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Description
| Manufacturer: | Douglas | |
| Base model: | D-558 | |
| Designation: | D-558 | |
| Version: | -2 | |
| Nickname: | Skyrocket | |
| Designation System: | U.S. Air Force | |
| Designation Period: | 1948-Present | |
| Basic role: | Research | |
Specifications
| Length: | 42' | 12.8 m | |
| Height: | 12' 8" | 3.8 m | |
| Wingspan: | 25' | 7.6 m | |
| Wingarea: | 175.0 sq ft | 16.2 sq m | |
| Gross Weight: | 15,266 lb | 6,923 kg | |
Propulsion
| No. of Engines: | 1 | ||
| Powerplant: | Westinghouse J34-WE-40 & XLR-8-RM-5 6,000Lb Rocket | ||
| Thrust (each): | 3,000 lb | 1,360 kg | |
Performance
| Max Speed: | 720 mph | 1,159 km/h | 626 kt |
History
| Date | Subject | Event |
| 1951/08/07 | A Douglas D-558-II was flown to 74,495fl at Mach 1.88 by Pilot William 'Bill' Bridgeman at Edwards AFB. | |
| 1953/08/21 | A Douglas D-558-II was flown to a new world altitude record by pilot Col. Marion E. Carl (USMC), reaching 83,825 ft after having been released at 37,000 ft. | |
| 1953/11/20 | A Douglas D-558-II flown by pilot Scott Crossfield, was the first to exceed Mach 2, reaching 1,291 (Mach 2.01) at an altitude of 62,000 ft. |
Examples of this type may be found at
| Museum | City | State |
| National Air and Space Museum | Washington | Dist of Col |
| The Air Museum "Planes of Fame" | Chino | California |
D-558-2 on display
National Air and Space Museum | The Air Museum "Planes of Fame" |
Recent comments by our visitors
| Bernard Biales , MA | Bill Bridgeman's autobiography with Jaqueline Hazard is indeed wonderful, but some of it is a bit hyped up and the story of the early test program of the all rocket ship is inaccurate -- compare the text of the book with the actual sequence of early flights (memoirs are often hyped or based on somewhat unreliable memories). Mention should also be made of Bridgeman's flight over 79,000 feet long before Carl took it over 83,000 feet. Carl was unable to make a speed record on another flight. This is not surprising, as he only had a few flights with the plane, which was very tricky at high Mach. Marion Carl was a war hero and great pilot who was murdered a few years ago in a robbery.
The thrust rating for the rocket is a bit misleading. Crossfield was actually getting something like 8000 pounds plus at altitude on the Mach two flight -- motors often over spec, plus reduced external pressure, plus the nozzle extenders, plus cheating on the propellent valve pressures. (An even higher thrust engine was available, but not used.) Note that the Skyrocket did not have the explosions that plagued the Bell turbopump rocket program -- apparently Douglas was smart or lucky enough not to use Ulmer leather seals. Which suggests the BIG question. Which was more beautiful -- the D-558-2 or the X-2? Both gorgeous planes, but the D-558-2 experience was a lot more survivable. Sadly, I am morally certain that the dash 2 never flew with the flush canopy, although it did fly with the short vertical. (This note hasn't posted so I am resending it.) 01/22/2009 @ 17:26 [ref: 23533] |
| Bernard Biales , MA | Bill Bridgeman's autobiography with Jaqueline Hazard is indeed wonderful, but some of it is a bit hyped up and the story of the early test program of the all rocket ship is inaccurate -- compare the text of the book with the actual sequence of early flights (memoirs are often hyped or based on somewhat unreliable memories). Mention should also be made of Bridgeman's flight over 79,000 feet long before Carl took it over 83,000 feet. Carl was unable to make a speed record on another flight. This is not surprising, as he only had a few flights with the plane, which was very tricky at high Mach. Marion Carl was a war hero and great pilot who was murdered a few years ago in a robbery.
The thrust rating for the rocket is a bit misleading. Crossfield was actually getting something like 8000 pounds plus at altitude on the Mach two flight -- motors often over spec, plus reduced external pressure, plus the nozzle extenders, plus cheating on the propellent valve pressures. (An even higher thrust engine was available, but not used.) Note that the Skyrocket did not have the explosions that plagued the Bell turbopump rocket program -- apparently Douglas was smart or lucky enough not to use Ulmer leather seals. Which suggests the BIG question. Which was more beautiful -- the D-558-2 or the X-2? Both gorgeous planes, but the D-558-2 experience was a lot more survivable. Sadly, I am morally certain that the dash 2 never flew with the flush canopy, although it did fly with the short vertical. (This note hasn't posted so I am resending it.) 01/22/2009 @ 17:25 [ref: 23532] |
| Bernard Biales , MA | Bill Bridgeman's autobiography with Jaqueline Hazard is indeed wonderful, but some of it is a bit hyped up and the story of the early test program of the all rocket ship is inaccurate -- compare the text of the book with the actual sequence of early flights (memoirs are often hyped or based on somewhat unreliable memories). Mention should also be made of Bridgeman's flight over 79,000 feet long before Carl took it over 83,000 feet. Carl was unable to make a speed record on another flight. This is not surprising, as he only had a few flights with the plane, which was very tricky at high Mach. Marion Carl was a war hero and great pilot who was murdered a few years ago in a robbery.
