X-2 on Transportation Dolly

Autor:

NASA

Shortlink:

https://czwiki.cz/b/c8ed2

Zdroj:

Wikimedia Commons

Formát:

3000 x 2343 Pixel (3887706 Bytes)

Popis:

This 1952 photograph shows the X-2 #2 aircraft mounted on a special transportation dolly at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The dolly was steerable and was used for transporting the X-2 around and for towing it off the lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base after a landing. This was the number 2 airplane (46-675), which was lost on May 12, 1953, on a captive flight over Lake Ontario when the airplane exploded during a liquid-oxygen topoff test, killing the pilot, Jean Ziegler, and EB-50A crewman Frank Wolko. Almost no debris was recovered from Lake Ontario, so no cause for the explosion could be determined. Later, however, investigations of similar explosions in the X-1 #3, X-1A, and X-1D traced the problem to Ulmer leather gaskets, which exuded tricresyl phosphate. This substance caused detonations in the supercold atmosphere of the airplanes' liquid oxygen tanks. As the X-2 #2 also had these gaskets, they were probably the cause of the explosion in that aircraft as well.

Licence:

Public domain

Credit:

https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/X-2/HTML/E-5749.html (image link); cropped from source. See also https://www.dvidshub.net/image/835152/x-2.

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