X

Test pilots put tech in motion (photos)

In the world of aviation, the people who get some of the most critical hands-on experience with the machinery are a hardy, daring breed of fliers.

Jon Skillings
Jon Skillings is an editorial director at CNET, where he's worked since 2000. A born browser of dictionaries, he honed his language skills as a US Army linguist (Polish and German) before diving into editing for tech publications -- including at PC Week and the IDG News Service -- back when the web was just getting under way, and even a little before. For CNET, he's written on topics from GPS, AI and 5G to James Bond, aircraft, astronauts, brass instruments and music streaming services.
Jon Skillings
TestPilotBiplane.jpg
1 of 24 NASA

Biplane pilot and flight engineer

Technology isn't just about wires and widgets and levers and code. It's also about the people who make it happen, who help translate electrical and mechanical possibilities into things that work--and work right--in the real world. In the world of aviation, the people who get some of the most critical hands-on experience are a hardy, daring breed known as test pilots. Into the wild blue yonder they go, strapped into aircraft that often have yet to be proven fully airworthy, and in so doing help push the boundaries of flight science.

In the United States, some of the earliest organized aeronautical research--that is, after the jump start by the Wright Brothers and other intrepid individuals--was done under the auspices of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NACA began its operations at Langley Field in Virginia, and here, in a photo from about 1920, we get a glimpse of NACA's first civilian test pilot, Thomas Carroll, tucked into the front cockpit of a biplane. Behind him, more prominent in the white shirt, is engineer John Crowley Jr.

TestPilotThomasCarroll.jpg
2 of 24 NASA

Thomas Carroll

Here's a better look at Carroll, in dramatic profile, from March 1923.

In those earliest days of powered flight, when so much had yet to be proven about aircraft technology and handling, almost any pilot was a test pilot of sorts. Those early fliers were often self-taught, or taught each other informally.

TestPilotPaulKing.jpg
3 of 24 NASA

Paul King and Vought VE-7

In October 1925, NACA test pilot Paul King poses with a Vought VE-7 "Bluebird" biplane, typically used as an advanced trainer, before taking flight. He's dressed in a fur-lined leather flying suit and has donned his oxygen facepiece.

It was a Vought VE-7 that three years earlier, on October 17, 1922, performed the first-ever take-off from the USS Langley, the nation's first aircraft carrier. Clearly, that flight made a test pilot, at least for the day, of Lt. Cmdr. Virgil C. "Squash" Griffin.

The event was later recalled by another naval aviator, as noted on the Vought Aircraft Web site: "We had no brakes, so the plane was held down on the deck by a wire with a bomb release at the end. This was attached to a ring in the landing gear. 'Squash' Griffin climbed in, turned up the Hispano Suiza engine to its full 180 hp, and gave the 'go' signal. The bomb release was snapped and the Vought rolled down the deck. Almost before it reached the deck-center elevator it was airborne."

TestPilotHoodie.jpg
4 of 24 NASA

Wright Apache

Dressed warmly, an unnamed NACA test pilot in 1928 gets ready for a high-altitude flight from the group's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory airfield in Virginia. The aircraft is a Wright Apache, which, NASA says, originally had a metal jacket covering the crankcase and part of the engine cylinders. It was at this time that Langley researchers were experimenting with the use of cowlings on the front of engines--in the case of the Apache, an air-cooled J-5 Whirlwind--in order to reduce drag, while still allowing the engine to be sufficiently powered.
0622McAvoy.jpg
5 of 24 NASA

W.H. McAvoy and North American O-47

NACA's second research lab was established in 1939 at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, Calif. (It's now known as NASA's Ames Research Center.) Here, in November 1940, test pilot W.H. McAvoy steps out of a North American O-47, the first test airplane at Ames. Research flights by McAvoy and fellow pilot Lawrence Clousing included looking into the problem of ice buildup on aircraft.

Those flights often were done in a two-engined Lockheed 12 airplane. "McAvoy and Clousing...flew the little transport plane into some of the worst weather they could find on the West Coast," according to a NASA account. "Ice would sometimes form on the windows so thickly that they could not see whether the wings were ice-free or not, the radio would cut out due to icing, and ice would sometimes form on the tail surfaces, which were only partially protected by an inflatable rubber shoe."

TestPilotLawrenceClousing.jpg
6 of 24 NASA

Lawrence Clousing and P-80

This image from 1948 shows Clousing getting into a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, an early jet fighter design, for a test flight from Moffett Field. According to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the original XP-80 was designed and built in just 143 days during the middle of World War II, and it became the first American aircraft to make a sustained, level flight at better than 500 miles per hour.
TestPilotChuckYeager.jpg
7 of 24 U.S. Air Force

Chuck Yeager and X-1A

According to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission, Chuck Yeager just wanted to be a mechanic when he entered the Army Air Forces right out of high school. But not long thereafter, with World War II in full swing, he earned his wings, and then after the war became a maintenance officer--a job that involved flight-testing airplanes.

