i was watching the movie "the right stuff" which is supposed to be a historically accurate movie, and is in the library of congress for its value. in the scenes where chuck yeager breaks the sound barrier and later the other guy breaks the second sound barrier, both times the rocket plane is shown as going upwards, i could have sworn the help of a shallow dive was needed to break the sound barriers.
Do not confuse "Hollywood" with History. The value of the historical record is in the story, and charecters, not the camera angles.
The second event was the crash involving Chuck Yeager, in '63, in a modified F-104 "[SIZE=14.44444465637207px]The NF-104A was able to reach great altitudes through a combination of zoom climbing (trading speed for altitude) and use of the rocket engine. A typical mission involved a level acceleration at 35,000 feet (10,700 m) to [/SIZE]Mach[SIZE=14.44444465637207px] 1.9 where the rocket engine would be ignited, and on reaching Mach 2.1 the aircraft would be pitched up to a climb angle of 50-70° by carefully applying a load equal to 3.5 [/SIZE]g[SIZE=14.44444465637207px]. The J79 [/SIZE]afterburner[SIZE=14.44444465637207px] would start to be throttled down at approximately 70,000 feet (21,300 m) followed shortly after by manual fuel cutoff of the main jet engine itself around 85,000 feet (25,900 m) to prevent fast rising engine temperatures from damaging the turbojet. After continuing over the top of its [/SIZE]ballistic[SIZE=14.44444465637207px] arc the NF-104 would descend back into denser air where the main engine could be restarted using the [/SIZE]windmill restart[SIZE=14.44444465637207px] technique for recovery to a landing."[/SIZE] [SIZE=14.44444465637207px]70 degrees is pretty much near vertical[/SIZE]
Nope, that was what made the Bell X-1 different. Other previous flirtations with Mach 1 were done in dives and were transitory at best, the X-1 was built to achieve supersonic speeds in level flight or in a climb. As it was, Yeager was in level flight at 42,000 feet when he broke the speed of sound, officially, for the first time, see his flight report: http://www.456fis.org/X-1/53.bmp The problem with flying at sustained Mach 1 speeds in a dive is that you are flying into thicker air where the speed of sound is greater