UNSUNG PILOTS TASTED AIR GLORY.

Byline: Bill Kaczor / Associated Press 

A Navy and a Marine test pilot were the toast of the nation 50 years ago when they set consecutive world speed records in bright red experimental jets.

Pictures of Turner Caldwell and Marion Carl and accounts of how they pushed their Douglas D-558-1 Skystreaks to just under Mach 1 - the speed of sound - were on front pages everywhere.

Caldwell, a Navy pilot, set a 641 mph record on Aug. 20, 1947, and five days later Carl, a Marine, broke it by going 10 mph faster, both at Muroc Field, now Edwards Air Force Base.

But their fame was fleeting and soon forgotten.

Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager wrested away the title of world's fastest human by breaking the sound barrier two months later, also at Muroc. He flew a Bell X-1 rocket plane to Mach 1.07 - 700 mph - on Oct. 14.

Yeager's flight later was immortalized in the book and movie ``The Right Stuff.'' Carl and Caldwell, however, didn't even rate a mention in Tom Wolfe's 1979 best-seller about the beginnings of the U.S. manned space program and its roots in military test flying.

``It's not much of a deal now,'' said Carl, 81, a retired major general, as he recalled his record-setting flight from his home in Roseburg, Ore.

But it was a big deal back when the Navy and newly created Air Force were fiercely competing to protect and expand their roles after World War II, said Hill Goodspeed, historian for the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla.

The rivalry carried over to flight testing until 1956 when Skystreak's successor, the D-558-2 Skyrocket, made its final landing.

``For the Navy it was a real pivotal program,'' Goodspeed said. ``It was something they showcased . . . something they could put before the public.''

Douglas Aircraft, now part of Boeing Co., built only three planes of each type at its plant in El Segundo. Douglas later proposed a third version to rival the North American X-15, flown by NASA and Air Force pilots, but it never got off the drawing board.

``The Navy and the Marine Corps kind of backed away,'' Carl said. ``It was just too expensive a program for them; that's my impression. They let the Air Force go ahead and stick their necks out and spend the money.''

Caldwell's Skystreak, which broke a 624 mph record set by an Air Force pilot two months earlier, is on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, a crimson curiosity amid mostly blue and gray combat aircraft.

Carl's D-558-1 crashed the following May, killing Howard Lilly, a pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, forerunner of NASA. The military test programs operated in conjunction with the civilian agencies.

The third Skystreak, owned by the Marine Corps Air-Ground Museum of Quantico, Va., is in crates at the Cherry Point, N.C., Naval Aviation Depot awaiting restoration.

Although a Skystreak eventually hit supersonic speed in a dive, the plane was never intended to reach Mach 1, said R.B. ``Bob'' Smith, then assistant chief of aerodynamics for Douglas. It was designed, instead, to provide data on handling problems in level flight at high subsonic speeds.

The Skystreak records were set in full view of the press while the Air Force kept Yeager's supersonic flight a secret for two months until it was leaked in Aviation Week magazine.

``We didn't have any idea, and we had people there at Edwards at the time,'' said Smith, 83, of Balboa Island. ``If they knew, they kept their mouths shut.''

Once Yeager's achievement became public, it overshadowed the Navy program and continues to do so. Yeager, 74, a retired brigadier general living in San Antonio, is planning to re-enact his first supersonic flight Oct. 14 during a 50th anniversary celebration at Edwards.

No similar observance is to be held for the Skystreak flights.

Carl, a leading World War II ace with 18.5 aerial victories, stopped flying years ago. Caldwell, also a highly decorated World War II pilot from Arlington, Va., retired from the Navy as a captain and died in 1991.

Also passing away that year in San Diego was Ed Heinemann, who designed the Skystreak, Skyrocket and top Navy warplanes for Douglas.

``Ed Heinemann told me once he wished he had a better PR (public relations) guy,'' said retired Navy Capt. Rosario Rausa, co-author of Heinemann's memoirs. ``He was highly regarded, but he never had the visibility of Chuck Yeager and the X-1.''

The stubby Skystreak had straight wings and a jet engine, while the Skyrocket was more elegant with a needle nose and swept wings, powered by rocket and jet engines.

In 1953, Carl set a world altitude record of 83,235 feet and NACA pilot Scott Crossfield made the first flight at twice the speed of sound, both in a Skyrocket now at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Within a month, however, Yeager had broken Crossfield's Mach 2 mark by taking an X-1A to Mach 2.4.

The Skystreaks' red paint was standard for test aircraft of the time, leading to the nickname ``Crimson Test Tube.'' But rival designers had another name for it, Smith recalled with a chuckle.

Engine trouble - later fixed - had aborted its first flights. Shortly thereafter a package arrived from across the street at North American. Smith opened it.

``It's a tortoise, a desert tortoise, all painted red with two flashlight bulbs on the front of it and a battery taped onto it,'' Smith said. ``And it said `D-558 Groundstreak.' ''

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PHOTO Fifty years ago, Navy pilot Turner Caldwell flew this D-558-1 Skystreak, now at a Pensacola, Fla., museum, to a speed record.

Associated Press