Top Of The Pyramid.

"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the Sound Barrier."

- prologue narration from The Right Stuff; Philip Kaufman, 1983.

The Americans have Edwards Air Force Base in California, and the Russians had Gromov Flight Research Institute near Zhukovsky, nearly 25 miles south-east of Moscow. Although it is well known that Chuck Yeager was the first man to break the Sound Barrier flying the Bell X-1 on October 14th 1947, the first Soviet pilot to go supersonic was I. E. Fedorov, flying the Lavochkin La 176 experimental jet fighter on 26th December 1948.