Lawrence Clousing and P-80

This image from 1948 shows Clousing getting into a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, an early jet fighter design, for a test flight from Moffett Field. According to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the original XP-80 was designed and built in just 143 days during the middle of World War II, and it became the first American aircraft to make a sustained, level flight at better than 500 miles per hour.