The thrust rating for the rocket is a bit misleading. Crossfield was actually getting something like 8000 pounds plus at altitude on the Mach two flight -- motors often over spec, plus reduced external pressure, plus the nozzle extenders, plus cheating on the propellent valve pressures. (An even higher thrust engine was available, but not used.) Note that the Skyrocket did not have the explosions that plagued the Bell turbopump rocket program -- apparently Douglas was smart or lucky enough not to use Ulmer leather seals. Which suggests the BIG question. Which was more beautiful -- the D-558-2 or the X-2? Both gorgeous planes, but the D-558-2 experience was a lot more survivable. Sadly, I am morally certain that the dash 2 never flew with the flush canopy, although it did fly with the short vertical. 01/22/2009 @ 17:23 [ref: 23531] |
| Tom Dougherty Ayer, MA | I remember seeing the Skyrocket at the NE Air Museum back in the late 1980's, early 1990's when I lived in Cheshire, CT. What I did not know until tonight was that as a child growing up in Levittown, Pa., I had crawled all over the same Skyrocket when it was in front of the Walt Disney School. I had remembered there was an aircraft at the school, but did not know it was the Skyrocket engineering test article. I had erroneously remembered it as an early Navy jet fighter.
If you haven't read "The Lonely Sky", I recommend it highly! Extremely well written in a collaboration of pilot Bill Bridgeman and Jacqueline Hazard (Bridgemen). 07/27/2008 @ 18:14 [ref: 22276] |
| glennwilliams Lancaster, CA | Outside my classroom at Antelope Valley College is a Skyrocket on a pedestal. She's still beautiful (although needs some anti-pigeon work) and awe-inspiring. Oddly, our PR department didn't even know her significance. 11/19/2007 @ 09:27 [ref: 18590] |
| Lou Varricchio Middlebury, VT | Re: the Douglas X-3--in my humble opinion, it remains the most stylish of all the experimental manned vehicles of the 1940s-'50s. It's far "sexier" in design than even the X-15 even though it was an underperformer. Sadly, today's X-planes are just flying multimillion dollar scale models; without a live pilot inside the X program has lost all its human drama although the scientific research is astounding. Safety fears ("gosh, we can't send a man up in that! He might buy the farm.") and budget constraints keep the pilots grounded these days. The can without even the Spam inside. Gone are the days of rocket-pilot heroes. (Maybe Virgin Galactic will recapture some of the thrill, as it did with Space Ship 1, with commercial suborbital jaunts above the New Mexico desert in the coming decade. But that, too, will vanish with time.) 11/25/2006 @ 03:56 [ref: 14839] |
| Lou Varricchio Middlebury, VT | The Pennsylania Skyrocket mentioned above was on display at Walt Disney Elementary School near Philadelphia and later sold to a Connecticut man. The experimental rocket plane remains in his barn waiting to be restored last I knew. It is too valuable to be allowed to rust away. Someone should get this bird in a museum display before it's too late.
See: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/levittownrelics/rocket/index.htm 11/25/2006 @ 03:44 [ref: 14838] |
| Mark Lincoln Houston, TX | Bridgeman went on to fly the first flight and Douglas program in the X-3.
The plane was a real dog with a bad flea infestation. Badly underpowered and barely supersonic in a dive. It was not a total failure, it contributed greatly to development of tires capable of handling extremely high takeoff and landing speeds. It also had vicious inertia coupling problems, and that was it's ONLY contribution to aeronautical knowledge. 05/15/2006 @ 13:58 [ref: 13285] |
| Jerry O\'Neill Cheshire, CT | The D-558 that Barry found in the PA junkyard was aquired by the New England Air Museum. It was an actual airframe with a actual Navy BuAero #. It was used for engineering and structural testing and it never flew.
The Museum decided it was not needed for it's collection and it was sold to a private individual about 10 years ago. 12/07/2005 @ 01:10 [ref: 11898] |
| Tom DeGeorge , MD | I found the NTSB accident report on their web site. It looks like Mr. Bridgeman was killed on Sept. 29, 1968.
If this is the correct report, he was flying a Grumman G-21, and the cause of the accident was undetermined. The report states that the pilot's body was not recovered, which is consistent with the earlier posting here by the eye witness. Mr. Bridgeman was 53 years old and had flown 14,000 plus hours, 3000 in type, and was instrument rated. Dry facts, but his book "The Lonley Sky" is an extraordinarily fine work; starkly honest, espcially for the times, introspective without being self-absorbed, fair without false modesty, and a window into one of the golden ages of aviation. I wish I had known the man. 08/13/2004 @ 15:46 [ref: 8054] |
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