts to break the sound barrier.

This is a really interesting thread!