COVER STORY

THE LAST ACTION HERO With a life story that reads like the script of A summer blockbuster, ’s picture should be in the dictionary next to the word “tough”. On location at the landing strip where he first shot to fame, Chris Wright speaks to the man himself about flight, war and transAtlantic relations oliver blaise c/o www.chuckyeager.com : oliver blaise c/o ph oto

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tHE MANY scrapES OF CHUCK YEAGER 1943 "A sheep-herder found me"

In a P-39 at 644 kilometres per hour over Wyoming. “There was an explosion in the back. Fire came out from under my seat and the flew apart in different directions. I jettisoned the door and stuck my head out, and the prop wash seemed to stretch my neck three feet. I jumped for it. When the chute opened, I was knocked unconscious. A sheep- herder found me in the hills and tossed me across his burro, face down.” He ended up in If you know the name Chuck hospital, with a fractured back Yeager, it is probably because he broke the sound barrier — the invisible, impenetrable wall that 1944 protected by scientists used to believe existed French resistance

Shot down over occupied . “The world at the speed of sound — at the age exploded. I ducked to protect my face with my hands, and when I looked a second later, my engine was on fire, and there was a gaping of 24 in 1947. But that is not the hole in my wingtip. The airplane began to spin. It happened so fast, there was no time to panic. I knew I was going down; I was barely best bit of the story. To understand able to unfasten my safety belt and crawl over my seat before my burning P-51 began to snap and roll, heading for the ground. I Yeager, you need the rest of it. just fell out of the cockpit when the plane turned upside down — my canopy was shot away.” He got off fairly lightly, with shrapnel Two nights before the flight, he decided to go horse- seat, causing his head and hand to catch fire. Upon punctures in his feet and hands. protected riding in the dark in the middle of the Mojave Desert, landing, he calmly asked a passer-by for a knife, which by French resistance, he eventually escaped in the US state of California. Galloping between the he then used to cut off his glove, two of his charred over the Pyrenees mountains to Spain Joshua trees on a moonless night, Yeager failed to see fingertips along with it. Famed writer and journalist Tom a closed gate and was thrown over it, breaking two ribs. Wolfe, narrating his definitive account of post-war test He refused to tell anyone in command, in case they pilot bravado and skill, virtually coined the term The grounded him. Instead, he got his ribs taped up by a Right Stuff for Yeager, calling him “the most righteous of veterinarian — but still had a problem. Although he could all the possessors of the right stuff.” It is May, and Discovery Channel Magazine is sitting fly his Bell X-1 jet with broken ribs, he couldn’t actually (main); corbis .chuckyeager.com seal the hatch. So he got a trusted flight engineer to with Chuck Yeager at the test pilot school at Edwards saw the end off a broomstick, fashioning it into a lever, Air Force Base, formerly known as Muroc. This was the that accent 1946 and used that instead. Then, wounded and with a broom place where he broke the barrier, 65 years ago. Decades Although less broad today, Chuck Yeager "Morning, ma’am, Can handle wedging the lock, Yeager went off and beat the may have passed, but it is clear that Yeager has not was renowned for the strength of his West www photos: I use your telephone?" speed of sound — for the first time in human history. lost his direct nature. “You got an English accent,” he Virginia accent. Major General Fred J. Calling Yeager tough is like saying that the Titanic had observes as we drive around the base. “I gotta tell you, I Ascani, who was the executive officer in In a T-6 prop trainer with an instructor, the a bit of a scrape. Yeager isn’t tough, he is indestructible. hated the English even more than I hated the Germans flight test in 1947, would later recall: master rod blew apart in the engine when He also represents the kind of epic American hero that in World War II. The meanest people I have ever seen “He barely spoke English. I’m not referring he was flying over rural Ohio. Yeager aimed for two fields and landed in between them seemingly cannot exist anymore. This is a pilot who — and we were supposed to be saving your goddamned to his West Virginia drawl; I mean grammar in the path of a farmhouse, going through asses.” On that note, we begin. and syntax. He could barely construct a became a World War II flying ace (requiring five or more a chicken house and ending alongside the victories) at the age of 21 — not in a year or even a week recognisable sentence.” This was something farmer’s wife’s kitchen window. “She was at of flying, but remarkably, after a single mission. of an issue, knowing that Yeager would, as a the sink, looking out, and I was looking her Yeager once amputated a shot colleague’s leg with a MAKING OF A MAN record-breaking hero, become a very public right in the eye through a swirl of dust and penknife, before carrying him up a snowbound Pyrenean One of the things that shaped Yeager was his modest face. “[Colonel] Boyd fretted about the feathers. I opened the canopy and managed a mountain to save his life. Another time, he evacuated childhood in Hamlin, in the US state of West Virginia. At Air Corps’ image if its hero didn’t know a small smile. ‘Morning, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Can I use from a plane, and was hit in the face by his own ejector the time the state topped the nation in unemployment, verb from a noun.” your telephone?’”

