RIGHT STUFF:

Scott Crossfield (Daily Telegraph, 22/04/2006)

Scott Crossfield, who died on Wednesday in a plane crash, was one of the test pilots during the early days of rocket power documented by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff; he was the first person to travel at twice the speed of sound, and the first to travel at three times the speed of sound and survive.

Albert Scott Crossfield was born at Berkeley, California, on October 2 1921, one of three children of a petroleum engineer who moved the family to Wilmington when Scott was a year old. The boy had his first trip in a plane aged six, and became determined to earn his living by flying. [...]

Crossfield then joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (which from 1958 became became NASA). From 1950 until 1955, he piloted most of NACA's high-speed flights in the F-100 and F-102 supersonic fighters, the X-1, X-4 and X-5 rocket research planes and the Douglas 558-II Skyrocket.

In the last he set four speed records before breaking Mach 2 in 1953. He made more than 130 air-launched rocket flights in all.

Crossfield was closely involved in the design and development of the X-15, then the most advanced of the rocket planes, which was intended to travel at a height of 50 miles and at a speed of Mach 6.

When North American Aviation secured the contract to build the plane, Crossfield left NACA to supervise the project, which was completed in 1958.

His most dangerous moment came not in flight, but when he failed to turn on an oxygen valve on a pressure suit during ground tests. He passed out after inhaling nitrogen gas coolant; he recovered consciousness and, by frantically signalling to his crewman, Pete Barker, managed to have the helmet removed from his head only a few seconds before he would have died.

The first test of the X-15 in 1959 resulted in a fire in the tail section, but the second was judged a complete success. On the third flight an emergency landing nearly broke the plane in two, but the following year Crossfield became the first man to reach Mach 3 and survive. (Captain Mel Apt had died on the first flight to break the limit several years before.)