Colorized photo captures historic supersonic flight of Canadian Pacific DC-8

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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