On this day in aviation history, January 19, 1946, the Bell X-1 high-speed research aircraft, made its first flight. While this first flight was in fact a gliding test, the X-1 would become the ...

And the plane that would ultimately achieve that goal would be the experimental Bell X-1 jet. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, later becoming NASA), the newly formed U.S. Air ...

He helped design the X-1, which was the first airplane to break the sound barrier. Slick Goodlin was a test pilot for Bell Laboratories and made numerous flights in the X-1 before it was ...