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The Military Transportation

Chuck Yeager, Test Pilot Who Broke the Sound Barrier, Dies At 97 (npr.org) 48

jowifi shares a report from NPR: One of the world's most famous aviators has died: Chuck Yeager -- best known as the first to break the sound barrier -- has died at the age of 97. Yeager started from humble beginnings in Myra, W.Va., and many people didn't really learn about him until decades after he broke the sound barrier -- all because of a book and popular 1983 movie called The Right Stuff. He accomplished the feat in a Bell X-1, a wild, high-flying rocket-propelled orange airplane that he nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," after his first wife who died in 1990. It was a dangerous quest -- one that had killed other pilots in other planes. And the X-1 buffeted like a bucking horse as it approached the speed of sound -- Mach 1 -- about 700 miles per hour at altitude.

But Yeager was more than a pilot: In several test flights before breaking the sound barrier, he studied his machine, analyzing the way it handled as it went faster and faster. He even lobbied to change one of the plane's control surfaces so that it could safely exceed Mach 1. As popularized in The Right Stuff, Yeager broke the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, at Edwards Air Force Base in California. But there were no news broadcasts that day, no newspaper headlines. The aviation feat was kept secret for months. In 2011, Yeager told NPR that the lack of publicity never much mattered to him. "I was at the right place at the right time. And duty enters into it. It's not, you know, you don't do it for the -- to get your damn picture on the front page of the newspaper. You do it because it's duty. It's your job."

Yeager never sought the spotlight and was always a bit gruff. After his famous flight in the X-1, he continued testing newer, faster and more dangerous aircraft. The X-1A came along six years later, and it flew at twice the speed of sound. On Dec. 12, 1953, Chuck Yeager set two more altitude and speed records in the X-1A: 74,700 feet and Mach 2.44. [...] Today, the plane Yeager first broke the sound barrier in, the X-1, hangs inside the air and space museum. [...] Chuck Yeager spent the last years of his life doing what he truly loved: flying airplanes, speaking to aviation groups and fishing for golden trout in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

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Chuck Yeager, Test Pilot Who Broke the Sound Barrier, Dies At 97

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  • by thragnet ( 5502618 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @04:43PM (#60809224)

    There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. Charles Yeager, rest in peace.

    • I get the sentiment and have heard that quote somewhere else. But, until yesterday, Chuck Yeager was, in actual fact, an old and bold pilot.

      • I get the sentiment and have heard that quote somewhere else. But, until yesterday, Chuck Yeager was, in actual fact, an old and bold pilot.

        I'm no great interpreter of the minds of others, but it seems likely that is the sentiment expressed by the GP.

        Though he seemed the bravest of daredevils, Yeager was the epitome of genuine courage; acting honorably and effectively in the face of fear, rather than with the lack of it.

      • by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @12:52AM (#60810702) Homepage Journal

        Yeager always talked about his careful approach to everything. He seemed cavalier, but he knew the aircraft he flew inside and out. As an example, he helped determine why F-86 fighters were crashing: controls locked during high-speed rolls. He did not panic, but gently removed G-forces by pushing nose-down, and the ailerons unlocked. It was traced to an improperly-installed bolt in the wings. In the rare case that something went wrong, he always had a clear understanding of the escape methods, including how the X-1's escape mechanism was basically suicide (he would jump out the side and get sliced in half by the tail). The glory, in his mind, was worth the risk.

        He wasn't a bold pilot. He was a careful pilot who took carefully calculated and well-understood risks. There's a difference.

        • just another day at the office ?

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          • by Agripa ( 139780 )

            The father of a friend of mine was an aerospace engineer at Lockheed who worked on the NF-104A and later F-117. The way he told it, Yeager took advantage of his rank to fly whatever he wanted and he took the NF-104A up and ran out of fuel. The Lockheed engineers were really pissed off with Yaeger for carelessly destroying the plane they were using to collect performance data.

  • Capt Jack Ridley (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rfengineer ( 927289 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @04:47PM (#60809246)
    The changes to the flight controls which enabled the Bell X-1 to remained controlled through the compressibility of going through Mach 1 were conceived by (then) Capt Jack Ridley, the team's engineer. With all due respect to Chuck Yeager, let's not go with the media's current trend to endow a single person with single handedly having made the project a success. If you've read, Gen Yeager's biography, he goes to great length to credit Capt Ridley with ALL the engineering that made his flight a success. Yeager was just a very skilled pilot who did study the systems and asked pointed questions, but didn't do the engineering. It is sad to have lost him.
    • This isn't about that. This is about Yeagar passing away and paying tribute to HIS accomplishments.

      RIP Chuck. Fear was not an option.

      • No, fear was an option. He carefully calculated his risks before he took them, and if they were beyond a threshold, he didn't take them.

    • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @05:11PM (#60809338)

      True. One thing that really struck me about Yeager when I read his autobiography was how, while not exactly humble himself (As if he had any need to be.), he was very generous with praise for Ridley, Bob Hoover, and others who he thought were good pilots or engineers. Thatâ(TM)s hardly the stereotype of the âoearrogant hot shot pilotâ you usually see portrayed in the media; and the mark of a true class act.

      Yeager also had no shortage of criticism for pilots who didnâ(TM)t meet his standards, including some of the NACA civilian pilots who went on to fly in space. But if anyone had the right to judge, no doubt it was Yeager.

