Chuck Yeager
Charles Elwood Yeager was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight. He wrote two books about his life, "Yeager" and "Press On: Further Adventures in the Good Life."
Yeager was raised in Hamlin, West Virginia. His career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army, assigned to the Army Air Forces in 1941. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer, later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft. The half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown. On October 12, 1944, he attained "ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission.
After the war, Yeager became a test pilot and flew many types of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered aircraft for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Through the NACA program, he became the first human to officially break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of, for which he won both the Collier and Mackay trophies in 1948. He broke several other speed and altitude records in the following years. In 1962, he became the first commandant of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, which trained and produced astronauts for NASA and the Air Force.
Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In recognition of his achievements and the outstanding performance ratings of those units, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1969 and inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973, retiring on March 1, 1975, for its colloquial similarity to "Mach 1". His three-war active-duty flying career spanned more than 30 years and took him to many parts of the world, including the Korean War zone and the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
Yeager is referred to by many as one of the greatest pilots of all time, and was ranked fifth on Flying list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation in 2013. He flew more than 360 different types of aircraft over a 70-year period, and continued to fly for two decades after retirement as a consultant pilot for the United States Air Force. In 2020 at the age of 97, Yeager died in a Los Angeles-area hospital.
Early life and education
Chuck Yeager was born February 13, 1923, in Myra, West Virginia, to farming parents Albert Hal Yeager and Susie Mae Yeager. When he was five years old, his family moved to Hamlin, West Virginia. Yeager had two brothers, Roy and Hal Jr., and two sisters, Doris Ann and Pansy Lee.He attended Hamlin High School, where he played basketball and football, receiving his best grades in geometry and typing. He graduated from high school in June 1941.
His first experience with the military was as a teen at the Citizens Military Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana, during the summers of 1939 and 1940. On February 26, 1945, Yeager married Glennis Dickhouse. The couple had four children. Glennis Yeager died in 1990, predeceasing her husband by 30 years.
His cousin, Steve Yeager, was a professional baseball catcher.
Career
World War II
On September 12, 1941, Yeager enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and became an aircraft mechanic at George Air Force Base, Victorville, California. At enlistment, Yeager was not eligible for flight training because of his age and educational background, but the entry of the U.S. into World War II less than three months later prompted the USAAF to alter its recruiting standards. Yeager had unusually sharp vision, a visual acuity rated 20/10, which once enabled him to shoot a deer at.At the time of his flight training acceptance, he was a crew chief on an AT-11. He received his pilot wings and a promotion to flight officer at Luke Field, Arizona, where he graduated from Class 43C on March 10, 1943. Assigned to the 357th Fighter Group at Tonopah, Nevada, he initially trained as a fighter pilot, flying Bell P-39 Airacobras, and shipped overseas with the group on November 23, 1943.
File:Captain Charles E. Yeager.jpg|thumb|upright|Yeager in was a young captain in the United States Army Air Forces.
Stationed in the United Kingdom at RAF Leiston, Yeager flew P-51 Mustangs in combat with the 363d Fighter Squadron. He named his aircraft Glamorous Glen after his girlfriend, Glennis Faye Dickhouse, who became his wife in February 1945. Yeager had gained one victory before he was shot down over France in his first aircraft on March 5, 1944, on his eighth mission. He escaped to Spain on March 30, 1944, with the help of the Maquis and returned to England on May 15, 1944. During his stay with the Maquis, Yeager assisted the guerrillas in duties that did not involve direct combat; he helped construct bombs for the group, a skill that he had learned from his father. He was awarded the Bronze Star for helping a navigator, Omar M. "Pat" Patterson Jr., to cross the Pyrenees.
Despite a regulation prohibiting "evaders" from flying over enemy territory again, the purpose of which was to prevent resistance groups from being compromised by giving the enemy a second chance to possibly capture him, Yeager was reinstated to flying combat. He had joined another evader, fellow P-51 pilot 1st Lt Fred Glover, in speaking directly to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on June 12, 1944. "I raised so much hell that General Eisenhower finally let me go back to my squadron" Yeager said. "He cleared me for combat after D Day, because all the free Frenchmen – Maquis and people like that – had surfaced". Eisenhower, after gaining permission from the War Department to decide the requests, concurred with Yeager and Glover. In the meantime, Yeager shot down his second enemy aircraft, a German Junkers Ju 88 bomber, over the English Channel.
