Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin was born in January 1923 in Pennsylvania, USA. He began learning to fly at the age of 15. In 1941 at the age of 19 he travelled to Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the war against the Germans.
During his military flying training in Canada, he so impressed his colleagues with his flying skills that they gave him the nickname “Slick.”
After training, he was also a flight instructor in Canada before completing a combat tour in England flying Spitfires alongside RAF squadrons. Goodlin then transferred to the US Navy. Released from active duty in 1944, Goodlin joined Bell as a test pilot. Following the death in a crash of the initial Bell X-1 test pilot Jack Woolams, Goodlin accepted a lucrative verbal agreement from Bell and became, at just 23-years-old, the prime pilot for the experimental X-1. Goodlin went on to make no less than 33 flights in the X-1 between September 1946 and June 1947. However, in June 1947, when the initial subsonic testing of the X-1 was complete and responsibility for further test flights of the X-1 was taken over by the US Army Air Force, they were unwilling to continue the expensive verbal contract for tests flights that Bell had previously agreed with Goodlin. Aggrieved by what he considered to be a breach of faith, Goodlin quickly tendered his resignation.
After leaving Bell, Goodlin looked for work, and was eventually recruited by Joseph Berg, a Hollywood producer, to fly as a volunteer for the IAF.
Joining the only fighter squadron, 101, in Israel, he participated in the 7th January 1949 downing of five RAF fighters. Flying with Canadian John McElroy, they encountered four enemy planes and assumed that they belonged to the Egyptian Air Force. Goodlin and McElroy each shot down one plane.
Later in the afternoon McElroy shot down another one, and American volunteer Bill Schroeder shot down the third one.
Sources: South Africa’s 800 by Henry Katzew
Spyflights website