Sonic Wind: The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth

by Craig Ryan

Overview

The untold story of an eccentric, scientific visionary whose death-defying research has saved millions of lives.

Sixty years ago, cars and airplanes were still deathtraps waiting to happen. Today, both are safer than ever, thanks in part to one pioneering air force doctor’s research on seatbelts and ejection seats. The exploits of John Paul Stapp (1910–1999) come to thrilling life in this biography of a Renaissance man who was once blasted—faster than a .45 caliber bullet—across the desert in his Sonic Wind rocket sled, only to be slammed to a stop in barely a second. The experiment put him on the cover of Time magazine and allowed his swashbuckling team to gather the data needed to revolutionize automobile and aircraft design. But Stapp didn’t stop there. From the legendary high-altitude balloon tests that ensued to the ferocious battles for car safety legislation, Craig Ryan’s book is as much a history of America’s transition into the Jet Age as it is a biography of the man who got us there safely.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631491910
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	349,796
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Craig Ryan is the author of acclaimed books on extreme adventure and scientific discovery in the stratosphere as well as the coproducer of the documentary film The Angry Sky. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part I The Glorious Rebellion Against Dissolution

1 Where Are My Children To-Night? 7

2 The Most Interesting Place 18

3 Colonel Tank and Colonel Gas 33

4 Scum Jobs 40

5 The Citadel of Aeromedical Research 54

Part II The Hot Siberia of the Air Force

6 The Battle of Muroc 73

7 Oscar Eightball and the Curbstone Clinic 83

8 Stapp's First Rides 98

9 Anticipating Strict Compliance 111

10 G-Force Chimps 117

11 Brother, We Are the Goats 136

12 Evicted 145

13 Solo on Lovers Lane 160

14 Waiting for a Tiger to Spring 175

15 Subject Had Considerable Apprehension 185

Part III Above the Armstrong Line

16 The Conference 205

17 Space Scientists in Hollywood 223

18 Space Scientists in Space 232

19 The Most Significant Apparatus 250

20 Kicked Upstairs 264

21 The Survivors Club 274

22 Exit from Valley Forge 289

23 Nazi Doctors and the Never-Ending Road Trip 299

Part IV The Ghosts That Never Happened

24 Washington 313

25 Slugging Away at the Standards 329

26 Who Wants a Resurrection, Anyway? 346

27 Honor and Violation 366

28 The Stapp Years 371

Appendix: How Fast? 377

Notes 379

Interviews 387

List of Illustrations 389

Acknowledgments 391

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

"Remarkable…[an] intriguing book about this unusual and mostly intriguing man."

Dallas Morning News - Michael Merschel

05/25/2015
Adventure writer Ryan (Magnificent Failure) rescues the brilliant, obsessive John Paul Stapp (1911–1999) from obscurity with this lively biography. Stapp made the cover of Time magazine in 1955, thanks to dangerous high-speed experiments in which he used himself as the subject. Unlike the theatrical efforts of daredevils such as Evel Knievel and Super Dave Osborne, Stapp’s feats led to important scientific advances. In 1946, Stapp, an Army Air Corps medical consultant, was assigned to simulate airplane crashes in order to improve the dismal pilot survival rate. The experiment that followed involved accelerating a rocket-propelled sled to high speed before abruptly applying the brakes. Crash dummies shattered, chimpanzees died, and Stapp himself broke bones. But in 1954 he reached 632 mph and stopped in 1.4 seconds, enduring (barely) the equivalent of hitting a brick wall at 120 mph and proving that experts had wildly underrated human endurance. “All you had to do,” Ryan remarks, “was protect and restrain them effectively, and they could take almost anything.” Ryan delivers fine explanations of technical details, byzantine military politics, and Stapp’s bumpy personal life, and though he fails to explain Stapp’s suicidal bravery (superiors wisely forbade planned faster runs), readers will share his admiration for Stapp’s achievements. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Compelling and compulsively readable…a curious but charming tale, the story of a man who courted danger—and death—in the ultimate pursuit of safety. Sonic Wind is an engrossing read, and Ryan brings his unlikely hero to life, deftly describing Stapp’s missionary zeal—inherited, presumably, from his parents—for safety."

Emily Anthes

"A beautifully presented and admiring portrait of Stapp…. Mr. Ryan demonstrates a gift for making the complex science of Stapp’s experiments understandable, and he is equally skilled at capturing the spirit of his subject."

Wall Street Journal - Patrick Cooke

★ 05/15/2015
Ryan's (Magnificent Failure) protagonist, Col. John Paul Stapp (1910–99), an MD who also had a PhD in biophysics, was a career U.S. Air Force officer, flight surgeon, and pioneer in researching the impact of acceleration and deceleration on humans. By riding the rocket sled Sonic Wind on a trial run in December 1954, Stapp showed that a pilot could survive a 46.2G decelerative force seated in the forward position with an advanced harness. Equally significant, he also attained an accelerative speed of 639 mph, which set the land record and made him the fastest man on Earth at that time. The colonel next directed a program, Project Manhigh, testing human endurance at the edge of space, employing piloted high-altitude balloon flights, which helped prepare for America's first manned space launch in 1961. Ryan notes that Stapp parlayed his considerable celebrity (he was portrayed on a cover of Time magazine and on the documentary TV series This Is Your Life) as a means to improve automobile safety, pushing for the installation of seat belts in American cars. He was in attendance as President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Highway Safety Act of 1966, requiring seat belts in all new cars sold domestically beginning in 1968. Stapp received numerous awards, including inductions into the International Space Hall of Fame and the National Aviation Hall of Fame for his contributions to aviation safety. VERDICT A fine, groundbreaking biography of one of aeromedical sciences' more legendary figures. Recommended for scholars and devotees of aviation and space exploration, biophysicists, automotive safety specialists, and all public libraries.—John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Library Journal

★ 2015-05-16
An author specializing in aviation tells the remarkable, almost-forgotten story of an aerospace pioneer. In September 1955, the cover of Time featured a portrait of the Air Force medical officer "Space Surgeon Stapp." That same year, John Paul Stapp (1910-1999) was the subject of TV's popular This Is Your Life and a Hollywood movie. His suddenly high profile stemmed from a land speed record set aboard a rocket sled that made him the "Fastest Man on Earth." This glamorous moniker, though, came really as a byproduct of Stapp's principal work, a lifetime study of massive acceleration and deceleration forces and the limits of human tolerance on land and in the air, experiments in which he frequently used himself as the guinea pig. Responsible for radical new designs of cockpits, ejection seats, crash helmets, parachutes, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, and flight suits, Stapp rewrote textbooks and obliterated the previously accepted limits of human endurance. He also developed pre-breathing procedures for stratospheric flights, vetted the Mercury astronauts for NASA, and conducted important car-crash research years before anyone ever heard of Ralph Nader. Ryan (Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space, 2003, etc.) delights in Stapp's various obsessions, effortlessly explains the aeromedical research, and vividly sets scenes, whether of Stapp's boyhood in Brazil or of his research project in the New Mexico desert, where an unusual gang of scientists and engineers (including a troop of chimpanzees used, not without controversy, in tests) gathered to set the speed record. Indefatigable, Stapp inspired deep loyalty and admiration from those who worked with and for him, despite his unconventional persona. Ryan's full-length biography uncovers the private man, Stapp's offbeat sense of humor, his awkward love life, his passion for classical music, and his friendships with daring test pilots Chuck Yeager and Joe Kittinger, fellow trailblazers whose fame has persisted. A consistently fine appreciation of the medical maverick who, as much as any other, helped make the Space Age possible.

Kirkus Reviews