Yeager pushes past Mach 1; two broken ribs and a broom handle sealed the hatch

For years, engineers had argued over whether any aircraft could survive the buffeting and control loss pilots reported near the speed of sound. On October 14, 1947, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1, "Glamorous Glennis," after it dropped from the bomb bay of a modified B-29 over Rogers Dry Lake, California. He fired its rocket engines and reached Mach 1.05–1.06, roughly 700 miles per hour, at 45,000 feet. Two days earlier he had cracked two ribs falling off a horse, and he sealed the cockpit hatch with a sawed-off broom handle so no one would scrub the flight…