A B-50 crew member, Frank Wolko, was also killed during the incident. Ziegler and aircraft #2 (46-675) were subsequently lost on, in an inflight explosion during a captive flight intended to check the aircraft's liquid oxygen system. The X-2's twin set of shock diamonds in the exhaust plume, characteristic of supersonic conditions from a two-chamber rocket engine.įollowing a drop launch from a modified B-50 bomber, Bell test pilot Jean 'Skip' Ziegler completed the first unpowered glide flight of an X-2 at Edwards Air Force Base on 27 June 1952. Constructed of stainless steel and a copper- nickel alloy, K-Monel, and powered by a liquid propellant (alcohol and oxygen) two-chamber XLR25 2,500 to 15,000 lbf (11 to 67 kN) sea level thrust, continuously throttleable rocket engine, the swept-wing Bell X-2 was designed to probe the supersonic region.

For, at speeds in that region, they knew they would also begin to encounter a 'thermal barrier', severe heating effects caused by aerodynamic friction. Providing adequate stability and control for aircraft flying at high supersonic speeds was only one of the major difficulties facing flight researchers as they approached Mach 3. The XLR25 rocket engine, built by Curtiss-Wright, was based on the smoothly variable-thrust JATO engine built by Robert Goddard in 1942 for the Navy. aircraft (previously demonstrated on the Me 163B during World War II) and digital flight simulation. Not only did the X-2 push the envelope of manned flight to speeds, altitudes and temperatures beyond any other aircraft at the time, it pioneered throttleable rocket motors in U.S. The Bell X-2 had a prolonged development period due to the advances needed in aerodynamic design, control systems, materials that retained adequate mechanical properties at high temperature, and other technologies that had to be developed. The Bell X-2 was developed to provide a vehicle for researching flight characteristics at speeds and altitudes in excess of the capabilities of the Bell X-1 and D-558 II, while investigating aerodynamic heating problems in what was then called the 'thermal thicket'. The X-2 was a rocket-powered, swept-wing research aircraft developed jointly in 1945 by Bell Aircraft Corporation, the United States Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to explore aerodynamic problems of supersonic flight and to expand the speed and altitude regimes obtained with the earlier X-1 series of research aircraft. The Bell X-2 (nicknamed 'Starbuster' ) was an X-plane research aircraft built to investigate flight characteristics in the Mach 2–3 range. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Experimental aircraft build to investigate flight characteristics in the Mach 2–3 range X-2īell X-2 #2 with a collapsed nose landing gear, after landing on the first glide flight, on 22 April 1952 at Edwards Air Force Base.ġ8 November 1955 (first powered flight) 27 June 1952 (first drop glide)

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