(USA) Everest Pete @·AIRCRAFTUBE

  • Pete Everest and his P-40<br>(North Africa, 1943) Pete Everest and his P-40<br>(North Africa, 1943)
    Pete Everest and his P-40
    (North Africa, 1943)
  • Pete Everest Pete Everest
    Pete Everest
  • X-2 drop from the B-50 mothership X-2 drop from the B-50 mothership
    X-2 drop from the B-50 mothership
  • Bell X-1B Bell X-1B
    Bell X-1B
  • Bell X-5 Bell X-5
    Bell X-5
  • F-100 Super Sabre F-100 Super Sabre
    F-100 Super Sabre
  • Bell X-2 Bell X-2
    Bell X-2
  • Bell X-2: Mach 2.87<br>(July 23, 1956) Bell X-2: Mach 2.87<br>(July 23, 1956)
    Bell X-2: Mach 2.87
    (July 23, 1956)
  • "The Fastest Man Alive" (1958) "The Fastest Man Alive" (1958)
    "The Fastest Man Alive" (1958)
  • 50th anniversary of the record (2006) 50th anniversary of the record (2006)
    50th anniversary of the record (2006)

Frank Kendall "Pete" Everest

Brigadier General Frank Kendall "Pete" Everest Jr. (August 10, 1920 – October 1, 2004) was a United States Air Force officer, fighter pilot and one of the great test pilots of the 1950s. Chief Air Force test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, he flew almost every new American jet of the period as well as the rocket-powered research aircraft of the "X" series. On July 23, 1956, he flew the Bell X-2 to Mach 2.87, which earned him the title of "The Fastest Man Alive".

Early life

Everest was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, the elder of the two children of Frank Kendall Everest, an electrician, and Phyllis Gail Walker Everest. The nickname "Pete" was given to him by his father. He saw his first airplane, a Curtiss Jenny, at the age of ten and decided then to become a pilot. After graduating from Fairmont Senior High School, he spent a year at Fairmont State College and then studied engineering at West Virginia University. He learned to fly through the Civilian Pilot Training Program, on a Piper J-2 Cub, then on Waco and Stearman biplanes.

World War II

Everest enlisted as an aviation cadet in the United States Army Air Corps on November 7, 1941, a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was commissioned a second lieutenant on July 3, 1942. Five days later he married Avis June Mason; they would have three children.

Assigned to the 314th Fighter Squadron, 324th Fighter Group, he flew the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk on 94 combat missions in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. On April 18, 1943, he shot down two Junkers Ju 52 transports and damaged a third. He was promoted to captain in August 1943 and returned to the United States in May 1944 as an instructor with a fighter squadron at Venice, Florida.

He then volunteered for the China-Burma-India theater, where he commanded the 17th Fighter Squadron (Provisional), 5th Fighter Group, of the Chinese-American Composite Wing, based at Chinkiang (Zhenjiang). Flying the North American P-51 Mustang, he completed 67 missions and destroyed four Japanese aircraft. In May 1945, while strafing a column of Japanese supply boats, his Mustang was hit by ground fire. He bailed out, his parachute briefly caught on the aircraft, and he landed in Japanese-held territory. Captured, he was brutally interrogated and was saved from execution only by inventing false performance figures for American aircraft. He remained a prisoner until the end of the war and returned to American control in October 1945, having been promoted to major in the meantime.

Test pilot

Wright Field

In February 1946, Everest was one of only four pilots selected out of some 800 applicants for the Flight Test Division at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), Ohio. There he took part in high-altitude tests of the Bell X-1, the rocket aircraft with which Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier, and reached an unofficial altitude record of 71,902 ft (21,916 m) in 1949. During these flights he suffered engine problems, a rocket chamber explosion and, on another flight, a cracked canopy that caused the loss of cabin pressure at about 69,000 ft. His partial pressure suit inflated and saved his life: it was the first time such a suit had been used in a real emergency.

Edwards Air Force Base

In September 1951 he was transferred to the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as chief Air Force test pilot and head of the Flight Test Operations Division. Between 1950 and 1956 he flew on average eight new aircraft types a month, and over his ten years as a test pilot he checked out more than 120 different aircraft. He tested the research aircraft X-1, X-1A, X-1B, X-1D, X-3, X-4 and X-5, the Convair XF-92 and the YB-52, and took part in the test programs of the XF-88, F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104 and F-105 fighters and of the XB-51, B-52, B-57 and B-66 bombers.

