This answer will have caused raised eyebrows in more than one establishment. As every quizzer surely knows, the first pilot to break the sound barrier was Chuck Yeager.
Peter Twiss's claim to fame is that he was the first pilot to fly at over 1,000 miles per hour in level flight. (The speed of sound in air is about 767 mph.) On 10 March 1956, in a Fairey Delta 2, he raised the world air speed record to 1,132 mph – an increase of some 300 mph over the record set the year before by an F–100 Super Sabre.
Charles Elwood 'Chuck' Yeager broke the sound barrier in the rocket–powered Bell XS–1 (pet name Glamorous Glennis), on 14 October 1947.
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