Chuck Yeager, a World War II fighter ace who was the first human to travel faster than sound and whose gutsy test pilot exploits were immortalized in the bestselling book, The Right Stuff, died on Monday, his wife said. He was 97.
“It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET,” Victoria Yeager wrote on her husband’s Twitter account. “An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.”
She did not specify the cause of his death.
Photo: AFP/US Air Force
Yeager rocketed into history by breaking the sound barrier in the experimental Bell X-1 research aircraft in 1947, helping to pave the way for the US space program.
“It opened up space, Star Wars, satellites,” Yeager said in a 2007 interview.
Charles Elwood Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in the tiny town of Myra, West Virginia, and grew up fixing pickup trucks alongside his father.
Yeager joined the US Army Air Corps in September 1941, three months before the US entered World War II, and started out as an aircraft mechanic before undergoing flight training.
Based in England, Yeager began flying combat missions in a P-51 Mustang in February 1944 and downed a German Me 109.
Yeager was shot down behind enemy lines in March 1944, but was able to rejoin his unit in England with the help of the French resistance after a harrowing trek over the Pyrenees.
He resumed combat and was credited with 12.5 aerial victories by the war’s end, including downing five Me 109s on a single day and four Fw 190s on another.
Yeager booked his place in history as a test pilot when he broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1 on Oct. 14, 1947, earning him the title of “The Fastest Man Alive.”
After the X-1 was dropped from the belly of a B-29 bomber at 45,000 feet (13,700m), Yeager flew at supersonic Mach 1.06 (1,130kph).
Yeager’s colleague Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin, another test pilot for Bell Laboratories, once famously described the X-1 as a “bullet with wings.”
It was, in fact, modeled after a .50 caliber bullet, with short wings and a pointed tip, allowing it to pierce the air more efficiently.
The aircraft, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” in honor of Yeager’s first wife, now hangs in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Before his historic flight, Yeager said he received advice from Colonel Albert Boyd, who headed the US Air Force’s supersonic flight program.
“Get above Mach 1 as soon as you can, don’t bust your butt, and don’t embarrass the Air Force,” Yeager said Boyd told him.
“I had done what the old man had sent us out to do,” the matter-of-fact Yeager said.
Yeager’s accomplishment was depicted in the acclaimed 1983 film The Right Stuff, based on the bestseller by Tom Wolfe.
Yeager would go on to set numerous other flight records, but most of his career was spent as a military commander directing US fighter squadrons throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
He retired from the US Air Force in 1975 as a brigadier general having logged more than 10,000 hours of flight time in about 360 different models of military aircraft.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine mourned the “tremendous loss” of Yeager and praised the pilot’s “pioneering and innovative spirit.”
“Chuck’s bravery and accomplishments are a testament to the enduring strength that made him a true American original, and NASA’s Aeronautics work owes much to his brilliant contributions to aerospace science,” Bridenstine said in a statement on Monday.
“His path blazed a trail for anyone who wanted to push the limits of human potential, and his achievements will guide us for generations to come,” he said.
Yeager was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973, and he kept flying into his later years, even breaking the sound barrier at age 89.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in