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and Yeager was from the poorest county the 363rd. He took to it like a duck to water, THE MANY SCRAPES OF within it, Lincoln County. “It wasn’t really clocking 100 hours in his first month, and CHUCK YEAGER tough. It was just a variety of experiences,” never looked back. he says today. Still, it is not a childhood that He was among a wild bunch. One fellow a lot of us would recognise. By the time he pilot, apparently doomed as he glided in was six, he knew how to shoot a .22 rifle, with engine failure, bounced off the roof of a 1947 make LIKE and hunt squirrels and rabbits, skinning passing truck in order to get enough altitude A BOMB them before school, left in a bucket of water to clear the airport fence. Yet even among for his mum to cook for supper. He slopped the truly gung-ho, Yeager stood out. Less than a month after breaking the sound hogs, milked cows, weeded gardens and Flight training was brutal. A total of 13 barrier, Yeager’s next flight in the X-1 went stole watermelons from farmers, who kept pilots died in six months, mostly through awry when the plane was dropped from the shotguns loaded with rock salt, “to sting the individual error. But even at that young age, mother ship, and had no electrical power butts of kids like us”. Yeager seemed almost immune to any pity. at all. Without radio, he couldn’t even tell Yeager has written that West Virginia also “A gruesome weeding-out process was anyone. “The ship is dead and I’m dropping made him the pilot he became. “What is the taking place,” he later wrote. “I turned my like a bomb, loaded with five thousand pounds secret to combat?” he asks me. “Deflection back on lousy fliers, as if their mistakes of volatile fuel, certain to blow a giant shooting.” That is, shooting at where were catching. When one of them became crater into the desert floor 20,000 feet (6,096 metres) below.” He managed to vent enough something is going to be, not where it is a grease spot on the tarmac, I almost felt fuel to glide down at high speed and make a relieved: it was better to bury a weak sister now. “What do the kids in the hills do? They landing. On Numerous later WAR flights, He hunt,” he explains. “They shoot at animals in training than in combat, where he might would experience smoke in the cockpit that are running. And that makes them not only bust his ass, but do something that experts at deflection shooting.” would bust two or three asses in addition to His background and lack of education his own.” In his autobiography, Yeager, he also made him into a fighter, and stubborn speaks openly of “getting mad at the dead”, to boot, the type who says what he thinks, not only for losing their lives so young, but and means what he says. also “for destroying expensive government property as stupidly as if they had driven a Cadillac off a bridge.” While it might sound wounded and almost obscenely lacking in empathy, this with a broom is what he says fighter pilots had to feel. “Anger was my defense mechanism. Either handle wedging you become calloused or you crack,” he 1950 notes. “Those who couldn’t put a lid on their "at 2,000 feet the lock, Yeager grief couldn’t hack combat.” with no engine" went off and The legend surrounding Chuck Yeager got rolling even before he went off to war. Assigned by the Air Force to fly for the John beat the speed A friend with a ranch had mentioned that Wayne and Janet Leigh film Jet Pilot, Yeager he wanted to get rid of a tree — so Yeager was asked to dive into a cloud inverted at 12,000 feet (3,658 metres), and then pull out ai rcr af t of sound — for flew by and topped it with his wingtip, before trying to explain to a maintenance officer a teacher you'll near the ground. Yet When he tried to pull the first time in why there were hunks of wood rammed into never forget out, the elevator ripped off his tail, taking human history the wing. He buzzed the main street of his Yeager's training programme alumni about a third of the horizontal stabiliser with hometown of Hamlin, West Virginia; and from earlier test pilot days included it. Too late to eject, he managed to land, but “I was impulsive, or headstrong,” he herded antelope from his P-39, shooting leading Apollo astronauts such as David his wingman had assumed he had crashed and admits. “Something is either right or and later barbecuing them for his training Scott, who later became the commander broadcast as much to the ground. Two days wrong.” This would help as he rose through squadron. Another time, his plane blew up of Apollo 15 and seventh person to walk later the turbine wheel engine came out of the ranks, overtaking more qualified and and he was knocked out while parachuting. on the moon. Today, Yeager remembers his plane, “leaving me sitting at 2,000 feet with no engine. I was feeling good that day.” With no experienced people along the way. him with great admiration, and the engine, he landed the plane safely anyway Another vital part of the Yeager legend feeling is entirely mutual. Just a week was his vision, rated 20/10, or exceptionally ULTIMATE FLYING before the interview with Yeager, when sharp. This was at the heart of his success Still, that was nothing compared to wartime. asked by Discovery Channel Magazine as a in World War II, since he On one of his earliest missions, aged 21, for suggestions on questions to ask 1953 could see German planes further away he was shot down and later protected by during said session, Scott's advice was: "I called than most other pilots. Also, while lacking the French resistance, who eventually sent “Just ask him about hunting,” he said. it hell" education, and self-conscious about it, him on foot over the Pyrenees mountains “Then he’ll talk all day.” Yeager benefited instead from an endless with another airman. Resting in a wooden flying the new X-1A, Yeager aimed to reclaim fascination with the most minute details of shack, the two were discovered by German the world speed record set at Mach 2. He hit an , making him into an engineer as troops, who began shooting at them. They 2.4, but lost control. “We started going in much as a pilot. leapt down a logslide at the back of the four different directions at once, careening all over the sky, snapping and rolling and Chuck Yeager got started in flying shack, several hundred metres down into spinning, in what pilots call going divergent dels of mo dels an d types 361 s om e f lew er ye ag a reer,

