The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe

Ziegler’s X–2 exploded while still attached to the mother ship, a B–29, killing Skip and a B–29 crewman. The same thing had very nearly happened to Pete Everest in the X–1D—and to Walker himself in the X–IA. Walker was strapped into the X–IA, under the bomb bay of a B–29, at 35,000 feet, seventy seconds from launch, when a fuel tank exploded in the rear of the rocket plane. Walker got out, climbed back up into the B–29, passed out from lack of oxygen, was revived by a “walkaround” oxygen bottle, went back down into the burning X–IA, and tried to jettison the rest of the fuel so as to prevent both ships, the X–IA and the B–29, from burning up. The rocket plane was finally dropped, like a bomb, over the desert. Walker received the Distinguished Service Medal for his trip back into the burning ship.