A linearized, unsteady, inviscid, compressible, relaxing gas flow over slender bodies of general cross sections is considered. Its difference from the classical nonrelaxing case is found to occur entirely because the propagation of one‐dimensional impulsive disturbances differs in the two cases. The lateral forces and moments, to the linearized approximation, are shown not to be affected by nonequilibrium relaxation, but the drag expression contains nonequilibrium terms. Thus, only the decelerated (or accelerated) motion in the direction of flight had to be investigated. General solution is obtained analytically by transform method for arbitrary speeds (subsonic, transonic, or supersonic) and accelerations (or decelerations). A special example is calculated to illustrate the relative magnitude of relaxing drags.