after joining the Army Air Corps — the a creek. The other airman had been shot in w ith plane) yeager office (young center history flight test air force yeager); (present-day .chuckyeager.com

c on all three axes. I called it hell.” His visor predecessor of the Air Force — in 1941, the knee during the escape, and had only fogged and he had no ejector seat. After aged 18, shortly before America’s a tendon holding his leg together. Yeager falling about 51,000 feet (15,545 metres) in engagement in World War II. After cut off his fellow soldier’s lower leg with a above: yeager with the convair 51 seconds, the plane entered a spin, which completing the training to become a penknife, then dragged him up the side of a xf-92, a delta-wing aircraft. he he corrected, successfully landing the ing f ly h i s commissioned reserve flight officer, he went snowbound mountain to the border. was the first air force pilot to plane. His wife would later say this was the to Tonopah, Nevada, where he was one of Again, in the account there is a sense of fly this type of plane most shaken she ever saw him. Boyd (by now a right: even today, almost 90 years 30 fledgling pilots who underwent intensive bullheadedness driving his actions. “I don’t old, yeager remains an active General) said, “I don’t know of another pilot www oliver blaise c/o photos: dur ing training to join a combat fighter squadron, know why I keep hold of him and struggle to consulting test pilot at edwards who could have walked away from that one.”

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this page: yeager WITH the team and equipment behind the flights in the bell x-1a (pictured page 41) .chuckyeager.com (yeager and team); oliver blaise c/o www and team); oliver blaise c/o (yeager .chuckyeager.com opposite: not just a pilot, in 1986, yeager J EREMIE SOUTEYRAT photo: drove the pace car for the indianapolis 500-mile race, which is held each year in may. that year, rd he celebrated his 63 birthday www photos:

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THE MANY scrapes OF CHUCK YEAGER

1963 "The guy got sick"

