Revell Yeager Super Fighters Bell X-1 Model Kit (1:32 Scale)
 
The X-1 is the stuff of legend. 
 
The X-1 began life in 1944 as part of an U.S. Army Air Force project to see if supersonic flight was possible.
 
Bell Aircraft had already been working with jets and had produced the somewhat lackluster P-59 Airacomet, which actually proved slower than the P-51’s and P-47’s already in service. Bell’s design team was looking into a pure research aircraft to be rocket powered for the maximum amount of thrust possible
 
The aircraft was designed around the silhouette of a .50 caliber bullet, considered one of the cleanest aerodynamic shapes known, with wings and a tail attached to it. The canopy was made as flush and streamlined as possible.
 
Powered by a Reaction Motors, inc., four-chambered XLR-11 rocket engine fueled by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol, it produced 6,000 lbs. of thrust. This came with limited duration, though. The aircraft would have to carried aloft by a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress from which it would be air-dropped and pilot would then ignite the motor, flying until fuel was exhausted and then coming in for a dead stick landing on the dry lake runway at Muroc Army Air Field (Now Edwards Air Force Base).
 
The final aircraft in the program was the X-1E. It completed its final flight in 1958, being grounded after structural cracks were discovered. This would prove to be one of the longest running test programs, spanning more than a decade. Three aircraft survive located at the National Air and Space Museum, the Museum of the United States Air Force, and at Edward Air Force Base.
 
The Model box has some wear with age. It has its factory seal wrap still on.