The Legendary F-100 Super Sabre: America's First Supersonic Jet
The plane saw service until 1980. Here's What You Need to Know: America’s first supersonic jet did not excel as a fighter and had beastly accident rate. On October 14, 1947, an orange-painted Bell X-1 piloted by Chuck Yeager became the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in level flight. Though the rocket-powered X-1 was an experimental design, it followed that improving jet engine technology would make a supersonic fighter possible as well. On its own initiative, the North American firm took a crack at evolving the F-86 Sabre, the top U.S. fighter of the Korean War, into a supersoni...
Source: nationalinterest.org