#test pilots

I just completed “Chasing the Demon”, by Dan Hampton.  Overall, I thought it was decent enough.  I particularly enjoyed the parts about some of the Luftwaffe’s early work on jets and rockets. 

I think it would have been better if Mr. Hampton had a bit more focus on the X1 program itself.  For about two-thirds of the book, he covers some early flight history and some overview of WWII (although he tries to keep the focus on the test pilots later featured in the flight testing), which seem to take away from what I wanted to read about in greater detail. 

It’s not a bad read.  He loves Jack Ridley (for good reasons), and doesn’t seem to care much for Yeager.  Further, he really wants to give more credit to the theory that the XP-86 tests were the first to go supersonic.  So I was a little unsure about his straying into that area. 

But I enjoyed the X-1 part of the book, and it’s a quick read.  But with a much tighter focus on the X-1 development, I think it would have been much better.

As hard as it is to believe that its Ride the Wind Day again already (boy, does time fly!), things are looking up because that gives us an excuse to launch these photographs of the French test pilot Adrienne Bolland.

Bolland was initially inspired to take up aviation as a means of paying some gambling debts she had amassed while drinking, but her accomplishments in the field came to include becoming the first French woman to receive an aviator’s license, the first woman to fly the treacherous route over the Andes between Chile and Argentina (less than 15 months after receiving her aviator’s license), being honored as a Knight of the Legion of Honor, setting altitude records in both France and South America, and setting a women's record of 212 loops (tying with ten male pilots) in a race around France. Her interests outside of the field of aviation included support for leftist causes such as women’s suffrage and fighting Nazis. During World War II, Bolland joined the French Resistance, which later earned her an advancement to the rank of Officier in France’s Legion of Honor. Bolland died in Paris in 1975 at the age of 79.

“Yeager doesn’t fit the profile.” “Yeager doesn’t fit the profile?”