Obituary: Scott Crossfield

Scott Crossfield

American Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead yesterday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, authorities said.


The aircraft carrying the 84-year-old pilot crashed in a remote and heavily forested gully. Among the small community of test pilots, Crossfield was a legend, said veteran test pilot Fred Griffith. "This guy was a gentleman and an aviator.


That's the top of the line," said Griffith, a test pilot for 40 years. "There's pilots, there's drivers. An aviator is something else. That's the best I can say about anyone in this business."


In the early 1950s, Crossfield had been one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of Nasa. Air force Captain 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 2092km/h 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 24,300m.


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