By 1947, serving at Muroc Air Base in California (it later became Edwards Air Force Base), he was a bona fide test pilot, and just in time for a spectacular opportunity--the chance to be the first person to fly a plane faster than the speed of sound. On October 14 of that year, he accomplished that feat, flying the rocket-powered X-1 aircraft past Mach One. This photo shows Yeager about six years later, with the even more powerful X-1A, which he flew to a then-record Mach 2.4.

TestPilotCowboyJoe.jpg
8 of 24 NASA

Cowboy Joe

In 1955, NACA test pilot Joe Walker cowboys up in the cockpit of an X-1A. That version of the X-1 was designed for research flights at Mach 2 and above, and at altitudes exceeding 90,000 feet.
0621LittleJoe.jpg
9 of 24 NASA

Joe Walker and X-1E

Now we see Walker in 1958 in an early partial-pressure suit, apparel designed to protect pilots if they lost cockpit pressure at high altitudes where the low air pressure poses a severe threat to health. He's standing beside an X-1E at the NACA High-Speed Flight Station (now the Dryden Flight Research Center) at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

In 1960, Walker would make the first flight for what was now NASA in the X-15, one of the most significant of all the X-Planes. Within the next several years, he would fly X-15 aircraft to Mach 5.92 (just above 4,100 miles per hour) and to an altitude of 354,300 feet (67 miles).

TestPilotNeilArmstrong.jpg
10 of 24 NASA

Neil Armstrong

You know him better as the first human to step onto the surface of the moon, but in 1960, Neil Armstrong was a test pilot for NASA. Here, after a research flight, he rests his hand on the nose of the first X-15, a 50-foot-long rocket-powered aircraft.
TestPilotJerriCobb.jpg
11 of 24 NASA

Jerrie Cobb

NASA rules at the dawn of the Space Age held that only military test pilots could become astronauts--and at that time, there were no female test pilots in the military. So even though in 1961 Jerrie Cobb, a versatile and experienced pilot, became the first woman to pass all three phases of the Mercury astronaut program, she was not allowed to go any further in the astronaut corps. Here, in April 1960, she's having a go at a gimbal rig (the long name is "multiple axis space test inertia facility," abbreviated to MASTIF), which was designed to help astronauts get a feel for controlling a tumbling spacecraft.

0621AlanShepard.jpg
12 of 24 NASA

Alan Shepard

A test pilot for the U.S. Navy during the 1950s, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard in May 1961 became the first American in space. In the Freedom 7 spacecraft, he traveled to an altitude of 116 miles in a suborbital flight that lasted 15 minutes, 28 seconds. He later flew on the Apollo 14 mission to the moon.
1965LLRV.jpg
13 of 24 NASA

Lunar Landing Research Vehicle

In its early work to get ready for the moon landings, NASA tried out this odd-looking contraption, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, built by Bell Aerospace (it was Bell Aircraft that built the X-1). This is the LLRV during a flight in April 1965. The first man to fly an LLRV, in October 1964, was test pilot Joe Walker, who eventually made 35 flights on the LLRV.

How did it fly, you're wondering? It had a vertically mounted turbofan engine in the center, which was used to lift the LLRV to the target altitude of about 1,500 feet. At that point, according to NASA, the pilot would throttle back to help simulate the moon's lower gravitational pull, and then would use a combination of two lift rockets and 16 smaller, paired rockets (for control of pitch, roll, and yaw) to practice setting the LLRV back on the ground.

0621MiltThompson.jpg
14 of 24 NASA

Milt Thompson and M2-F2

Before there were space shuttles, there were "lifting body" research aircraft used to validate ideas on how an airplane-like spacecraft might re-enter the atmosphere and fly back to Earth. This is one of those lifting bodies, the M2-F2, attached to a pylon on the wing of the B-52 that was used to carry it aloft. In the cockpit ahead of a 1966 flight is NASA test pilot Milt Thompson.
TestPilotHL10foursome.jpg
15 of 24 NASA

Test pilots and HL-10

Another of the lifting bodies that, altogether, performed scores of research flights in the 1960s and early 1970s was the HL-10, which NASA says was the best of the bunch. Pictured here (from left to right) with the HL-10 are Air Force research pilots Jerauld Gentry and Peter Hoag, and NASA pilots John Manke and Bill Dana.
0621JamesPatton.jpg
16 of 24 NASA

James Patton

Working at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, research pilot James Patton Jr. (center, in the goldenrod-colored jumpsuit) in the 1970s and 1980s conducted years of research that helped lead to spin-resistant designs for small, general-aviation aircraft. Behind him is a low-wing spin research aircraft, and on the ground are two model aircraft of the same configuration (one radio-controlled and the other for use in a spin tunnel). According to NASA, Patton once estimated that he had done 8,000 spin turns.
0621PhilBrown.jpg
17 of 24 NASA

Phil Brown

Fellow NASA Langley research pilot Phil Brown (right) also flew spin research aircraft during that era. In addition, NASA says, his feats included flying an F-16 jet into thunderstorms, enduring more than 700 lightning strikes, a research effort that helped in the creation of lightning protection standards. Both Brown and Patton had earlier been Navy pilots, and together logged more than 16,000 flight hours at Langley.
ShuttleSeparation.jpg
18 of 24 NASA

Space shuttle prototype

In 1977, the space shuttle prototype Enterprise made its first free flights, in Earth's atmosphere, after separating from the 747 that carried it aloft. Writes NASA, not too melodramatically, in a short essay on test pilots: "When it came to launch the never-before-flown space shuttle from the back of a 747, nerves of steel were required yet again. When the Enterprise lifted off a 747 in 1977, no one knew for sure if it would clear the carrier aircraft's tail. Two pilots aboard the fledgling spaceship and two on the 747 put their lives on the line to find out."

