The Fastest Man Alive

Fighting the controls, struggling to hold a steady flight path, at fifty thousand feet I was already supersonic. My instruments could not keep up with the acceleration as the incredible momentum hurled the plane skyward. The day was July 23, 1956. The place, miles above Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert. The aircraft was a rocket plane, the Bell X-2. Its pilot was Lt. Col. Frank K. Everest, Jr., USAF. Streaking through space at 1,900 miles an hour, he was flying faster than man had ever traveled. That flight won for the 36 yer-old pilot the 1957 Harmon International Trophy … and the title of THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE… Here is his personal life story, which dramatizes, as never before, the dangers and problems of the pioneers of space exploration.