      • by turbidostato ( 878842 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @05:34PM (#60809420)

        "One thing that really struck me about Yeager when I read his autobiography was how, while not exactly humble himself (As if he had any need to be.), he was very generous with praise for Ridley, Bob Hoover, and others who he thought were good pilots or engineers. "

        Maybe because (from the very little I knew about him) he was neither humble nor proud: he was basically honest (both about himself and others and circumstances). Maybe that was an important part into achieving what he achieved.

        • by jensend ( 71114 )

          Several who knew him better have characterized him as humble. Examples here [floridatoday.com], here [va.gov], and here [roadandtrack.com].

          That doesn't contradict your characterization of him as "basically honest" - indeed it strengthens it. Any "dishonest humility" is usually, though not always, a sign of vanity and pride - trying to appear humble, ingratiating, etc. If it isn't vanity, a false humility arises from some form of delusion - lack of self-awareness, certain kinds of mental health issues, etc.

          Any real humility goes hand in hand with honesty

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Reading Eric Brown's biography the thing that struck me was that almost every other pilot named died.

        There's an argument that the ones still alive are the best because being a test pilot in those decades was a very short career. When you're that good it costs you nothing to acknowledge how good the few still with you are.

    • Re:Capt Jack Ridley (Score:4, Informative)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @07:32PM (#60809776)

      Your post is ironic considering that Bell switched out the standard tailplane on the X-1 for the British designed variable incidence tailplane (originally intended for the M.52) after suffering a lot of issues in the transonic area, so a lot of credit for those controls should go to Miles Aircraft and Dennis Bancroft...

      • Your post is ironic considering that Bell switched out the standard tailplane on the X-1 for the British designed variable incidence tailplane (originally intended for the M.52) after suffering a lot of issues in the transonic area, so a lot of credit for those controls should go to Miles Aircraft and Dennis Bancroft...

        I'll let you correct Jack Ridley's wikipedia entry located here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Like most developments it was the product or many people's work. The British did a lot of research and developed some novel idea, shame they gave up or they could have been first to fly supersonic. Even long before that the Germans were gaining valuable experience with both jet engines and supersonic flight characteristics.

  • He did pretty well for himself, for a guy who joined the Army as a private, and only had a high-school education. Fair winds and following seas sir.
  • by fred911 ( 83970 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @05:00PM (#60809288) Journal

    Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

  • Iâ(TM)ll always remember him for failing to give Ed White a fair shake.
    • Ed Dwight got his fair shake, and failed. Kennedy wanted a black astronaut to get into the program, and the bureaucrats tried to force a 'diversity hire' in by making more slots. Yeager just told the truth: the guy wasn't good enough to earn a spot like the rest of them did. When you lower the standards in an area that has no room whatsoever for slack, like space-flight, or aerospace engineering, you get people killed. Fuck diversity - Give me Merit.

      • Chuck Yeager was a hero of mine growing up, but he was racist. People confirmed the expletives he used about Dwight and how he felt about him being in his program. Let's not pretend Dwight was some shmuck who got pushed into the program for PR.

        • Expletives are unfortunate but their use merely calls the action into question. At the time military speech was coarse in a way rare iin the last few decades. Dwight was of course an outstanding officer but diversity promotions were famously common in the era (rightly or wrongly). Most of that history is unwritten for obvious reasons but old career Air Force officers and enlisted (self included but of course my era was much later) on promotion boards saw many examples.
          In that era a word from the right senio

  • by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @05:53PM (#60809484)

    Yeager reminds me of John Glenn. One of those old school, fearless, country-first bad asses. A man's man. RIP Chuck. We might never see the likes of you again.

  • by Ksevio ( 865461 ) on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @06:01PM (#60809504) Homepage

    This just goes to show the risks of high speeds like this. If he had only known he was going to die after breaking the sound barrier, he might have chosen not to. I hope others can learn from this tragedy

    • by reg ( 5428 )

      Deadly like vegetables... Everyone who ate vegetables in the 19th century is dead now. If you've eaten vegetables you'll probably die too.

    • This just goes to show the risks of high speeds like this. If he had only known he was going to die after breaking the sound barrier, he might have chosen not to. I hope others can learn from this tragedy

      I wonder how much time he gained on the rest of us due to the Lorentz Factor. Iâ(TM)m sure it was only a fraction of a second, but your comment made me think of it.

  • It really pisses me off that QAnon keeps spreading conspiracy theories that Chuck Yeager's landing on the moon was fake!

    • It was fake!!! Everyone knows Yeager never landed on the moon, he was taken to an alien vessel stationed at the L2 point in 1986, but never actually got a chance to visit their base in the moon.
  • He had an amazing military career - he enlisted as a private and retired as a Brigadier General.
  • I remember playing a video game "Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] where Chuck Yeager would offer pithy sarcastic remarks when you crashed or collided with an object, aircraft. I did kamikaze runs just to cycle through all the remarks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    • That's how I learned the word "auger"! Seems I did that a lot.

      That was one of the first PC games we ever had. Can't tell you how many hours I spent crashing into the EA logo. Back when they were a developer, not the publisher everyone loves to hate.

      • I remember doing deliberate nose dives, or other things just to see how the game would respond. "Auger" hmm, don't recall that. I just remember the picture of Chuck and his sarcastic comments.
  • He went a lot faster then that breaking the speed of sound.

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