What was the record for the highest man-made flight before Gagarin's spaceflight? My recent conversation with uhoh reminded me of something which stays kind of unmentioned in history of air and space flight, namely the altitude record prior to Gagarin's Vostok 1 mission. I wonder what the highest human flight had been before the first spaceflight occured. There's a Wikipedia list on (airplane, helicopter and balloon) flight altitude records: Flight altitude record, which but is quite muddled up. From the list I conclude that Iven Kincheloe's Bell X-2 flight on Sept 7, 1956 was the altitude record until Vostok 1, Kincheloe having reached an altitude of ~126,300 ft (~ 38,5 km). Am I right and why does it remain so unmentioned, somehow? I mean like it was the highest flight until Vostok 1 and the highest airplane flight until the ones of the X-15.
Joe Walker flew X-15 #2 to 169,600 ft (51.7 km) on 1961-03-30, thirteen days before Vostok-1.
Source: X-15 flight log