The supersonic Canadian Pacific DC-8-40, accompanied by an F-104 chase plane piloted by Chuck Yeager at 50,000 feet, has been colorized by French artist Benoit Vienne. The Douglas DC-8 is the only subsonic commercial jet to break the sound barrier.
This historic event occurred on August 21, 1961, when test pilot William Magruder, copilot Paul Patten, flight engineer Joseph Tomich, and flight test engineer Richard H. Edwards took Douglas DC-8-43 no. N9604Z for a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California. During this flight, the DC-8 exceeded Mach 1—the only intentional supersonic flight by an airliner other than the Concorde and the Tu-144.
The DC-8 was escorted by a US Air Force F-100 Super Sabre and F-104 Starfighter chase planes. According to reports, Colonel Chuck Yeager flew the F-104.
In a 2007 interview with historian and former Douglas employee Bill Wasserzieher for Air & Space magazine, Richard Edwards recalled that it was “Bill Magruder’s idea.”
Edwards stated: “Very smart—get it out there, show the airplane can survive this and not fall apart. Boeing will never try it [with the 707] because they don’t want to be second.”
“We took it up to 10 miles up, 52,000 feet—that’s a record—and put it in a half-a-G pushover. Bill maintained about 50 pounds of push. He didn’t trim it for the dive so that it would want to pull out by itself,” Edwards continued.
“In the dive, at about 45,000 feet, it went to Mach 1.01 for maybe 16 seconds before he recovered,” said Edwards. “But the recovery was a little scary. When he pulled back, the elevator was ineffective; it didn’t do anything.”
“It stalled because of the load,” he added. “What he did…is something that no other pilot would do: He pushed over into the dive more…and he recovered at about 35,000 feet.”
The DC-8 carried US registration N9604Z and was powered by four Rolls-Royce Conway RCo.12 Mk 509 turbofan engines rated at 17,500 pounds of thrust each.
Delivered to Canadian Pacific Airlines on November 15, 1961 as CF-CPG (Empress of Montreal), this aircraft was scrapped at Opa Locka Municipal Airport in May 1981.
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