On the morning of Aug. 15 (as the Navy told about it last week), William Barton Bridgeman, Douglas Aircraft Co. test pilot, climbed into a B29, sat down in its crew's quarters as it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on Muroc Dry Lake, Calif. Under the bomber's belly hung Bill Bridgeman's own baby: the milk-white Douglas Skyrocket, slim, needle-nosed, with four rocket motors.
When the B-29's Pilot George Jensen got the bomber up to 20,000 ft., the crew topped off the rocket plane's tanks with 45 gallons of "lox" (liquid oxygen), fuming...
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