He took a test flight in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the first Mach 2 . He successfully reached 104,000 feet (31,700 .chuckyeager.com (yeager in plane); getty images (yeager .chuckyeager.com metres), yet on descent the thrusters designed to keep the nose down did not work. filming The engine locked and hydraulic pressure

the right stuff www photos: was lost. The plane made 14 flat spins; Yeager The 1983 movie, based on the book by stayed through 13, then ejected. His ejector Tom Wolfe, starred Sam Shepard as Chuck seat, still spewing the rocket charge used Yeager. The film brought the award-winning in the ejection, became caught in his chute writer, actor and director to the attention lines, hitting him in the face, penetrating of the mainstream audience, though he was the helmet and igniting the rubber seal around it, which erupted in the pure oxygen already making a name for himself in theatre environment. His head caught fire and his prior to that. He once said, "I didn't go out hand too — as he tried to scoop in air to of my way to get into this movie stuff. I breathe. When he hit the ground a driver who think of myself as a writer." Indeed, he later saw him descend came over, offering to help. won a Pulitzer prize for one of his plays. Yeager, his face like charred meat, requested Incidentally, Yeager made an appearance a knife and cut off his glove. Parts of two of in The Right Stuff as a bartender. He also his burned fingers came off with it. Yeager climb,” Yeager wrote in his autobiography. Yeager, feeling cheated out of a war, was remembers. “And when you came home and felt like he was truly flying for the personally advised Shepard on his recalls: “The guy got sick”

“It’s the challenge, I guess, and a stubborn having none of it. He fought his case all the from an eight-hour mission you would take first time. In August that year, he role during the filming. 1975

pride knowing that most guys would’ve let way up to General Dwight Eisenhower, who a bicycle out on the country roads to unwind. accompanied then Colonel Albert Boyd, the in go of Pat before now, and before he stopped eventually took his side. And then a goddamn farmer with a pitchfork head of the flight test division and the man Flying again, Yeager excelled, spotting would come out and say: ‘Get off my road, who would trust Yeager more than any enemy aircraft early and taking advantage you damned Yankee’. I hated the British other to deliver the pioneering spirit of the "There is no of the extra time his sight gave him. He more than the Germans.” jet age, to Muroc Air Base in the Mojave joy in killing became the first, and maybe the only, He flashes a classic Yeager smile, a Desert. Now called Edwards, this was the United States Army Air Forces pilot to combination of grin and sneer, like a lizard place where history would be made, the someone, but be rated a flying ace in a single mission, about to deliver a punchline. “Ain’t your first flight through the sound barrier. something many aviators would not fault. I don’t hold it against you.” Today, driving around Edwards amidst real satisfaction achieve over the entire war. the relentless crosswinds of the Mojave when you Sometimes his sheer enthusiasm for Desert, Yeager recalls the process of the fight was almost alarming. Writing BEFORE THE BARRIER beating the sound barrier with a mixture outflew a guy about an incident when his squadron Returning home, luck was once again on of pride and bitterness. The first place he encountered around 150 German planes, Yeager’s side. After a short spell training takes me to is the remnants of a shack, i r ing ret re fo be t im e f l ig ht and destroyed he notes: “We couldn’t believe our luck.” in Texas, he headed to Wright Field, Ohio, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and 1964 his machine" He has called dogfighting “a clean contest in order to move his newly pregnant wife, outside the modern edges of the base. upside down in the of skill, stamina and courage, one on one. Glennis, closer to family support in West There is really not much left now: a few middle of the icy lake breathing.” Yeager got them both into Spain, There is no joy in killing someone, but real Virginia. In doing so, he arrived in the right stumps, the top of the well they drew their leaving the airman by a road where he was satisfaction when you outflew a guy and place at the right time. Wright Field was water from, and the frame of a swimming Not flying this time, he and colleagues were picked up and saved, returning home — destroyed his machine. For me, combat set to become the centre of what Yeager pool he built out of cement (“Where did at Rocky Basin Lakes in the high Sierra Nevada mountains, and climbed into a helicopter. It minus half a leg — within six weeks. remains the ultimate flying experience.” called “the greatest adventure in aviation you get the cement?” asks a test pilot who took off, climbed 80 feet (just over 24 metres), Having escaped, Yeager still had a This is also where his contempt for the since the Wright brothers — the conversion is escorting us around the base. “Stole it,” and came down upside down in the middle of of h o urs 10,132.6 ted problem. Nobody who had been assisted English began. While he apologises four from propeller to supersonic jets Yeager replies). Rattlesnakes, scorpions the icy lake. He made it to the bank, whereupon in escape by the French resistance was times for being rude about the English, and rocket-propelled aircraft.” And what an and coyotes were rife here in the 1940s, opposite: all suited up, yeager waves from the cockpit of a his colleague — a general — told him he allowed to fly again, because if they did each time he follows up by being even adventure it proved to be. and probably still are today. lockheed f-104 starfighter could see Yeager’s brains through a head

