posted 08-27-2017 09:34 AM               

Space Cover #432: Not Quite Muroc

It's a pretty ho-hum looking postcard, postmarked at Mojave, CA on October 3, 1947. But there is a backstory.

Seventy years ago this month, the Army Air Corps, unhappy with Bell Aircraft's progress on flight testing the rocket powered X-1, took over the project. They brought in a brash young war hero named Chuck Yeager to take over test flying the plane and start pushing towards the speed of sound. Yeager made his first rocket powered flight on August 29, 1947 reaching 85% of the speed of sound (Mach 0.85). Over his next 9 flights he incrementally pushed his speeds past Mach 0.85, working his way past Mach 1 (speed of sound) on October 14, 1947. One of those "work up" flights occurred on October 3, 1947 at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards AFB) reaching Mach 0.92.

So, wouldn't it be great to have a Muroc postmarked cover for this flight, or any of Yeager's X-1 flights? YES! Unfortunately after WWII, Muroc had shrunk to a fraction of its wartime size, and postmarks from the Muroc Post Office in this timeframe are very scarce. Often, Muroc's mail was sent to nearby Mojave ("nearby" is about 20 miles in the middle of the desert) for processing. So, in all my decades of searching for Muroc postmarked covers for the early X-1 flights, this postcard, postmarked at Mojave on the date of Yeager's October 3 flight is as close as I have found. Was it from the base? Not sure. But I'd like to think that it at least heard the distant roar of Yeager's rocket engine...