EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — The first person to fly a winged aircraft at four, five and six times the speed of sound has died. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert M. White was 85.  NASA says the record-setting test pilot who flew X-15 rocket planes in the 1960s died March 17. His son, Greg, told the Orlando Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times that White died in his sleep in Orlando, Fla.

White flew in World War II and the Korean War before he became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles, making 16 flights in X-15s. NASA says White was the first to fly a winged craft at Mach 4, 5 and 6. In 1962, he flew an X-15 more than 59 miles high, earning the Air Force rating of winged astronaut. White later flew 70 missions in Vietnam and retired in 1981.

REST IN PEACE!

“What’s on your window?” – Flightline Fabrications

This long awaited miniseries from those who brought you Band of Brothers tracks the intertwined odysseys of three U.S. Marines – Robert Leckie, John Basilone and Eugene Sledge – across the vast canvas of the Pacific. The extraordinary experiences of these men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain forests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day.

THE PACIFIC

You will not want to miss this one!