so and were captured a second time, they ruder about them. “All our missions ran In 1945, he flew for the first time in a Here, he says, he lived with his wife above: Yeager and glennis, with wound. Undeterred, Yeager walked nine miles ccu m ul a might reveal crucial information to the about eight hours, 36,000 feet (10,973 Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the first and children, because the base would three of their four children: donald, michael and sharon. (14.5 kilometres) to an airstrip, received 138 Germans about resistance activities. This metres). No pressurisation, freezing operational American jet fighter (“like being not allow his wife onto it, as he was there their other daughter, susan, is stitches, and made it home for a dinner party, was supposed to be a hard and fast rule, but cold with people shooting at you,” he a pebble fired from a slingshot,” he recalls), on a 'temporary' assignment from Ohio. not pictured in the photo which his wife shrewdly cancelled er a er ye ag

38 39 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE COVER STORY "I’m not for “No housing. No nothing. So we rented a the old man was,” Yeager recalls. “He also sending a dumb “IT DIDN’T KILL ME” little shack, and that’s where we set. My came up the hard way. And what he saw wife was not allowed to use the hospital, in me was, I knew maintenance. My dad pilot who can’t commissary, nothing,” he says. “I’m a was a natural gas driller and I worked with pretty bitter guy.” him and used to overhaul all his engines. fly into combat, Is there really such a thing as The He has not a word of sympathy for the As a 12-year-old kid I could disassemble that’s a bad Right Stuff? people who ran Muroc at that time. “Muroc dome regulators, and that was the heart Nah. It sells books. It was Tom Wolfe was staffed by the dregs of the Air Force. of the X-1.” Boyd himself, who died in choice. The same

trying to explain what did the right They were useless.” Asked whether he 1976, said shortly before his death: “Above in plane) (yeager .chuckyeager.com stuff mean. It’s rather futile. knows we’re recording him, and that he will all, I wanted a pilot who was rock-solid in applies for going be quoted, Yeager leans towards the tape stability. Yeager came up number one.” into space. You’d Then what makes a great pilot? recorder. Unflinchingly, he speaks directly My answer would be, nobody ever into it: “I cannot over-emphasise, this base better get some told me what to do. My opinion is, the had the most sorry-ass people on it. The TEST THE LIMITS guys who do it on their own are the most useless people I have ever seen.” Preparing for test flights on the X-1 was smart guys" best. It’s a simple statement but it is Clearly this is not someone who is in the hellish, as scientists experimented with the so true. If you have to run around and habit of retracting his quotes. effect of high altitude and extreme g-force say, how can I be the best, they’ll wipe Still, as he says, “I was bitter, but on the on the pilots. He and wingman Bob Hoover you off the slate. other hand I was a very happy guy. Because wore the first high-altitude pressure no pilots ever got this opportunity again.” suits. Flights began in August 1947. The

You piloted 361 planes. Is there a He is referring to the X-1 programme, X-1 was carried up attached to the belly www oliver blaise c/o (x-1a); .chuckyeager.com favourite that sticks out? the very first time the Air Force had been of a B-29 bomber, which would climb to Some airplanes are good at doing permitted to do research flying. The 7,620 metres, then dive to pick up speed. one thing, some are good at another. programme was given a mandate to work Yeager would climb down a ladder from the Test pilot SCHOOL Like the P-51: eight hours if it rains, out how to beat the sound barrier. mother ship to the test jet, and then the www photos: The Test Pilot escorting the bombers. The X-1 came In the 1940s, it was widely believed that bomber would release him. School at is one of out and developed the flying tail that it was impossible to fly faster than the On the first flights they carried the most established and competitive in the got us through Mach 1. speed of sound without the plane breaking practically no fuel, gliding down to the country. Just to apply, a potential pilot needs lakebed. The cockpit was pressurised with to have spent 10 years or more in the service; How did the MiG-15 fly? pure nitrogen so as to be inflammable; must have a Bachelor of Science degree, with I was the first American to fly one. It there was no back-up oxygen system good grades; and a minimum of 750 hours was quite obvious when I walked up beyond what he was breathing. Lacking a as a qualified instructor pilot. Requirements and looked at the airplane with its proper hard-hat helmet, he made his own for prospective navigators and engineers are goddamn fixed stabilisers — they went by cutting the top out of a World War II tank only slightly less rigorous. In the 1960s and out with the goddamn balloons. When helmet as a protective dome, and placing ‘70s, the programme also included astronaut I flew it, I knew exactly how it was his own leather helmet over the top of that. training. Twenty-six graduates went on to going to fly. At Mach 0.94 you’re going By the time of the first powered flight fly in space programmes such as Gemini, to lose control. And I did. on August 29, Yeager had developed, if Apollo and the Space Shuttle. not a closeness with the plane, at least an Deke Slayton said you should understanding of it. Reminded that he once

II never ask a pilot who the best wrote that there were a dozen ways the X-1 om ever pilot is. You should ask who could kill you, he shakes his head. “There the second best is, since the pilot were at least a hundred. You had no way of answer to the whole X-1 programme. If FAME BUT no FORTUNE goddamn friend of a senator would be head will think he’s the best. Who’s the getting out of the X-1. You could open the you’re gonna fly supersonic, you gotta have Oddly, the Air Force would keep the flight of the Rotary Club, and would say: hey, can

ph an t second best you flew with? apart. The closer one got to it, the argument door and roll out, but you’d be sliced in two a flying tail. It took the British, the French secret for months, possibly to allow you get Yeager to make a speech for us?” C If he’s alive, he’s a good pilot. It’s that went, the more shock waves would smash by a razor-sharp wing.” Yet was he really and the Soviet Union five years to figure production of supersonic jets to get underway The Air Force, seeing an opportunity, would

F-4 simple. It’s not ‘the best’. Some pilots against the fuselage. A famous British test confident in the jet’s ability to surpass the out that little trick.” At the next flight, 0.96, before the Russians became aware of what instruct him to do it. “I’m not a talker. I’m a

