Northrop X-4

摘要

When it appeared at the flight test facility at California's Muroc Air Force Base in 1948, the Northrop X-4 Bantam was the 98-pound weakling of research airplanes. The X-1 and X-2 rocketplanes were the big bullies, punching through the Mach left and right, and even the extreme but useless Douglas X-3 Stiletto was at least able to pose on the ramp looking like Marty McFly's prom ride. The swing-wing X-5 would soon arrive and prove to be Steady Eddie-one of the few X-planes to complete every test planned for it. The nerdy little X-4, however, couldn't even sneak through the sound barrier. In Yeager An Autobiography, Chuck Yeager wrote that before Air Force test pilots even got into the X-4, Northrop pilot Charles Tucker "got her out to .93 Mach, when she began to spin violently. We figured that she would punch a hole in the desert, so we quit right there and junked her." Yeager was recalling the first X-4, and that airplane indeed was ill-built and mechanically flawed. The second of the two X-4S, however, flew 82 missions, and none of its pilots, including Yeager, had a serious incident or accident. Today, it sits in the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, near Dayton, Ohio.