The essential components of an airplane are a wing system to sustain it in flight, tail surfaces to stabilize the wings, movable surfaces to control the attitude of the plane in flight, and a power plant to provide the thrust necessary to push the vehicle through the air.
The first plane to break the sound barrier in level flight was a rocket plane – the Bell X-1 in 1948. The North American X-15 broke many speed and altitude records in the 1960s and pioneered engineering concepts for later aircraft and spacecraft.