posted 01-25-2026 08:37 AM               

Space Cover 842: The X1 at Pine Castle

Have you ever flown through Orlando (Florida) International Airport? If so, you've shared some hallowed ground with the legendary X1 rocketplane! But more on that later.

Just over 80 years ago, January 19, 1946, the X1 rocketplane, minus its engine that was still under construction, arrived at Pine Castle Army Air Base (AAB) outside of Orlando for glide tests. Pine Castle was selected because it had warm weather (for January), was sparsely used after WWII ended and was far enough away from Orlando (back then) to minimize public attention to the tests. The X1 was carried aloft ten times by its B29 mother plane and released to glide to a landing on Pine Castle's runway (with at least one excursion onto the grass). Bell Aircraft test pilot Jack Woolams flew these ten flights. Now comes the gray area – some sources (including the cachet above) call January 19 the date of the first glide flight while most sources call January 25 as the date of the first glide flight. Nonetheless, January 19 was the date that the X1 and its team arrived at Pine Castle and has a place in history. The ten flights were:

• January 25, 1946 (maybe January 19)
  
• February 5, 1946
  
• February 5, 1946 (second flight of the day)
• February 11, 1946 (landing gear retracted, left wing damage)
  
• February 19, 1946 (nosewheel collapsed, a common problem throughout the program)
  
• February 25, 1946
  
• February 25, 1946 (second flight of the day)
  
• February 26, 1946
  
• February 26, 1946 (second flight of the day)
  
• March 6, 1946

After these ten flights, the X1 was ferried back to the Bell plant in Buffalo, NY to await installation of its engine. The Pine Castle tests verified the glide performance of the X1 and pointed out that rocket-powered flights were going to need a lot bigger area for flying and landing. So, the powered flights that started later that year were moved out to Muroc AAB on a dry lake in the California desert. Also, Woolams was killed in the crash of another plane and was replaced for the powered flight tests by Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin (see SCOTW 630).

So, back to covers! The cover above was postmarked at Orlando's Pine Castle Branch on January 19, 1981, thirty-five years after the arrival of the X1 at the airbase. The Prosser Cachet questionably lists January 19 as the first glide flight date, but as mentioned above, that was the arrival date, nonetheless. And back in the '80's and '90's I used this cover to collect X1 autographs, (clockwise from upper left) Scott Crossfield, mother plane pilot Bob Cardenas, Chuck Yeager, Bob Champine, Pete Everest, and Slick Goodlin.

Oh, and Pine Castle AAB later became Pine Castle Air Force Base (AFB), then McCoy AFB, and ultimately Orlando International Airport. The west side of Orlando International subsumes the old Pine Castle grounds. And that's the rest of the story.

posted 02-02-2026 03:31 PM               

Dennis provided very interesting information about the X-1 at Pine Castle and not being familiar with the ill-fated Jack Woolams, I looked for further information about him.

He was Bell Aircraft's chief pilot and, as one source mentioned, would have been seriously considered to have piloted the first flight to exceed the speed of sound instead of Chuck Yeager.

Woolams was killed in a race-configured P-39, named Cobra I, while practicing for the Cleveland Air Races and its 1946 Thompson Trophy Race award.

Woolman's partner, Alvin "Tex" Johnston, then flying Cobra II, won the race and gave one-half of his $19,400 winnings to Woolman's widow.

By dying so early in the X-1 Program, Woolams' autograph is among the rarest of the 18 X-1 pilots' autographs and his and 3-4 other X-1 pilots' autographs make a complete 18 X-1 pilot autograph set unattainable by us present-day collectors; work on a moonwalker or X-15 set instead.