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    Chasing the Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It
    Chasing the Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It
    Chasing the Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It
    Audiobook8 hours

    Chasing the Demon: A Secret History of the Quest for the Sound Barrier, and the Band of American Aces Who Conquered It

    Written by Dan Hampton

    Narrated by John Pruden

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The New York Times bestselling author of Viper Pilot chronicles another thrilling chapter in American aviation history: the race to break the sound barrier.

    In the aftermath of World War II, the United States accelerated the development of technologies that would give it an advantage over the Soviet Union. Airpower, combined with nuclear weapons, offered a formidable check on Soviet aggression. In 1947, the United States Air Force was established. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers were pioneering a revolutionary new type of aircraft which could do what no other machine had ever done: reach mach 1—a speed faster than the movement of sound—which pilots called ""the demon.""

    Chasing the Demon recreates an era of excitement and danger, adventure and innovation, when the future of the free world was at stake and American ingenuity took the world from the postwar years to the space age. While the pressure to succeed was high, it was unknown whether man or machine could survive such tremendous speeds.

    A decorated military pilot with years of experience flying supersonic fighter jets, Dan Hampton reveals in-depth the numerous potential hazards that emerged with the Air Force’s test flights: controls broke down, engines flamed out, wings snapped, and planes and pilots disintegrated as they crashed into the desert floor. He also introduces the men who pushed the envelope taking the cockpits of these jets, including World War II ace Major Dick Bong and twenty-four-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager, who made history flying the Bell X-1 plane faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947.

    Chasing the Demon recalls this period of the emerging Cold War and the brave adventurers pursing the final frontier in aviation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 24, 2018
    ISBN9780062849564
    Author

    Dan Hampton

    Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dan Hampton flew 151 combat missions during his twenty years (1986–2006) in the United States Air Force. For his service in the Iraq War, Kosovo conflict, and first Gulf War, Col. Hampton received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor, a Purple Heart, eight Air Medals with Valor, five Meritorious Service medals, and numerous other citations. He is a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, USN Top Gun School (TOGS), and USAF Special Operations School. A frequent guest analyst on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC discussing foreign affairs, military, aviation, and intelligence issues, he has published in Aviation History, the Journal of Electronic Defense, Air Force Magazine, Vietnam magazine, and Airpower magazine, and written several classified tactical works for the USAF Weapons Review. He is the author of the national bestsellers Viper Pilot and Lords of the Sky, as well as a novel, The Mercenary.

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    Reviews for Chasing the Demon

    4/5

    25 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      an easy read about a complex topic. Excellent research about the science of compressibility, the sound barrier
    • 2/5
      The author states at the forward that this book is written for the common person. He's right. The subtitle of this book, "A secret history of the quest for the sound barrier and the band of American aces who conquered it", is deceptive. Approximately 10% relates to that topic--the rest is superficial history of the 20th century. If you aren't an aviation buff, then maybe this is a good read.
    • 3/5
      While subtitled as a “secret history” of the first officially documented supersonic flight I found this to be a rather disjointed effort to describe the life and times of the generation of USAAF/USAF test pilots who lead the way into the post-WWII jet age. The problem is that even if one allows that the author is writing for a general audience that has no real knowledge of the history of aeronautics, World War II air warfare, or even the state of U.S society pre-1950, I just came away with a certain sense that this narrative was less than the sum of its parts.Getting back to the notion that this book represents a secret history, what Hampton seems to be reacting against is some of the myth making that has attached to Chuck Yeager over the years and emphasizing that one of the reasons that Yeager got the honor is that he was seen as junior and, frankly, expendable; not to mention that men with better technological credentials were seen as having more important work to do rather than complete a project that the Air Force saw as a wasting asset in terms of publicity and technological development. To put it another way the responsible leadership realized that the X-1 could easily be put in the shade by the F-86 Saber and this was not going to be allowed to happen.When I note that this book underwhelmed me this is not to cast aspersions on Hampton’s writing as I’d be happy to look at his other works. I do suspect that access to Ken Chilstrom, Yeager’s superior officer at the time of the historic flight gave him the sense of opportunities that really weren’t there. I also suspect that the man Hampton really wanted to write about was George Wagner, one of the few fighter pilots to get off the ground during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and lead test pilot for the F-86, who died during the testing of the North American F-100. The problem there is that Wagner was something of an enigma even to the men who remembered and admired him.