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Description
| Manufacturer: | Douglas | |
| Base model: | D-558 | |
| Designation: | D-558 | |
| Version: | -2 | |
| Nickname: | Skyrocket | |
| Designation System: | U.S. Air Force | |
| Designation Period: | 1948-Present | |
| Basic role: | Research | |
Specifications
| Length: | 42' | 12.8 m | |
| Height: | 12' 8" | 3.8 m | |
| Wingspan: | 25' | 7.6 m | |
| Wingarea: | 175.0 sq ft | 16.2 sq m | |
| Gross Weight: | 15,266 lb | 6,923 kg | |
Propulsion
| No. of Engines: | 1 | ||
| Powerplant: | Westinghouse J34-WE-40 & XLR-8-RM-5 6,000Lb Rocket | ||
| Thrust (each): | 3,000 lb | 1,360 kg | |
Performance
| Max Speed: | 720 mph | 1,159 km/h | 626 kt |
History
| Date | Subject | Event |
| 1951/08/07 | A Douglas D-558-II was flown to 74,495fl at Mach 1.88 by Pilot William 'Bill' Bridgeman at Edwards AFB. | |
| 1953/08/21 | A Douglas D-558-II was flown to a new world altitude record by pilot Col. Marion E. Carl (USMC), reaching 83,825 ft after having been released at 37,000 ft. | |
| 1953/11/20 | A Douglas D-558-II flown by pilot Scott Crossfield, was the first to exceed Mach 2, reaching 1,291 (Mach 2.01) at an altitude of 62,000 ft. |
Examples of this type may be found at
| Museum | City | State |
| National Air and Space Museum | Washington | Dist of Col |
| The Air Museum "Planes of Fame" | Chino | California |
D-558-2 on display
National Air and Space Museum | The Air Museum "Planes of Fame" |
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| glennwilliams Lancaster, CA | Outside my classroom at Antelope Valley College is a Skyrocket on a pedestal. She's still beautiful (although needs some anti-pigeon work) and awe-inspiring. Oddly, our PR department didn't even know her significance. 11/19/2007 @ 09:27 [ref: 18590] |
| Lou Varricchio Middlebury, VT | Re: the Douglas X-3--in my humble opinion, it remains the most stylish of all the experimental manned vehicles of the 1940s-'50s. It's far "sexier" in design than even the X-15 even though it was an underperformer. Sadly, today's X-planes are just flying multimillion dollar scale models; without a live pilot inside the X program has lost all its human drama although the scientific research is astounding. Safety fears ("gosh, we can't send a man up in that! He might buy the farm.") and budget constraints keep the pilots grounded these days. The can without even the Spam inside. Gone are the days of rocket-pilot heroes. (Maybe Virgin Galactic will recapture some of the thrill, as it did with Space Ship 1, with commercial suborbital jaunts above the New Mexico desert in the coming decade. But that, too, will vanish with time.) 11/25/2006 @ 03:56 [ref: 14839] |
| Lou Varricchio Middlebury, VT | The Pennsylania Skyrocket mentioned above was on display at Walt Disney Elementary School near Philadelphia and later sold to a Connecticut man. The experimental rocket plane remains in his barn waiting to be restored last I knew. It is too valuable to be allowed to rust away. Someone should get this bird in a museum display before it's too late.
See: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/levittownrelics/rocket/index.htm 11/25/2006 @ 03:44 [ref: 14838] |
| Mark Lincoln Houston, TX | Bridgeman went on to fly the first flight and Douglas program in the X-3.
The plane was a real dog with a bad flea infestation. Badly underpowered and barely supersonic in a dive. It was not a total failure, it contributed greatly to development of tires capable of handling extremely high takeoff and landing speeds. It also had vicious inertia coupling problems, and that was it's ONLY contribution to aeronautical knowledge. 05/15/2006 @ 13:58 [ref: 13285] |
| Jerry O\'Neill Cheshire, CT | The D-558 that Barry found in the PA junkyard was aquired by the New England Air Museum. It was an actual airframe with a actual Navy BuAero #. It was used for engineering and structural testing and it never flew.
The Museum decided it was not needed for it's collection and it was sold to a private individual about 10 years ago. 12/07/2005 @ 01:10 [ref: 11898] |
| Tom DeGeorge , MD | I found the NTSB accident report on their web site. It looks like Mr. Bridgeman was killed on Sept. 29, 1968.
If this is the correct report, he was flying a Grumman G-21, and the cause of the accident was undetermined. The report states that the pilot's body was not recovered, which is consistent with the earlier posting here by the eye witness. Mr. Bridgeman was 53 years old and had flown 14,000 plus hours, 3000 in type, and was instrument rated. Dry facts, but his book "The Lonley Sky" is an extraordinarily fine work; starkly honest, espcially for the times, introspective without being self-absorbed, fair without false modesty, and a window into one of the golden ages of aviation. I wish I had known the man. 08/13/2004 @ 15:46 [ref: 8054] |
| Mark Hiller Chehalis, WA., WA | To the best of my recollection it was in the summer of 1970 when on our return crossing from Avalon bay to Newport Beach, CA. we observed a Catalina Airlines (PBY)/Grumman do a nose dive, level off just above the water and then made contact, cartwheeling and disintegrating right before our eyes. I steered our 42'fishing boat into the debris field and found the body of pilot Wm. Bridgeman whom now settled and sank before we could get a rope on him. Luckily he was ferrying the plane back empty to Avalon Bay as we saw no other souls. The plane was in small pieces from this horrific impact and we did observe that Mr. Bridgeman was completely stripped of all clothing as evidentely the impact had propelled him straight thru the fuselage. It was a grim sight and it was regretful that we were unable to collect Mr. Bridgeman for a befitting funeral to this veteran aviation pioneer. I gave a complete report to the FAA together with a few photographs taken of the debris field.
Mark Hiller 04/16/2004 @ 20:42 [ref: 7228] |
| Barry Ervin Norristown, PA | In about 1980 I was checking out a big scrapyard in Tullytown (I think?) PA, looking for useable sheet metal and other fascinating junk, when I saw a white sweptback aircraft tail peeking up from behind a huge pile of scrap metal. I went to take a look and was astounded to find a D558-2 Douglas Skyrocket, completely intact and sitting on it's landing gear. Not the most common of junkyard finds, to say the least! I asked the man working in the office about it and was told that it had been sold to a school somewhere; he didn't seem to know how it had been aquired in the first place. The next time I went there (with my camera) it was gone. I seem to recall later reading some reference to what I believe was this plane in which it was described as a "full-scale engineering mockup". Whatever; it would have looked great in my front yard. 04/12/2004 @ 20:00 [ref: 7207] |
| Joe Raimondi , FL | Back in the mid 1950's there was a program on television named "Captain Midnight". The plane he flew was the D-558. In the program it was shown as a side by side two seater. It had a paint scheme very similar to the Air Force "Thunderbirds". It was named the "Silver Dart". When the credits were displayed at the end, the Douglas firm and the U.S. Navy were given credit for their involvement in the show. 02/24/2004 @ 10:18 [ref: 6844] |
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