William Barton Bridgeman (June 25, 1916 – September 29, 1968) was an American
test pilot
A test pilot is an aircraft pilot with additional training to fly and evaluate experimental, newly produced and modified aircraft with specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques.Stinton, Darrol. ''Flying Qualities and Flight Testin ...
who broke aviation records while working for the
Douglas Aircraft Company
The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and military, defense company based in Southern California. Founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr., it merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell D ...
, testing experimental aircraft. In July 1951, the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
announced the D-558-II Skyrocket piloted by Bridgeman had "attained the highest speed and altitude ever recorded by a piloted plane". Subscription required for full article. On August 15 of the same year, he set a world record with a speed of Mach 1.88 and an unofficial record height of .
Bridgeman was born in
Ottumwa, Iowa
Ottumwa ( ) is a List of cities in Iowa, city in and the county seat of Wapello County, Iowa, United States. The population was 25,529 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. Census. Located in the state's southeastern section, th ...
. His father was a barnstormer and separated from his mother shortly after he was born. He was raised in
Malibu, California
Malibu ( ; ; ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about west of downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching along the Pacific Ocean coa ...
by his paternal grandmother and majored in
geology
Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...
in college, receiving his
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
degree from the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
.
He enlisted in the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
to attend flight school at Pensacola. He graduated and was commissioned in 1941, and was sent to
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...
, where he experienced the Japanese attack on December 7. He flew PBY flying boats in the New Guinea/Australia sector, then four-engined PB4Y-2 Privateer patrol bombers on a tour of operations with VP/VPB-109 (the "Reluctant Raiders"). He was reassigned afterwards to training activities stateside from August 1944 until the end of the war, then spent two years flying transport missions from Pearl Harbor to the West Coast.
Upon leaving the Navy in 1947, Bridgeman joined Southwest Airways (a local West Coast airline that eventually became Pacific Air Lines, not to be confused with today's
Southwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...
) to fly
DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II.
It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper ...
s on the San Francisco-Seattle route. Bored with the airline routine, he left in 1949 to join Douglas as a production test pilot to certify A-1 Skyraiders off the assembly line before their delivery to the Navy. A few months later, he accepted an offer to take over the test program of the D-558 II Skyrocket, one of the world's first supersonic research aircraft.
Bridgeman converted to jet aircraft on the F-80 in early 1950 and eventually conducted a very successful test program with the Skyrocket, collecting data on the behavior of
swept-wing
A swept wing is a wing angled either backward or occasionally forward from its root rather than perpendicular to the fuselage.
Swept wings have been flown since the pioneer days of aviation. Wing sweep at high speeds was first investigated in Ge ...
aircraft over a wide envelope of load factors and
Mach number
The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound.
It is named after the Austrian physicist and philosopher Erns ...
s deep in the supersonic range. In May 1951, he broke the world speed record, achieving a speed of Mach 1.72, then broke the record again, reaching Mach 1.88 (1,245 mph, 1,992 km/h) the next month. Immediately afterwards, he broke the world altitude record with on the Skyrocket's final flight before delivery to
NACA
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its ...
. During this campaign, Bridgeman was one of the first pilots to encounter the phenomenon of inertia coupling, a flight hazard that would dominate high-speed aircraft research for much of the 1950s. He was on the cover of the April 27, 1953, ''Time'' magazine.
He appeared as a contestant on the ''
You Bet Your Life
''You Bet Your Life'' is an American comedy quiz series that has aired on both radioX-3 Stiletto, a promising but ultimately unsuccessful design. In 1955, he recounted his experiences test-flying the Skyraider and Skyrocket in a successful memoir, ''The Lonely Sky'', written with Jacqueline Hazard, whom he married shortly after the book was published.
He was an astronaut candidate for the United States Air Force
Man In Space Soonest
Man In Space Soonest (MISS) was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to put a man into outer space before the Soviet Union. The program was cancelled on August 1, 1958, and was replaced by NASA's Project Mercury. Only two men from the prog ...
program, but the program was cancelled on August 1, 1958, and replaced by NASA's
Project Mercury
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...
.
Bridgeman eventually moved to
Grumman Aircraft
The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and his business partners, it merged in 1 ...
where he conducted test programs of commercial aircraft, then pursued a career in commercial real estate. In September 1968, he was the pilot of a routine air-taxi flight from Los Angeles to Santa Catalina Island when his
Grumman Goose
The Grumman G-21 Goose is an amphibious flying boat designed by Grumman to serve as an eight-seat "commuter" aircraft for businessmen in the Long Island area. The Goose was Grumman's first monoplane to fly, its first twin-engined aircraft, and ...
amphibian went down in the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...