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EDWARDS, from 6
rate post and designated Muroc Army both Air Force and Navy — under- By that time, the base had already
Air Base. went testing at Muroc, and the great become the reigning center of Ameri-
Throughout the war years, B-24s lakebed served as a welcome haven to can flight research and on June 25,
thundered through the Muroc skies and countless pilots in distress. Col. Albert 1951, this fact was finally officially
P-38s strafed the targets on the range, Boyd, Chief of the Flight Test Division recognized when its test community
as bomber crews and fighter pilots pre- in the late 1940s, declared the lakebed was designated the U.S. Air Force
pared to do battle overseas. “God’s gift to the Air Force.” Flight Test Center, or AFFTC. That
The success of these programs at- same year, the U.S. Air Force Air Ma-
Strange shapes in the sky tracted a new type of research activity teriel Command Experimental Test
In the meantime, wartime develop- to the base in late 1946. The rocket- Pilot School moved to Edwards from
ment of military aviation overwhelmed powered Bell X-1 was the first in a Wright Field, Ohio.
Wright Field in Ohio with an immense long series of experimental airplanes Its curriculum focused on the tradi-
volume of flight test work. It was nec- designed to prove or disprove aero- tional field of performance testing and
essary to find a remote location with nautical concepts — to probe the most the relatively new field of stability
good flying weather where a new top- challenging unknowns of flight and and control, which had suddenly as-
secret airplane could safely undergo solve its mysteries. sumed increased importance with the
tests. On Oct. 14, 1947, Capt. Charles E. dramatic increases in speed offered by
In the spring of 1942, a site was “Chuck” Yeager flew the small bullet- the new turbojets.
chosen alongside the north shore of shaped airplane to become the first
Rogers Dry Lakebed, about six miles human to exceed the speed of sound. The Golden Age of Flight Test
away from the training base at Muroc. With the X-1, flight testing at Muroc The decade of the 1950s was a
A wooden hangar and rudimentary fa- began to assume two distinct identi- remarkable period in the history of
cilities sprang up and on Oct. 1, 1942, ties. Highly experimental research pro- aviation, and there was no better evi-
Bell test pilot Bob Stanley lifted the grams — such as the X-3, X-4, X-5 dence of this than what transpired at
wheels of the Bell XP-59A Airacomet and XF-92A — were typically flown Edwards. If the concept seemed fea-
off the enormous, flat surface of the in conjunction with the National Ad- sible — or even just desirable — it
dry lakebed. The turbojet revolution visory Committee for Aeronautics, was evaluated in the skies above the
had arrived. America’s first jet plane or NACA, and were conducted in a sprawling 301,000-acre base. Experi-
was shortly joined by a second, the methodical fashion to answer largely mental rocket planes continued to ex-
famed Lockheed XP-80 Shooting Star. theoretical questions. Then, as now, pand the boundaries of the high-speed
As revolutionary as these two ex- the great bulk of flight testing at Muroc and stratospheric frontiers.
perimental fighter planes were, the focused on evaluations of the capabili- As the decade opened, the first-
natural runways of the lakebed served ties of aircraft and systems proposed generation X-1 reached Mach 1.45
them well. The first-generation turbo- for the operational inventory. (957 mph) and a 71,902-foot altitude,
jet engines had a nasty habit of flam- In December 1949, Muroc was representing the edge of the envelope. Air Force photograph
ing out, and the Airacomet required an renamed Edwards Air Force Base in The D-558-II Douglas Skyrocket soon
extremely long takeoff roll. honor of Capt. Glen W. Edwards, who surpassed these marks. In 1951, Doug- U.S. Air Force test pilots in front of the Experimental Test Pilot School, which
was transferred from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to Edwards AFB,
During the postwar years, all of was killed a year earlier in the crash of Calif., on Feb. 4, 1951.
America’s first generation of jets — the YB-49 Flying Wing. See EDWARDS, Page 8

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