On Oct. 14, 1947, Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier — or so history tells us.
According to a new book, World War II hero and civilian test pilot George Welch most likely achieved that feat two weeks prior, and the proof lies with the women at local bar (and rumored brothel) the Happy Bottom Riding Club.
Before he headed into the clouds on Oct. 1, Welch reportedly told Happy Bottom hostess Millie Palmer to listen out for a shockwave that would roll through the club.
“And then he went out [into the sky] and pointed [his plane] at the club, knowing that if he could break Mach 1, that’s where the sound would go,” says Dan Hampton, author of “Chasing The Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It” (William Morrow), out now.
In World War II, Welch earned a Medal of Honor and a Distinguished Service Cross flying for the US Army Air Force, which wouldn’t become a stand-alone military branch until 1947. By then, he was a civilian test pilot for aircraft manufacturer North American Aviation.
Yeager, who also served in the war, held the same job, but for the Air Force. Both men worked in a tight-knit community centered around California’s Edwards Air Force Base, where the Happy Bottom was their local bar — and possibly more.
Everyone at Edwards wanted to know who’d be the first to break the sound barrier. For the brand-new US Air Force, it was crucial that their test pilot, Yeager, be the one to smash it, to help the new military branch prove its worth.
On this point, the first secretary of the Air Force, Stuart Symington, left no ambiguity. “Symington put out a directive to North American Aviation saying that the sound barrier will be broken first by the US Air Force,” says Hampton. “The subtext was, I don’t care if you do it, but if you do and it gets publicized, you can say goodbye to these billion-dollar contracts.”
Welch was testing a jet fighter called the XP-86 for North American, while Yeager flew a rocket-powered F-1 for the Air Force. Throughout September 1947, it became clear to all at Edwards that one of these men would soon break Mach 1, even though Welch was forbidden by his employer from doing so.
In fact, Welch could have broken the barrier anytime he wanted; he just couldn’t record it, document it or discuss it publicly in any way. And this, says Hampton, is exactly what he believes happened.
Welch told club hostess Palmer to “be his data recorder . . . to listen for a ‘sharp boom like a clap of thunder’ and to write down the time and the reactions around her,” writes Hampton.
On the morning of Oct. 1, 1947, Welch took the XP-86 up to 35,000 feet for what was supposed to be a standard test flight.
“Eyes darting around the cockpit, George let the airspeed jump to 320 knots then he rolled left, the stick hard against his leg and dropped the nose into a 40-degree dive,” Hampton writes. “Leaning forward, he stared through the clear canopy and pointed directly at the only green area visible: [the] Happy Bottom Riding Club.”
After landing, Welch called Palmer to find out what she heard.
“She told him that the sound was exactly how he described and it shook the walls,” writes Hampton, who adds that many in the area reported the same.
“It comes from a lot of people,” he says. “Windows were broken and other things that happen when the sound barrier has been exceeded. Everybody knew it had been done.”
Thirteen days later, Yeager went into the record books.
Hampton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who fought in Kosovo, Iraq and the first Gulf War, is still trying to definitively prove that Welch — who died in 1954 after crashing at 1.55 Mach speed — accomplished this feat. Meanwhile, he says that Yeager, who is still alive at 95, is dismissive of his claims.
“He wanted to be the one that did it, and he has always said, and he has a point — show me the evidence,” Hampton says. “Well, I think he knows very well that there is no evidence, because if [there] was, it was destroyed long ago, so he feels pretty safe in saying stuff like that. He wants to be remembered, understandably so, as the guy that did this first, but I don’t think he did it.
“I keep hoping somebody will read this book and say, ‘My dad worked for North American and took some papers out of there 50 years ago, and here they are.’ But it hasn’t happened yet,” adds Hampton.
“All I can do is present both sides and say look, based on what I know about these guys and the circumstances and the airplanes, there’s no reason why George Welch wouldn’t have done this.”
