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Museum Aircraft Strikes a New Pose

Exhibits & Collections > History Up Close > Museum Aircraft Strikes a New Pose

The D-558-1 Skystreak has long been a bit of an anomaly in the museum’s aircraft collection, a plane with a crimson hue amid the various shades of blue and gray that adorns most of its contemporaries. It spent much of its life flying not from the deck of an aircraft carrier, but of all places an Air Force base. It doesn’t even have Navy painted on its wings or fuselage! As if this were not enough to set the D-558-1 Skystreak apart, the striking way in which it is now displayed is sure to grab the attention of visitors. Through the after hours efforts of the museum’s Aircraft Maintenance and Restoration Divisions, the Skystreak was recently hung on one of the walls of the Quarterdeck so that visitors can get an overhead view of the aircraft. It is a fitting method of displaying the aircraft for in its life as a test platform, it spent many an hour roaring at low altitude and making knife edge turns over the dry lake bed of Muroc Army Airfield (renamed Edwards Air Force Base).

The D-558-1 can trace its origins to a time when air battles still raged over Europe and the Pacific. Planning for the future, the military and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) began thinking about the next generation of aircraft, in particular the development of those capable of approaching or exceeding the speed of sound. On 22 June 1945 the Navy awarded a contract to Douglas Aircraft Company for a transonic aircraft. Called the D-558-1 Skystreak, it was designed around a cylindrical fuselage, whose shape and appearance when the aircraft was painted in its scarlet scheme prompted the press to nickname it the “Crimson Test Tube.” A pure research aircraft, it featured sensors positioned on the wing and tail surfaces to record pressure and air loads. Additionally, the nose section containing the cockpit could be jettisoned during flight, enabling the pilot to bail out once it reached a slower speed. All told, three examples of the aircraft were delivered. In August 1947, with Commander Turner F. Caldwell and Major Marion Carl, USMC, at the controls, Skystreaks established two world speed records, achieving 640.663 M.P.H. and 650.796 M.P.H. over a 30-kilometer course. Thus, for a fleeting moment before Chuck Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier, upon the wings the D-558-1 flew the fastest man alive.