On August 22, 1953, he was to make the first powered flight of the Bell X-1D, carried aloft under a Boeing EB-50 Superfortress mothership. Before the drop he noticed that the nitrogen pressure used to feed the propellants was falling, and the flight was cancelled. While he was jettisoning the fuel, an internal explosion shook the rocketplane. Fearing a larger explosion that would endanger the bomber and its crew, Everest climbed back into the B-50 and the X-1D was released; it crashed and exploded in the desert. The cause of this and several other explosions (X-1A, X-1-3 and the second X-2) was later traced to leather gaskets treated with tricresyl phosphate, which could detonate on contact with liquid oxygen.

On October 29, 1953, flying the prototype YF-100A Super Sabre over a course near the Salton Sea, he set an official world speed record of 755.149 mph (1,215.30 km/h). In December 1954 he took the Bell X-1B to Mach 2.3.

Bell X-2

Everest was the Air Force project pilot for the Bell X-2, a swept-wing rocket aircraft designed to explore the Mach 2 to Mach 3 range. He made the first glide flight of the X-2 n°1 (46-674) on August 5, 1954, and the first powered flight on November 18, 1955, when only one of the two rocket chambers ignited. On April 25, 1956, firing both chambers for the first time, he took the X-2 supersonic (Mach 1.40). Three flights in May pushed the speed to Mach 2.53. After the installation of nozzle extensions, he made his last X-2 flight on July 23, 1956, reaching Mach 2.87 (about 3,050 km/h) at around 68,000 ft (20,700 m) while gathering aerodynamic heating data. The press called him "The Fastest Man Alive". In all, Everest made 13 of the 20 flights of the X-2 program.

Everest then left Edwards to attend the Armed Forces Staff College, and the X-2 was handed over to Iven Kincheloe and Milburn Apt. Apt was killed on September 27, 1956, when the X-2, after reaching Mach 3.2, went out of control.

Later career

In March 1957 Everest returned to operational duties as commander of the 461st Fighter Squadron, 36th Fighter Wing, flying the F-100 at Hahn Air Base, Germany. From July 1958 he commanded a group in North Africa, then became deputy for operations at Wheelus Air Base, Libya. In January 1961 he was appointed director of operations of the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing at England Air Force Base, Louisiana, then commanded the 4453rd Combat Crew Training Wing at MacDill AFB, Florida. On November 20, 1963, he delivered one of the first two production F-4C Phantom II to the Tactical Air Command. The wing moved to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, in June 1964.

In May 1965 he took command of the 4520th Combat Crew Training Wing at Nellis AFB, Nevada, and was promoted to brigadier general on November 1, 1965. He was then director of aerospace safety at Norton AFB, California (1966), and assistant director for operational test and evaluation in the office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Pentagon (1969). In April 1970 he became commander of the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service, Military Airlift Command, at Scott AFB, Illinois, whose fleet included HH-53 and HH-3 helicopters, HC-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter aircraft. Between 1966 and 1972 he flew 32 combat missions over Southeast Asia.

He retired from the Air Force on March 1, 1973, after 33 years of service and more than 9,000 flying hours, then worked as a test pilot for Sikorsky Aircraft. He died at his home in Tucson, Arizona, on October 1, 2004, at the age of 84.

Honors and awards

Everest was rated a command pilot and a basic parachutist. His decorations include the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (three awards), the Distinguished Flying Cross (three awards), the Purple Heart, the Air Medal (eight awards), the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Prisoner of War Medal and the Chinese Aviation Award.

  • 1955: one of the "Ten Outstanding Young Men" of the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce.
  • 1956: named one of the nation's "Greatest Living Americans" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
  • 1957: Harmon International Trophy and Octave Chanute Award.
  • 1989: enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
  • 1997: enshrined in the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame.

In popular culture

The 1956 film "Toward the Unknown", starring William Holden as Major Lincoln Bond, a test pilot and former prisoner of war, was loosely inspired by Everest's career; the X-1D incident is dramatized in it, and Everest served as technical adviser. In 1958 he published his memoirs, "The Fastest Man Alive", written with John Guenther, with a foreword by General Albert Boyd.

Sources: Wikipedia (Frank Kendall Everest Jr.), U.S. Air Force official biography, NASA (Bell X-2 history), This Day in Aviation, HistoryNet (interview with Frank K. "Pete" Everest), National Aviation Hall of Fame.

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