Chasing the Demon

At the dawn of the Cold War, a band of World War II aces gathered in the Mojave Desert on a top secret quest to break the sound barrier. The true story of what happened in those skies has never been told.Speed. In 1947, it represented the difference between victory and annihilation.After Hiroshima, the ability to deliver a nuclear device to its target faster than one’s enemy became the singular obsession of American war planners. And so, in the earliest days of the Cold War, a highly classified program was conducted on a desolate air base in California’s Mojave Desert. Its aim: to push the envelope of flight to new frontiers. There gathered an extraordinary band of pilots—including Second World War aces Chuck Yeager and George Welch—who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called “the demon.”Shrouding the program in secrecy, the US military reluctantly acknowledged the “barrier” had been broken only after the story was leaked. The full truth has never been revealed—until now.