Captain Chuck Yeager

Captain Chuck Yeager

By Tom Kirvan

He was one of America’s foremost test pilots who proved to have “The Right Stuff,” which was the title of Thomas Wolfe’s best-selling book about those involved in the experimental stages of the U.S. space program.

On October 14, 1947, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, surpassing the 662-mph barrier while piloting the X-1 aircraft over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The rocket plane, which was nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” in a nod to Yeager’s wife, was designed with thin wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a 50-caliber bullet.

“Just before you break through the sound barrier, the cockpit shakes the most,” Yeager said of the experience. “You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.”

As a test pilot in 1953, Yeager flew 1,650 mph in an X-1A rocket plane, pushing the limits of supersonic flight to a new level at the time.

Born in West Virginia in 1923, Yeager was a highly decorated fighter pilot during World War II, flying 64 missions over Europe and shooting down 13 German planes while earning “ace” status. He was shot down himself on a mission over France but escaped capture thanks to the assistance of the French Underground.

Captain Chuck Yeager*

Yeager resumed his fighter-pilot duties during the Vietnam War, flying more than 120 missions over South Vietnam in the mid-1960s. Over the course of his aviation career, Yeager flew more than 360 different makes and models of military aircraft before retiring from the Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

“You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing,” Yaeger surmised upon his retirement.

“The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day,” he added, noting that “if you can walk away from a landing, it was a good landing.”

Yaeger, who earned the Distinguished Service Medal and the Silver Star, among a host of other military honors, died at age 97 on December 7, 2020, nearly 80 years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that prompted U.S. involvement in World War II.

*United States Air Force, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons