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Bob Cardenas stands in front of an F-105 Thunderchief in Southeast Asia.
Courtesy photograph
They married on June 5. As Cardenas was tak- ing his new bride to meet his parents, he heard on the radio that the YB-49 had crashed kill- ing Capt. Glen Edwards, Maj. Danny Forbes, 1st Lt. Ed Swindell and civilians C. Lesser and C. H. LaFountain. Cardenas’ school orders were cancelled by Boyd, and he was ordered to finish the testing and find out what had caused the crash of theYB-49.
On Feb. 9, 1949, Cardenas flew the YB-49 non-stop from Muroc to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., in 4 hours 5 minutes setting a new
comet and the XB-45 — the Air Force’s first jet fighter and bomber.
Cardenas was also the principal test pilot for the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, mak- ing his first flight in the aircraft in December 1947.
He was also the operations officer for test- ing of the YB-49 flying wing. Cardenas was also the investigating officer after the YB-49 crashed killing Capt. Glenn Edwards and Maj. Daniel Forbes on June 5, 1948.
Cardenas flew the evaluation tests that would inform the Air Force’s decision on whether to buy the Flying Wing.
By May of 1948, the phase II tests were almost complete when Cardenas had the op- portunity to finish his engineering degree at the University of Southern California. Maj. Gen. Al Boyd chose Capt. Glen Edwards to replace Cardenas as the project pilot.
Cardenas checked out Edwards in the YB- 49 on May 20 and 21, 1948. He then drove to Dayton, Ohio, to pick up his fiancé, Gladys.
transcontinental record. President Truman was at Andrews AFB that day and said to the chief of the Air Force (about the YB-49), “General, it looks pretty good to me. I think I’m going to buy
some of these.”
However, Cardenas had al-
ready written a report, which said that the airplane was not suitable as an operational bomber.
Truman then said, “Let’s have this whippersnapper fly this thing down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Cardenas later recalled, “My boss told me ‘Bob, go fly this thing down Pennsyl- vania Avenue and don’t hit anything!’ and I did. Penn- sylvania Avenue is lined with
See CARDENAS, Page 3
The X-1 team included (from left) Ed Swindell, Bob Hoover, Bob Cardenas, Chuck Yeager, Dick Frost and Jack Ridley.
Air Force photograph
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