Yeager demonstrated outstanding flying skills and combat leadership. On October 12, 1944, he became the first pilot in his group to make "ace in a day," downing five enemy aircraft in a single mission. Two of these victories were scored without firing a single shot: when he flew into firing position against a Messerschmitt Bf 109, the pilot of the aircraft panicked, breaking to port and colliding with his wingman. Yeager said both pilots bailed out. He finished the war with 11.5 official victories, including one of the first air-to-air victories over a jet fighter, a German Messerschmitt Me 262 that he shot down as it was on final approach for landing.
Yeager's official statement of the 12 October mission states:
In his 1986 memoirs, Yeager recalled with disgust that "atrocities were committed by both sides", and said he went on a mission with orders from the Eighth Air Force to "strafe anything that moved". During the mission briefing, he whispered to Major Donald H. Bochkay, "If we are going to do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we are on the winning side". Yeager said, "I'm certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory". He also expressed bitterness at his treatment in England during World War II, describing the British as "arrogant" and "nasty" on Twitter.
Yeager was commissioned a second lieutenant while at Leiston, and was promoted to captain before the end of his tour. He flew his 61st and final mission on January 15, 1945, and returned to the United States in early February 1945. As an evader, he received his choice of assignments and, because his new wife was pregnant, chose Wright Field to be near his home in West Virginia. His high number of flight hours and maintenance experience qualified him to become a functional test pilot of repaired aircraft, which brought him under the command of Colonel Albert Boyd, head of the Aeronautical Systems Flight Test Division.
Post-World War II
Test pilot – breaking the sound barrier
After the war, Yeager remained in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Upon graduating from Air Materiel Command Flight Performance School, Yeager became a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field. After Bell Aircraft test pilot Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin demanded to break the sound barrier, the USAAF selected the 24-year-old Yeager to fly the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight. Under the National Security Act of 1947, the USAAF became the United States Air Force on September 18.Yeager's flight was scheduled for October 14. Two nights before his flight, Yeager went horseback riding with his wife and fell, breaking two ribs under his right arm. Worried the injury would remove him from the mission, Yeager had a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond tape his ribs.
To seal the hatch of the XS-1, the pilot needed to hold the hatch in position and use their right arm to slam down a heavy lever. Yeager would not be able to seal the hatch with his broken ribs, so Yeager secretly asked his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley for a solution. Ridley sawed off the end of a broom handle for Yeager to use as a lever to seal the hatch.
Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, in level flight while piloting the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of over the Rogers Dry Lake of the Mojave Desert in California. The success of the mission was not announced to the public for nearly eight months, until June 10, 1948. Yeager was awarded the Mackay Trophy and the Collier Trophy in 1948 for his mach-transcending flight, and the Harmon International Trophy in 1954. The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. During 1952, he attended the Air Command and Staff College.
Yeager continued to break many speed and altitude records. He was one of the first American pilots to fly a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, after its pilot, No Kum-sok, defected to South Korea. Returning to Muroc, during the latter half of 1953, Yeager was involved with the USAF team that was working on the X-1A, an aircraft designed to surpass Mach 2 in level flight. That year, he flew a chase aircraft for the civilian pilot Jackie Cochran as she became the first woman to fly faster than sound.
On November 20, 1953, the U.S. Navy program involving the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket and its pilot, Scott Crossfield, became the first team to reach twice the speed of sound. After they were bested, Ridley and Yeager decided to beat rival Crossfield's speed record in a series of test flights that they dubbed "Operation NACA Weep". They not only beat Crossfield by setting a new record at Mach 2.44 on December 12, 1953, but also did so in time to spoil a celebration planned for the 50th anniversary of flight, at which Crossfield was to be called "the fastest man alive".
The new record flight, however, did not entirely go to plan, since shortly after reaching Mach 2.44, Yeager lost control of the X-1A at about due to inertia coupling, a phenomenon largely unknown at the time. With the aircraft simultaneously rolling, pitching, and yawing out of control, Yeager dropped in less than a minute before regaining control at around. He then managed to land without further incident. For this feat, Yeager was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in 1954.