Being a test pilot is an inherently very risky business. Some were badly burned in crashes, and others died in the line of duty, including NACA's Howard Lilly, whose D-558-1 jet-powered research airplane crashed on take-off in 1948, and X-2 pilot Jean Ziegler, who perished in 1953 (along with mothership crew member Frank Wolko) in an explosion during a captive flight under a B-50.

TestPilotSchneider.jpg
19 of 24 NASA

Fitzhugh Fulton, Ed Schneider, and F/A-18

The man on the right here is Fitzhugh Fulton Jr., who was the project pilot in the 747 for those shuttle launch flights in 1977. During the 1960s, he piloted the modified B-52 that NASA used as the mothership to launch research aircraft including the X-15 and the lifting bodies, and he also flew the XB-70 prototype supersonic bomber.

On the left in this photo from 1992 is NASA research pilot Ed Schneider, who also flew NASA's B-52 mothership along with other planes including the F-15B aeronautical research aircraft.

In the background is an F/A-18 Hornet, which at the time was used as a chase aircraft at the Dryden Flight Research Center. Chase aircraft at Dryden are flown by research pilots to make sure test flights are conducted safely.

SpaceShipOne.jpg
20 of 24 Jim Hu/CNET

Mike Melvill and SpaceShipOne

Mike Melvill celebrates after taking the SpaceShipOne to 368,000 feet in October 2004, in a feat that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize and thus marked the dawn of the commercial space flight era. It was a decidedly adventurous undertaking, hardly guaranteed of success, and indeed Melvill had to pull the spacecraft out of a significant and unplanned spin toward the apex of the flight.
0621Patuxent.jpg
21 of 24 U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Daniel J. McLain

U.S. Naval Test Pilot School

At the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent, Md., the students are experienced pilots, flight officers, and engineers, and the curriculum focuses on the right ways to test and evaluate aircraft. Here, in a photo from 2005, a flight instructor (right) and student go over a preflight checklist for a flight in an F/A-18B Hornet.
KellyLatimer.jpg
22 of 24 NASA/Tony Landis

Kelly Latimer

Things have changed since Jerrie Cobb's day. This is Kelly Latimer, the first female research test pilot at Dryden, as she joined NASA in March 2007 after a career in the U.S. Air Force. She was both a graduate of the Air Force Test Pilot School and an instructor there.
0621F35Lightning.JPG
23 of 24 U.S. Marine Corps photo/Sgt. Michael S. Cifuentes

Joseph Bachmann and F-35

In one incarnation or other, the next-generation F-35 Lightning II has been in flight testing since late 2006, and the U.S. Air Force is expected to take initial deliveries of production versions in the next year or so. This is Marine Corps Maj. Joseph Bachmann, a developmental test pilot for the Lockheed Martin-built supersonic strike fighter, in front of the F-35 AA-1 after a flight in March 2009.
Solar_Impulse_Good_to_Go-2.png
24 of 24

Marcus Scherdel and Solar Impulse

The spirit of the early aviators lives on in projects like the experimental Solar Impulse, a solar-powered plane that made its initial, barely-off-the-ground test flight in December 2009. Here, pilot Marcus Scherdel converses from the cockpit of the aircraft--which has the wingspan of a 747 but the weight of a midsize car--before heading down the runway.

A more ambitious nighttime flight, drawing on batteries that have been charged during daylight hours, is expected sometime this summer.

As ambitious as the project is, Solar Impulse founder Bertrand Piccard see it as more than just about aeronautics. "If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems, and computers," he said in June 2009 when the aircraft made its public debut.

More Galleries

My Favorite Shots From the Galaxy S24 Ultra's Camera
A houseplant

My Favorite Shots From the Galaxy S24 Ultra's Camera

20 Photos
Honor's Magic V2 Foldable Is Lighter Than Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra
magic-v2-2024-foldable-1383

Honor's Magic V2 Foldable Is Lighter Than Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra

10 Photos
The Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus Looks Sweet in Aluminum
Samsung Galaxy S24

The Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus Looks Sweet in Aluminum

23 Photos
Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra Now Has a Titanium Design
The Galaxy S24 Ultra in multiple colors

Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra Now Has a Titanium Design

23 Photos
I Took 600+ Photos With the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Look at My Favorites
img-0368.jpg

I Took 600+ Photos With the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Look at My Favorites

34 Photos
17 Hidden iOS 17 Features You Should Definitely Know About
Invitation for the Apple September iPhone 15 event

17 Hidden iOS 17 Features You Should Definitely Know About

18 Photos
AI or Not AI: Can You Spot the Real Photos?
img-1599-2.jpg

AI or Not AI: Can You Spot the Real Photos?

17 Photos