Scott Crossfield Dead at 84

[Amazon 7]

I just heard a news report on MSNBC that the body of Scott Crossfield has been pulled from the wreckage of his plane. He was one of the pilots featured in the movie "The Right Stuff" and was the first pilot to hit twice the speed of sound.

More to come as they get the links up.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12405728/




Another of our greatest aviation pioneers has left us... Fly Free Scott

[chaoskitty 0]

Wow...

[airtwardo 6]

How truly sad...

I knew Mr. Crossfield through the many Air Shows he attended nationwide over the years.

He use to spend hours on end in the Parachute packing room with our team during EAA Oshkosh...drinking beer and telling stories.

A more personable gentleman you you never hope to meet, ALL of Aviation mourns his passing.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[ACMESkydiver 0]

I read this at the memorial of a friend...it seems appropriate now.

Impressions of a Pilot
-By Gary Claud Stoker


Flight is freedom in its purest form,
To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;
To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,
To feel the joy that swells within;
To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,
And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;
Then back to earth at the end of a day,
Released from the tensions which melted away.

Should my end come while I am in flight,
Whether brightest day or darkest night;
Spare me your pity and shrug off the pain,
Secure in the knowledge that I'd do it again;

For each of us is created to die,
And within me I know,
I was born to fly.


Blue skies to Mr. Crossfield

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[popsjumper 2]

Fly in peace, Mr. Crossfield.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[CSpenceFLY 1]

According to the other thread he was flying yesterday morning in Ga.I would not have wanted to be flying in north Georgia yesterday morning.


.

[Amazon 7]

Right.... at first they were talking about his plane going down but they did not know if it was him flying it or not. They found the wreckage and confirmed it was him this morning.




Updated website

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12405728/

RANGER, Ga. - Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said.

Searchers discovered the wreckage of a small plane about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta, but the Civil Air Patrol didn’t immediately identify the body inside.

Ed Fleming, Crossfield’s son-in-law, told The Associated Press from Crossfield’s home in Herndon, Va., that family had been told it was Crossfield.


Crossfield’s Cessna was last spotted in the same area on Wednesday while on flight from Alabama to Virginia. There were thunderstorms in the area when officials lost radar and radio contact with the plane at 11:15 a.m., said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Crossfield, 84, had been one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA, in the early 1950s.

Set Mach 2 record
Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager had already broken the speed of sound in his history-making flight in 1947. But Crossfield set the Mach 2 record — twice the speed of sound — in 1953, when he reached 1,300 mph in NACA’s Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.

In 1960, Crossfield reached Mach 2.97 in an X-15 rocket plane launched from a B-52 bomber. The plane reached an altitude of 81,000 feet. At the time, Crossfield was working as a pilot and design consultant for North American Aviation, which made the X-15. He later worked as an executive for Eastern Airlines and Hawker Siddley Aviation.

More recently, Crossfield had a key role in preparations for the attempt to re-enact the Wright brothers’ flight on the 100th anniversary of their feat near Kitty Hawk, N.C. He trained four pilots for the Dec. 17, 2003, flight attempt in a replica of the brothers’ flyer, but poor weather prevented the take-off.

Among his many honors, Crossfield was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983.

On Wednesday, his plane had left Prattville, Ala., around 9 a.m. en route to Manassas, Va., not far from his home.

[Guest]

Blue Skies, Scotty.

mh

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[2fat2fly 0]

Just an update, the preliminary (and note that it is preliminary) NTSB report says that the debris is consistant with an inflight break up of the aircraft.

Mr. Crossfield always came by the booth to see us at the major shows-unfortunately, I wasn't there when he made the visit at Sun-N-Fun. A true gentleman and a real class guy.

I am not the man. But the man knows my name...and he's worried

[Meux 0]

My dad worked on the X-15. Scott Crossfield is one of the names from my earliest memories of aviation.

What an amazing history.

God Bless His Family.

MH