He was an aeronautical engineer, an aerodynamicist and a designer, who felt that his flying was primarily because it was essential to designing and building better airplanes for pilots to fly

What can human ingenuity achieve in half a century? A great deal. The Wright Brothers’ famous first flight was at a speed of 10.9 km/h. A few days before the 50th anniversary of that epochal feat, Albert Scott Crossfield piloted the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket to Mach 2.005 (2,076 km/h). Crossfield was one of USA’s top test pilots—part of the celebrated team that later took the legendary X-15 to record altitudes and speeds. His flight on November 20, 1953, was the first time an aircraft ever exceeded twice the speed of sound.

Albert Scott Crossfield was born in Berkeley, California, on October 2, 1921. Soon after America entered the Second World War, he became a naval aviator and flew overseas as an instructor. Later, in June 1950, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High Speed Flight Research as a test pilot. During the next five years, he notched up 99 rocket flights in the X-1 and D-558-II Skyrocket. The Skyrocket was a supersonic research aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It had wings of 35 degree sweep and horizontal stabilisers with 40 degree sweep. Its wings and empennage were fabricated from aluminium and the fuselage was primarily of magnesium. It was jet as well as rocket powered. For take-off, climb and landing, it had a Westinghouse J34-40 turbojet engine fed through side intakes. Alternatively, the plane could be carried aloft by a Boeing P2B Super Fortress ‘mother ship’. For high speed flight, a four-chamber Reaction Motors LR8-RM-6 engine was employed. Scott’s flight was part of a carefully conducted research programme that featured incremental increases in speed while sophisticated instrumentation recorded the flight data at each stage. For his record-setting mission, he was taken aloft in the Skyrocket by the mother ship. He dropped clear of the bomber at 32,000 feet and zoomed to 72,000 feet before diving to 62,000 feet where he became the first pilot to exceed twice the speed of sound. By the time he joined North American Aviation in 1955, Crossfield was by far the most experienced rocket plane pilot in the world.

As chief engineering test pilot for North America, Crossfield played a major role in the design and development of the X-15. He was the first to pilot the advanced hypersonic aircraft and it was his job to demonstrate its airworthiness at speeds of up to Mach 3. Because the X-15 and its systems were unproven, these tests were considered extremely risky. He piloted the plane on its first unpowered test flight on June 8, 1959. Later, he also flew the first powered flight. He flew 14 of the 199 total X-15 flight tests with most of his missions establishing and validating the initial key parameters. Scott introduced many important innovations, including putting the rocket plane’s engine controls into the cockpit. Previously, all engine adjustments were made by technicians on the ground- based on data from previous flight tests. He reached a maximum speed of Mach 2.97 and 27 km altitude in the process. In all, 12 test pilots flew the X-15; among them was Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. In 1967, an X-15 piloted by Pete Knight achieved its fastest ever speed of Mach 6.72 (7,297 km/h).