an have different capabilities, whether pilot, Geoffrey de Havilland Jr., had died speed of sound, without disintegrating? He the windscreen frosted, forcing him to land the Americans had achieved. “That gave us flyer,” he would say. But to no avail. it’s combat, test pilot or carrier pilot. when his own experimental aircraft, The looks up, with 89 years worth of contempt. blind, guided verbally by another pilot. And a hell of a quantum leap over the rest of the He recalls one early assignment. “So I “Obviously. Or I wouldn’t have flown it.” s in a s Swallow, disintegrated at Mach 0.94 (or 0.94 finally, on October 14, after breaking his ribs world’s air forces for five years. That’s the crawl into a goddamn P-80 in Muroc, roll When you were burned ejecting times the speed of sound) in early 1947. Dropped from the B-29 on the first two nights before, the X-1 he was piloting reason it was classified,” he says today. up my uniform, stick it in the nose at 60 from the F-104 in a flat spin, was The United States had long wanted to go powered flight, he lit the rocket chambers, created the first aircraft-generated sonic This created an odd situation for Yeager. below zero, fly to Lansing, Michigan, land that the worst accident you had, supersonic, and initially their star man was leaving diamond-shaped shock waves in his boom ever heard on Earth. First, a sense that nothing had happened on the goddamn runway, shake the damn the scariest? a civilian called Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin, wake. Then he promptly ignored the plan to Going supersonic was in fact a lot easier (“Thunder with no reverberation,” as ice off me, and go to the hotel.” Nobody Probably, I reckon. I got a few holes in who had been piloting a new test jet called jettison fuel and land, instead doing a slow than nearly-supersonic. Moments before the Wolfe put it), then an intense heroism, knows who he is, and two minutes before me during the war. But what the hell, the X-1, manufactured by Bell. But Goodlin roll and then rattling the base. Subsequent sound barrier, the shock waves caused great and a speaking circuit that he was deeply his speech, the head of the club asks him: it didn’t kill me. had demanded a renegotiated contract and missions steadily increased the speed, disruption to a plane’s handling. Beyond it, uncomfortable with. At no stage however did what are you famous for? “I almost got US$150,000 in pay to go beyond Mach 1. working out what happened the closer they was “smooth as a baby’s bottom,” Yeager it bring much money. He told his superiors he up and walked out.” Also, the reputation ht w f l ig ht duty i ve ct When did you last fly a jet? The Air Corps lost patience, took over the got to the sound barrier. At Mach 0.94, they wrote. “Grandma could be sitting up there wanted to buy his long-suffering wife Glennis didn’t help him within the Air Force, instead October, here. An F-16. It’s no project, and that was where Yeager came in. ran into trouble as he lost pitch control, and sipping lemonade. After all the anxiety, — still raising several kids in a shack in the creating a lot of jealousy and enemies problem. Hell, airplanes don’t change. He charged less than US$300 a month, his for a while it looked like the end of the line, breaking the sound barrier turned out to be desert and drawing water from a windmill wanting to knock him down. Like the steering wheel on your car: regular Army captain’s pay. until engineer Jack Ridley — a true hero of a perfectly paved speedway.” pump — a fur coat. This was refused. “We Soon, his career began to mesh with the you turn right, it turns right. I’m just Despite his record, Yeager was initially the programme, who Yeager speaks of with It was, he recalls today, something of lived no better than a damned sheep-herder, space race. On the public speaking circuit, lucky, I have been flying Air Force not an obvious choice for Colonel Boyd reverence as “the brains of the operation” an anticlimax. “When we were successful, maybe worse,” he notes. he often crossed paths with , the planes for 72 years. to make as the pioneering test pilot. But — came up with a fix. I suppose I was let down a little bit that Making 20 speeches a month while still first American to orbit the Earth, and before Boyd was, in essence, an elder version “We modified the airplane with a it didn’t blow all to hell.” To add some test piloting, before long he was on the cover long astronauts started coming to Edwards. Will you fly one again? of Yeager himself. “Think of the toughest jackscrew that would change the angle of excitement of his own, having fallen off a of TIME magazine. But the fame didn’t help Yeager was not a fan of the first round I don’t know. If I do I will, if I don’t I person you’ve ever known, then multiply by the horizontal stabiliser, making a flying horse before this perfect flight, Yeager then him, particularly within the armed forces. of NASA (then known as the National

l a offi c ia l l a st er's ye ag won’t. I don’t live to do things like that. 10. And you’re close to the kind of guy that tail,” Yeager explains today. “That was the crashed his motorbike that night. And he hated the public speaking. “Some Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or

