AP Wire | 04/20/2006 | Legendary pilot Scott Crossfield killed in small plane crash
RANGER, Ga. – Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said.
Searchers with the Civil Air Patrol and others discovered the wreckage of the plane Thursday afternoon but didn’t immediately identify the body inside.
In the 1950s, Crossfield flew numerous experimental planes at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and was a key figure in the development of the X-15.
It’s a sad, but fitting end to the career of an aviation pioneer. He wrote a book about aviation; Always Another Dawn,, which gets mixed reviews on Amazon for being dated in tone. He wrote the foreword to a much more recent book, Severe Weather Flying.
There’s more background information from the Houston Chronicle; I imagine there are some pretty long faces at the Johnson Space Center today, but most of the men who would remember him are retired or dead. He must have known Frank Borman when he was at Eastern Airlines.
Crossfield, now 84, was one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA, in the early 1950s.
Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager had already broken the speed of sound in his history-making flight in 1947. Crossfield set the Mach 2 record _ twice the speed of sound _ in 1953, when he reached 1,300 mph in NACA’s Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.
In 1960, Crossfield reached Mach 2.97in an X-15 rocket plane launched from a B-52 bomber. The plane reached an altitude of 81,000 feet. At the time, Crossfield was working as a pilot and design consultant for North American Aviation, which made the X-15. He later worked as an executive for Eastern Airlines and Hawker Siddley Aviation.
More recently, Crossfield had a key role in preparations for the attempt to re-enact the Wright brothers’ flight on the 100th anniversary of their feat near Kitty Hawk, N.C. He trained four pilots for the Dec. 17, 2003, flight attempt in a replica of the brothers’ flyer, but poor weather prevented the take-off.
Among his many honors, Crossfield was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983.