Product Details

• Directors: Tony Stark
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Full Screen
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: WGBH Boston
• VHS Release Date: March 28, 2000
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6304794436
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,829 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The quest to fly an airplane faster than sound is chronicled in this episode of Nova. The documentary begins in the final years of World War II, when fighter pilots began to notice that their airplanes began performing strangely as they began to attain great speeds during dives. The aircraft became unstable, the controls froze, and pilots who couldn't come out of the dive crashed helplessly to earth. Survivors of such terrifying ordeals speak on camera about what they experienced and reminisce about how flying at the speed of sound was thought to be an impossibility. Plans to develop faster planes are discussed, with looks at Allied and German designs during the war, and the eventual obstacles American designers faced in creating a plane to break what had become known as "the sound barrier" are shown with considerable detail. The plane built for the task, the Bell X1, is shown, and the pilot chosen to fly it on its monumental flight in 1947, Captain Chuck Yeager, recounts his experiences at the controls of an inherently dangerous piece of machinery. As one might expect from Nova, this documentary is intelligent and entertaining, and it also happens to be beautifully photographed. --Robert J. McNamara

Product Description

The international race to build an aircraft that could crack the sound barrier was fraught with danger, ambition, and intrigue. NOVA tells the real story of those who risked all to make aviation history, including Chuck Yeager, who on October 14, 1947 was the first pilot to fly faster than sound.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Breaking the sound barrier, April 14, 2010

By 

Michael Salvio "mikesalvio" (Bridgeport, WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Nova: Faster Than Sound [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Being a NOVA series it is short. I would have liked it to be longer and it deals with many aspects of the project to break the sound barrier. I was looking for information about Chuck Yeager but there is just a little on Yeager in this video.