"An American Adventure: The Rocket Pilots"

Here's a little something for you aviation history buffs: "An American Adventure: The Rocket Pilots"

It is a 1981 documentary on the X-15 rocket plane program from NBC News (back in the days when NBC News was a quality organization). I have it on DVD.

The video's synopsis:

A comprehensive documentary covering the history of aviation high speed innovation and advancement from the first powered flights of the Wright brothers up to and including the X-15 space plane. An emphasis is placed on the adventures and stories of the test pilots of Edwards Air Force Base, and how engineers of the era helped to develop the hardware and technical data that were eventually used by NASA in the design of the Space Shuttle.

Presented by Lloyd Dobyns for NBC News.

Flying Wing and Space Shuttle "Columbia"

After putting the car into the garage for the night, I was rummaging through one moving box and found a metal filing box.

I went through the box when I got back into the house and found a number of things inside, such as my high school diploma, silver dollar proof sets and other stuff.

I saw two large envelopes. I looked in them and found a couple of 8 x 10" photos of the famed Northrop "Flying Wing" in one and several photos of the space shuttle Columbia.

The shuttle photos came from an open house at the Rockwell International plant in Downey, California I attended. It was a "welcome home" event for the most recent shuttle astronauts (it may have been the crew for the second or third shuttle mission in 1981).

I have no idea where the "Flying Wing" photos came from. They could have been from an air show or some other event (I attended a lot of them back in the day). One of the photos had "Northrop" rubber-stamped on the back.

In any case, I scanned both "Flying Wing" photos and a couple of the Columbia photos.

Here they are: