Chuck Yeager, a test pilot who broke the sound barrier, has died at the age of 97



Chuck Yager, the most famous test pilot of his generation, was the first to break the sound barrier and came to dominate the death-defying pilot who had vague and vague “perfect things” thanks to Tom Wolf, who died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 97. His death was announced at a hospital, on his official Twitter account, confirmed by John Nicoleti, a family friend. General Yeager came out of the West Virginia hills with only a high school education, and a fellow pilot who left many was stunned. When he first boarded a plane, he felt sick to his stomach. But he became a war ace in World War II, shooting down five German planes and more than 13 in a single day. In the decade that followed, he helped in the age of military jets and space travel. He flew more than 150 military aircraft and recorded more than 10,000 hours in the air. His signaling record On October 14, 1947, he climbed over the Mojave Desert in California from a B-29 bomb and entered the cockpit of an orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-propelled test aircraft. Bomb Bay. An Air Force captain at the time, he magnified the Bell Flight X-1 at 23,000 feet, and when he reached an altitude of about 43,000 feet above the desert, echoed the site of the first sonic boom in history, the dry lake beds. He reached a speed of 700 miles per hour, breaking the sound barrier and dispelling the long-held fear that any plane flying at or beyond the speed of sound would be torn apart by shock waves. After all the expectations to reach this moment, General Yeager wrote his best-selling memoir, The Yeager (1985, with Leo Janos). “There must have been a bump in the road, let me tell you that you pierced a nice, clean hole through the Sonic barrier. A punch to Uknon with gel-o. Then, I realized that this task had to end in a sluggish state because the real barrier was not in the sky, But in our knowledge and experience of the supersonic plane. ”Nevertheless, the exploitation of the Wright Brothers’ first plane in the Kitty Hawk was ranked in 1903 and Charles Lindbergh’s solo battle to Paris in 1927 as one of the most epic events in aviation history. , His wife, Coring, exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Aerospace and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., whose record made headlines for a while, but he actually became the 1979 book “The Right Stuff” by Mr. Wolf. Shepard was a national celebrity about the early days of the film project and the release of the film based on it four years later, starring General Yeager Sam. He was portrayed breaking the sound barrier in the opening scene. In the depiction of the astronauts of NASA’s Mercury program, Mr. The Wolf pilot fraternity test in the desert of post-World War II California and the ability to “have a man go upstairs on a torture machine and line up his closet, and then have the moxie, the reflex, the experience, the coolness to pull it back at the last surprising moment – and then go upstairs again the next day, That quality, understood but not spoken of, Mr. Wolfe added, could be part of a pilot’s “brotherhood of the right stuff.” Mr. Wolfe wrote about a wolf being victimized by pilots in an emergency, especially in the voice of “Appalachian origin,” which was first heard of in military circles. But it eventually emerged from the cockpits of commercial aircraft. He said he was angry when people asked him because it indicates a talent he was born with. “All I know is I worked my tail to learn to fly, I worked hard all the way,” he wrote. “If there’s one thing like the right things in piloting, it’s experience. The secret of my success is that somehow I was always able to fly another day. ”Charles Elwood Yager on February 13, 1923 in Myra, Wm. W., was the second of five children born to Albert and Susie May. Sysmore) Yager. He grew up in nearby Hamlin, home to about 400 people, where his father drilled natural gas in coal fields. By the time he was 6, Chuck was shooting squirrels and rabbits, skinning them for family dinner, and enjoying the life of a country boy. He joined the Army Air Force from high school in September 1941 and became an air mechanic. One day he rode with a maintenance officer, inspected an aircraft he had serviced on the plane, and immediately threw it over the back seat. But he joined the listed men’s flight program in July 1942, which found him to be out of kitchen detail and guard duty. He took off his pilot wings and was commissioned as an aviation officer while on a base in Arizona in March 1943, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant after arriving in the UK for training. In 2016, when General Yeager was asked on Twitter what he wanted to do to become a pilot, the answer was filled by cheeky Levitt: “I was in care, I saw the pilots had beautiful women on their hands, no dirty hands, so I applied.” He had the innate integrity and competence to understand an airplane mechanical system with cooling under pressure. He enjoyed spins and dives, and loved to have fake dog fights with his fellow trainers. He flew P-51 Mustang fighters on the European stage during World War II, and in March 1944, on his eighth mission, was shot down by a warplane fighter jet and parachuted into the woods with leg and head injuries. But he was hidden by French underground members, climbed into the foggy Pyrenees and flew to neutral Spain, carrying a severely wounded pilot with him and returning to his base in England. Famous pilots did not usually engage in combat again, but were requested to see his action again. On October 12, 1944, he led three warlords carrying bombers over Bremen, Germany, shot down five German planes and became an ace in one day. In November, he shot down four more planes in one day. After the war, General Yeager was assigned to Murok Military Air Base in California, where hotshot pilots tested jet prototypes. He was selected over more senior pilots to fly the Bell X-1 in the quest to break the sound barrier, and when he began to do so, he could barely move, breaking two ribs in one night and crashing the Cold War with the Soviet Union when he crashed, a feat the Air Force kept a secret. But in December 1947, Aviation Week magazine revealed that the sound ban had been broken; In June 1948 the Air Force finally agreed to it. But life in Murok continued. The pilots and their families were a little better off than the shakes, the days were burning, the nights were fast, and the terrain was barren. The pilots flew during the day and did carousel at night, gathering at the Pancho Barnes bar. In December 1949, the Murok Edwards Air Force Base was renamed and became the center for advanced aerospace research leading to the space program. In December 1953, General Yeager set the world speed record by flying an X-1A aircraft at almost two and a half times the speed of sound, maintaining one cycle. In the fall of 1953, he was sent to an air base in Okinawa to test a MiG-15 Russian-built fighter in the Pacific, which was flown into US hands by a North Korean man. As he took the plane upstairs he struggled with the stormy weather and explored its strengths and weaknesses. In 1962, he became commander of the school at Edwards, where he coached prospective astronauts. During the Vietnam War he commanded a war unit, while serving as a colonel and flying 127 missions, mainly supplying Martin B-57 light bombs to enemy troops and their Ho Chi Minh route. After serving as Air Chief of Defense Staff for the Air Force, he retired in 1975 as a Brigadier General. His decorations include the Famous Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Famous Cross and the Bronze Star. In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal, the country’s highest civilian award, from President Ronald Reagan. NASA Administrator Jim Friedenstein described the death of General Yager as “the greatest loss to our nation.” Astronaut Scott Kelly, who writes on Twitter, called him “a true legend”. General Yeager became a familiar face in advertisements and made numerous public appearances. After flying F-15s, he broke the sound barrier again in the 50s and 55s of his predecessor, and traveled on the F-15s to break the soundtrack to commemorate his 65th birthday. His first wife, his former wife, Glennys Dickhouse, had four children with him in 1990. Died in. He married Victoria de Angelo in 2003. Wife to him; Two daughters, Susan Yeager and Sharon Yeager Flick; And a son, Don. Another son, Michael, died in 2011. In his memoirs, General Yeager wrote that during all his years as a pilot, he “made sure to learn everything I could about my aircraft and my emergency equipment.” This is not his image, but, as he puts it: “I was always scared to death. As always. Mike Ives and Neil Victor contributed to the reporting.

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