Bell X-2

X-2
Bell X-2 #2 with a collapsed nose landing gear, after landing on the first glide flight, on 27 June 1952 at Edwards Air Force Base.
General information
Type	Research aircraft
National origin	United States
Manufacturer	Bell Aircraft
Primary users	United States Air Force National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
Number built	2
History
First flight	27 June 1952 (first drop glide) 18 November 1955 (first powered flight)
Retired	27 September 1956

The Bell X-2 (nicknamed "Starbuster"^[1]) was an X-plane research aircraft built to investigate flight characteristics in the Mach 2–3 range. The X-2 was a rocket-powered, swept-wing research aircraft developed jointly in 1945 by Bell Aircraft Corporation, the United States Army Air Forces and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to explore aerodynamic problems of supersonic flight and to expand the speed and altitude regimes obtained with the earlier X-1 series of research aircraft.