"FROM SABRE TO RAPTOR" by Mike Machat
An interesting combination of past and present Air Force jet fighters as they fly over Edwards Air Force Base.
When the Air Force Flight Test Center was established on 25 June 1951, Edwards AFB was already the de facto center of American flight research, test and development. The turbojet revolution in America had been launched at the base with the first flight of the XP-59A in October 1942 and Chuck Yeager had achieved the supersonic breakthrough in the X-1 in October 1947.
Thus the new Flight Test Center already had a uniquely solid foundation and, over the next five decades, it would build on it impressively. From the F-86 to the F-22, the B-52 to the B-2, the C-124 to the C-17, and from the X-1 to the X-15 and the Space Shuttle, the AFFTC has played a preeminent role in the forging the future of the SAF and, indeed, the world of aerospace in general. It has tested and supported the development of virtually every aircraft that has entered the USAF inventory and it has been involved in more major milestones in flight than any other comparable organization in the world.
