You concentrate on what you are doing, to do the best job you can, to stay out of a serious situation. That’s the way the X-1 was.

At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.

After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.

Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn't in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.