08/19/2026
In light of all of the aviation-themed events this month at the National Museum of the Marine Corps and celebrating today being , we are pivoting from our normal Weapons Wednesday to 🚁🛩️
The Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak seems an odd airplane to be in the National Museum
of the Marine Corps' collection, but there is a connection between the Marines and this
research aircraft.
The D-588-1 grew out of conferences in March 1944 between the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, NASA's predecessor), the Army, and the Navy. With
aircraft top speeds getting faster, all agreed that they needed to explore problems
associated with approaching and exceeding the speed of sound. The proposed aircraft
should be able to take off and land under its own power, and it should be as fast as
possible using existing engines.
Douglas Aircraft Co.'s winning design was the D-588. Douglas proposed an initial build
of three aircraft powered by a General Electric TG-180 (later redesignated the J-35)
axial flow turbojet engine. The second phase proposed installing a smaller jet engine to
make room for a rocket engine. A third phase would develop a combat aircraft, but this
phase was soon dropped to focus on the research.
As finished, the three D-588-1 aircraft (for the first phase) featured a long, tubular
fuselage with nose intake, tailpipe exiting behind the empennage, and a bubble canopy
sitting on top of the fuselage rather than blending in with it. The canopy was soon
modified to a hooded covering with a flat, V-shaped windshield. The straight wings and
empennage were entirely conventional to reduce risks and uncertainties. It was painted
scarlet to make it more visible in the sky, though NACA later repainted it in white, finding
that was actually better than the scarlet for visibility.
Douglas pilots did the initial flight testing starting in April 1947. By August, the first two
D-588-1s were approaching 0.85 Mach (Mach 1 is the speed of sound), and Navy
Department test pilots began participating in the program as well, and here is where the
Marine connection comes in: Marine aviator Marion Carl had become famous during the
Battle of Guadalcanal as the Marines' first ace. He finished the war as the Marines'
seventh-highest ace with 18.5 victories. Following the war, Carl was in the first class of
graduates of the Navy's new Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, MD, and was selected
to participate in the D-588 testing.
Once the flight characteristics of the aircraft were known, the Navy authorized then-
Major Carl and Navy Commander Turner Caldwell to attempt to set new speed records.
On 20 August 1947, Caldwell averaged 640.7 miles per hour over a designated low-
level course. Five days later, Carl set a new record of 650.8 mph.
Carl's record did not last long either: USAF pilot Chuck Yeager flew faster than Mach 1
on 14 October in the rocket-powered X-1. And the D-588-1 was soon eclipsed by the D-
588-2, which had swept wings and empennage, and eliminated the small jet engine in
favor of pure rocket power. Like the X-1, the rocket-powered D-588-2 had to be air-dropped. Marion Carl remained with the program and on 21 August, 1953, flew to an unofficial altitude record of 83,235 feet at Mach 1.728.
Unfortunately, the D-588-1 in which Carl set his speed record was destroyed in an
accident in 1948. The National Museum of the Marine Corps, however, has one of the
other two surviving aircraft in the collection in honor of Carl's achievements. The aircraft
is on loan to the Sullenberger Aviation Museum in Charlotte, NC, where it is displayed in
its white NACA markings.