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NACA) astronauts, considering them Yeager himself was excluded from arrogant and unwilling to take advice. “In consideration for the space programme, the old days I rated them about as high through lack of a college degree. He as my shoelaces,” he says. He has zero doesn’t appear to regret it though. “I’m sympathy for Scott Crossfield, a golden not for sending a dumb pilot who can’t fly boy of NACA’s early days who would later into combat, that’s a bad choice. The same be the first man to pass Mach 2, but who applies for going into space. You’d better get put a prototype Super Sabre jet through some smart guys.” the wall of an aircraft hangar in 1954. “He was a proficient pilot, but also among the most arrogant I’ve met. THE NEXT STEPS Scotty just knew it all, which is why he After a near-death experience in the ran a Super Sabre through a hangar.” X-1A (see box on page 35) Yeager began to Yeager is no more reverent about consider life after test flying. But in Okinawa America’s most famous astronaut. in 1954, he found himself in arguably the most dangerous assignment yet — piloting a Russian-built MiG-15 gained from a defecting North Korean. Later assignments would take him through roles in and Pakistan; service in Vietnam; and finally, to the rank of General. Yeager’s toughness is at times almost alarming. When he was four and a half, his six-year-old brother was playing with his father’s shotgun, and accidentally shot and killed their baby sister. The unthinkable incident and its aftermath occupied 17 lines of a 400-page autobiography. Perhaps it is because it is a private matter, but one suspects also because he thinks there is “Armstrong may have been the first nothing else to say. He never discussed it, astronaut on the moon, but he was the and nor did his parents. (portrait) .chuckyeager.com last guy at Edwards to take any advice “That’s just the Yeager way,” he says. from a military pilot.” Yeager never quite “We keep our hurts to ourselves.” Which got over the time when Neil Armstrong, also seems an attitude of a different age, a against Yeager’s advice, attempted to black and white era of less introspection, touch their plane down in a lakebed, and and more big, bold events. He brushes got it stuck. Yet recalling the incident away any question about fame or his place today, Yeager has mellowed, calling in history. “I didn’t look at it as a mark in Armstrong “a good guy”. His second wife history,” he says. “It was duty.” Victoria (Glennis died of cancer in 1990) As our interview concludes in a lecture says the two in fact get along fine now. theatre at Edwards’ test pilot school, Years on though, Yeager still thinks Victoria, who now handles most of the very little of the space programme, administrative side of Yeager’s life and Apollo included. “What did we learn public appearances, is cheerful. “Hey other than bringing back a few pieces of Charlie,” she says. “I think we might have yeager may be 90 next february, rocks from the moon? The whole space found an Englishman we like!” but he's still going strong mission programme in my opinion was a Yeager stands. At 89, he needs no help, left: yeager and sam shepard waste of a lot of money.” www oliver blaise c/o shepard); and sam (yeager .chuckyeager.com (pictured left), the actor who bar the hearing aids made necessary played him in the right stuff Part of the contempt stems from the from years behind thundering engines. He fact that during the Mercury, Gemini and extends a firm handshake. “Well,” he says

Apollo programmes, which enriched with that half-grin again. “Maybe.” www photos: astronauts, real flying innovation was taking place, largely unnoticed, at the Air Force. This is the theme that underpins Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff, and the film that followed. “The film really laid it on the line,” Yeager says. “What you saw was IN DETAIL Air Force test pilots killing themselves, to Sound Barrier Sonic Boom Edwards Air force Base 20/10 Vision Glamorous Glennis support the space programme. And very few people knew it.” As an aircraft reaches the speed of sound, The speed of sound is variable, depending As a test centre for both US Air Force and The term “20/20 vision” is a measurement This was the nickname of the Bell X-1, in Yet Yeager later returned to Edwards aerodynamic drag suddenly increases. This on atmospheric conditions and altitude. NASA aircraft, this Californian air base is of standard human eyesight: someone with which Yeager first broke the sound barrier. to run an astronaut training programme, is because the sound waves generated by the At sea level, sound travels at a smidgen hallowed ground for the development of flight 20/20 eyesight can stand 20 feet (six metres) The name is a tribute to his first wife, which put 26 people into space, mainly craft are travelling at the same speed as the over 340 metres per second. When a craft vehicles. The first American jet aircraft, the away from an object and see it clearly. Less Glennis. The aircraft featured a fuselage on the Space Shuttle. When asked if vehicle itself, so it is constantly immersed flies faster than Mach 1, it breaks through Bell XP-59A Airacomet, was tested here in common is 20/10 eyesight, where one can see shaped like a .50 calibre bullet, a horizontal the training school was also a waste of in the high-intensity, vibrating waves. Once the sound barrier. As it does so, it literally 1942. It paved the way for generations of craft at 20 feet what an average person can only stabiliser to improve control as the jet money, Yeager says, “No. We trained the craft passes Mach 1, it is actually moving pushes aside molecules in the air, creating such as the XB-70 Valkyrie, SR-71 Blackbird, view at 10 feet. In the United States, a person approached the speed of sound, and carried them here, then sent them over to NASA. ahead of the sound it makes. shock waves that “boom”. F-111, B-2 bomber and many others. is legally blind with 20/200 eyesight. over 230 kilograms of flight test equipment. NASA’s the ones who wasted the money.”

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