Chuck Yeager Re-Enacts the Historic Flight That Broke the Sound Barrier

Hugh Pickens writes "The Seattle Times reports that exactly 65 years to the minute after becoming the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager flew in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California's Mojave Desert — the same area where he first achieved the feat in 1947 while flying an experimental rocket plane. Asked by a young girl if he was scared during Sunday's flight, Yeager joked, 'Yeah, I was scared to death.' Yeager made the first supersonic flight in a rocket-powered, Bell X-1, known as the XS-1 for 'experimental, supersonic,' attached to the belly of a B-29 aircraft. Hiding the pain of broken ribs from a midnight horse race after a night of drinking at Pancho Barnes' Happy Bottom Riding Club, Yeager squeezed into the aircraft with no safe way to bail out. Soon after the rocket plane was released, Yeager powered it upward to about 42,000 feet altitude, then leveled off and sped to 650 mph, or Mach 1.07. Some aviation historians contend that American pilot George Welch broke the sound barrier before Yeager, while diving an XP-86 Sabre on October 1, 1947 and there is also a disputed claim by German pilot Hans Guido Mutke that he was the first person to break the sound barrier, on April 9, 1945, in a Messerschmitt Me 262. Yeager's flight was portrayed in the opening scenes of The Right Stuff, the 1983 movie, based on the book by Tom Wolfe that chronicles America's space race. For his part Yeager said nothing special was going through his mind at the time of the re-enactment. 'Flying is flying. You can't add a lot to it.'"

Probbably not the first

[thrich81]

There is a well established legend (story, rumor?) that Yeager's supersonic flight was beaten by a couple of weeks by the F-86 prototype doing flight testing. The pilot, George Welch, was a test pilot for North American aviation and was doing tests including high speed dives before the X-1's supersonic flight. The aircraft was not instrumented to prove it at the time, but later it was conclusively shown that the F-86 would go supersonic in dives. Supposedly the Air Force hushed it all up at the time. Fascinating note in aviation history -- http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0113.shtml [aerospaceweb.org].

Re:Disputed claims

[Hagaric]

Highest speed ever recorded in a piston-engined aircraft was mach 0.92 in a spitfire.. the pilot only survived because the propeller and reduction gear got ripped off the aircraft and the resulting shift in the center of gravity caused an 11g pullout of an otherwise fatal dive. apparently the wings were distinctly "swept" after the event.

Re:Sure He Did

[vlm]

Interesting trivia point... F-15 is older than I am. First F-15 flight was a mere 27 years after Yeagers flight, and was also 38 years ago. So F-15's are so old, they're closer to the days of Yeagers first flight than they are to close to today. That must trip out F-15 pilots, its theoretically possible that a F-15 could have been flown by three generations of the same family... bomber and transport pilots are used to that but traditionally fighter planes don't serve for 4 decades.