North American X-15: Including the X-1, X-2 and Skyrocket (Blueprint)

A wonderful book and well worth the cost. A 'must' for every aviation fan.

4,520 mph. Mach 6.70. 354,200ft. Just some of the astounding statistics that could be claimed by the X-15 when it stated to smash records in the early 1960s. As a youngster becoming increasingly enamoured with aviation at this time, I can well remember the awesome reputation that this extraordinary rocket plane carried.This is the second book in Crecy’s new Blueprint series, following on from Saturn I/IB Rocket, also by the same author, which I have already reviewed on this site. I am not in possession of any of the other half a dozen or so which have previously been published on the X-15 so cannot make any direct comparisons, but what I can say is that this is a fine looking piece of work, following the publisher’s usual clean, modern style with an excellent range of nicely reproduced images.The first several chapters of the book deal with the increasing progress through the frontiers of flight in the search for speed, particularly in the immediate post-war period with the advent of Bell’s X-1 in which Chuck Yeager made the first supersonic flight in 1947, the X-2 and the Douglas Skyrocket. The story develops as the boundaries are then pushed ever further beyond Mach 2.The mid-part of the book gives a thorough description of X-15 evolution, engineering, testing and operational results, a fascinating story that reads nowadays as though it comes from the Dan Dare era.The work is rounded off with three appendices dealing with the X-15’s specification, Edwards AFB, X-15 research pilots and a compete tabulation of all X-15 flights.Like the Saturn book before, the cover is hardback glossy, with no dust jacket. The front cover photograph shows the X-15 in its later white-painted ablative finish, but rear cover makes up for that with a fine photograph in the far more familiar black livery.Again the book’s price seems like good value. The impressively presented material within is likely to please anyone with an interest in these extraordinary experimental craft. It will interesting to see what’s next in this new Blueprint series.

Many books have been written about the North American X-15 hypersonic suborbital spaceplane before, namely Dennis Jenkins' work "Hypersonic: The Story of the North American X-15". Indeed, even though the X-15 is forever remembered as the fastest manned aircraft and fastest suborbital spaceplane ever built, it was not until I received a copy of Bill Rose's Secret Projects volume about military space projects that I learned that the X-15 wasn't a design in its own right but instead was the end result of a competition by NACA and the US Air Force involving design studies for a hypersonic research aircraft by not just North American but also other companies with either experience building supersonic research aircraft or incipient involvement in development of superfast aircraft.Given that the X-15 was the last in a long line of manned American research aircraft designed to investigate speeds in flight regimes faster than 700 miles per hour, regardless of the role it played in aerodynamically contributing to development of the future Space Shuttle, David Baker does a nice job organizing this book into three sections plus an appendices section. The first section of this book is devoted to discussing the first generation of American manned research aircraft that heralded the dawn of the supersonic age, not just the iconic Bell X-1 but also the Bell X-2 that became the first aircraft to reach Mach 3 and the Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak and D-558-2 Skyrocket for the US Navy, the latter which became the first aircraft to fly at Mach 2. The second section is a very serious discussion of the technical genesis of the X-15 and the engineering aspects of the X-15, including an overview of all aircraft designs submitted for the X-15 competition, the materials used in the X-15's construction as well as the engine used to power the X-15 and the aircraft's systems and subsystems, like the flight controls, cockpit, ejection seat, and suit developed for X-15 pilots. The third section of this book covers the X-15 flight test program, including discussion of the all-time altitude and speed records attained by the X-15 as well as the crash of the third X-15 in November 1967 that killed Michael Adams, but also describes advanced X-15 studies such the orbital X-15B and several delta-wing X-15 proposals with either scramjet power or pure rocket power (including a scheme to launch a delta winged X-15 from the XB-70 Valkyrie). In the appendices section, the first appendix provides physical specifications for the X-15, while Appendix 2 describes the air base at which the X-15 was tested (along with a brief discussion of the X-for-Research aircraft designation series in which the X-15 designation was assigned), and third appendix provides brief biographies of the pilots who flew the X-15 whereas the fourth appendix lists all powered flights of the X-15 plus the only unpowered X-15 flight and captive carry flights.With all due respect, I'm glad that the author correctly lists the Douglas submission for the X-15 contest as the Model 684 because it and the earlier Model 671 (which was a proposed hypersonic derivative of the Skyrocket predating the X-15 competition) were incorrectly conflated with each other under the D-558-3 designation in some older books, and the Model 671 was only a Navy-funded design study, and therefore wasn't the Douglas submission for the X-15 contest.

Really interesting and complete book on the X-15 history... (at a good price too...)

Książka ogólnie całkiem niezła ale niestety lepsza jest pozycja o X-15 Dennisa Jenkinsa. Tutaj mamy ponad 100 stron ogólnego wstępu o X-1 i wersjach rozwoju który doprowadził do powstania X-15. Jakość druku przyzwoita a książka została wydrukowana w Bułgarii. Jeśli ktoś jest zainteresowany to pomocna pozycja ale jednak są trochę lepsze...

Book arrived in great shape!! Good transaction!

There hasn't been a decent review of the X-15 Program since Jay Miller's "the X-Planes : X-1 to X-45 " (Midland Publishing , UK , 2001) 30 page chapter on the X-15 came out 20 years ago ago. I was hoping for a lot of new information .. Instead , the first 145 pages were about the X-15's antecedents (X-1, X-2 , etc.) which , while nice, was covered in other works . The remaining 200 pages were a good expansion of the original Miller information . Still , " X-Planes" is long out of print , and a new text is better than nothing and it is reasonably priced at $44.95 for the amount of information it provides . So - this text will be a worthwhile addition to one's Aviation Library for those who missed "X-Planes" . I'd recommend both. .