The Bell X-1 is a rocket engine–powered aircraft, designated originally as the XS-1, and was a joint National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics–U.S. Army Air Forces–U.S. Air Force supersonic research project built by Bell Aircraft. Conceived during 1944 and designed and built in 1945, it achieved a speed of nearly 1,000 miles per hour in 1948. A derivative of this same design, the Bell X-1A, having greater fuel capacity and hence longer rocket burning time, exceeded 1,600 miles per hour in 1954. The X-1 aircraft #46-062, nicknamed Glamorous Glennis and flown by Chuck Yeager, was the first piloted airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight and was the first of the X-planes, a series of American experimental rocket planes designed for testing new technologies.
Bell X-1
XLR-11 rocket engine
Chuck Yeager in front of the X-1 that he nicknamed the Glamorous Glennis.
X-1A in flight
A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typically for at most a few minutes of powered operation, followed by a gliding flight. Unhindered by the need for oxygen from the atmosphere, they are suitable for very high-altitude flight. They are also capable of delivering much higher acceleration and shorter takeoffs. Many rocket aircraft may be drop launched from transport planes, as take-off from ground may leave them with insufficient time to reach high altitudes.
Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft
Opel RAK.1 - World's first public manned flight of a rocket plane on September 30, 1929.
A Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka replica at the Yasukuni Shrine Yūshūkan war museum
The X-15's XLR99 rocket engine used ammonia and liquid oxygen.