(John Bailey) wrote in message ...
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 21:16:00 -0500, VH wrote:

I was watching the Discovery Channel program comparing the
F-86 and Mig-15 and heard that the F-86 can break the sound
barrier. I know that this has been claimed many time before
but is that the official position of the US Air Force? Is
Yeager still officially the first man to break the sound
barrier?


The USAF likes to cover up everything and they are very good at it.
But answering your question- an emphatic "No" will suffice.
It was the Luftwaffe that broke Mach 1 back in the closing days of
WW2. Check out the Wright Patterson Official Manual on Flying the
Me-262 (circa 1946). It says that the Me-262 can break the sound
barrier in a shallow dive. So either one of the captured 262s flown by
a US pilot broke Mach 1 or the information came from German sources in
1945. Anyway, the official manual precedes Yeager's official flight-
fact.
As a matter of fact, in the US, according to various sources Yeager
was actually the 4th man to break Mach 1.
You might want to look into Project Blue Book also, another US
document. In the preface there is mention that the only machines
capable of flight like the UFOs being investigated at the time were "
certain developments of the Third Reich in the closing months of the
war". Certainly they are NOT comparing a superagile, gravity defying
UFO disc with a Me-262. It is obvious that Germany pioneered some
revolutionary aircraft at the close of the war and that what the US
recovered in material and/or documents (also from Wright Patterson)
has led throughout 6 decades to the strange enigmatic discs and black
triangles flying today. That's why German disc aircraft information
remains highly classified and wont be declassified until 2020- a full
75 years after WW2.
What does that tell you about how honest the USAF is and how
historically accurate aviation history is?

Rob