Yeager's most notable achievement was piloting the X-1 experimental rocket plane, in which he became the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound in 1947, shortly after the founding of the U.S. Air Force as a separate service. Legendary airman Chuck Yeager the first pilot in history confirmed to break the sound barrier died Monday, his wife announced. GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) Retired Air Force Brig. Yeagers pioneering and innovative spirit advanced Americas abilities in the sky and set our nations dreams soaring into the jet age and the space age. [77] Sam Shepard portrayed Yeager in the film, which chronicles in part his famous 1947 record-breaking flight. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, the first pilot ever to break the sound barrier, has died. On Oct. 12, 1944, leading three fighter squadrons escorting bombers over Bremen, Germany, he downed five German planes, becoming an ace in a day. He enjoyed spins and dives and loved staging mock dogfights with his fellow trainees. Chuck Yeager, standing next to the "Glamorous Glennis," the Bell X-1 experimental plane with which he first broke the sound barrier. Contact Us. He married Glennis Dickhouse of Oroville, California, on Feb. 26, 1945. [94] He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1981. Yeager never forgot his roots and West Virginia named bridges, schools and Charlestons airport after him. But there were no news broadcasts that day, no newspaper headlines. Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier in 1947, poses in front of the rocket-powered Bell X-IE plane that he flew at Edwards Air Force Base on Sept. 4, 1985. Yeager joined the USAF test pilot school at Muroc (now known as Edwards Air Force Base), and in June 1947 he was enlisted in the X-1 programme, making his first powered flight reaching Mach .85 that August. Chuck Yeager in 1948. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called his death "a tremendous. "It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. He was 97. He was 97. He flew more than 150 military aircraft, logging more than 10,000 hours in the air. Published: Dec. 7, 2020 at 7:56 PM PST. It is referred to as a Special Congressional Silver Medal in the President's Daily Diary (also see for a list of ceremony attendees). In the 2019 documentary series Chasing the Moon, the filmmakers made the claim that Yeager instructed staff and participants at the school that "Washington is trying to cram the nigger down our throats. Chuck Yeager, the most famous test pilot of his generation, who was the first to break the sound barrier and, thanks to Tom Wolfe, came to personify the death-defying aviator who possessed the elusive yet unmistakable right stuff, died on Monday in Los Angeles. [36][c] Besides his wife who was riding with him, Yeager told only his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about the accident. "All through my career, I credit luck a lot with survival because of the kind of work we were doing.". In 2016, when General Yeager was asked on Twitter what made him want to become a pilot, the reply was infused with cheeky levity: I was in maintenance, saw pilots had beautiful girls on their arms, didnt have dirty hands, so I applied.. Yeager became the first person to break the . In December 1953, General Yeager flew the X-1A plane at nearly two and a half times the speed of sound after barely surviving a spin, setting a world speed record. [47] The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. As an evader, he received his choice of assignments and, because his new wife was pregnant, chose Wright Field to be near his home in West Virginia. Downed pilots were not generally put back into combat, but his pleas to see action again were granted. "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. My beginnings back in West Virginia tell who I am to this day, Yeager wrote. [48] During 1952, he attended the Air Command and Staff College. [53][e], Yeager was foremost a fighter pilot and held several squadron and wing commands. Chuck Yeager, the historic test pilot portrayed in the movie " The Right Stuff ," is dead at the age of 97, according to a tweet posted on his account late Monday. Wearing a model of his hero Chuck Yeager's Bell X1A airplane on his lapel, Luke Strange-Paylor, 9, of Millstone, Calhoun County, waits for Yeager's memorial service to begin Friday at the . But the guy who broke the sound barrier was the kid who swam the Mud River with a swiped watermelon or shot the head off a squirrel before going to school.. Yeagers feat was kept top secret for about a year when the world thought the British had broken the sound barrier first. December 8, 2020. Chuck Yeager, Test Pilot Who Broke the Sound Barrier, Is Dead at 97 A World War II fighter ace and Air Force general, he was, according to Tom Wolfe, "the most righteous of all the possessors of. Key points: Yeager broke the sound barrier when he was just 24 years old in 1947 In his portrayal of the astronauts of NASAs Mercury program, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the post-World War II test pilot fraternity in Californias desert and its notion that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness to pull it back in the last yawning moment and then go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day., That quality, understood but unspoken, Mr. Wolfe added, would entitle a pilot to be part of the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.. Among the flights he made after breaking the sound barrier was one on Dec. 12. He was 97. There is anecdotal evidence that American pilot, Yeager received the DSM in the Army design, since the. He reportedly could see enemy fighters from 50 miles away and ended up fighting in several wars. Chuck Yeager, the American test pilot who became the first person to break the sound barrier and was later immortalised in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, has died aged 97. When youre fooling around with something you dont know much about, there has to be apprehension. In his memoir, General Yeager said he was annoyed when people asked him if he had the right stuff, since he felt it implied a talent he was born with. I'm down to 25,000," he says calmly if a little breathlessly. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done, Bridenstine said. Chuck Yeager was born in Myra, West Virginia, on February 13, 1923. On October 12, 1944, he attained "ace in a day" status, shooting down five enemy aircraft in one mission. During his stay with the Maquis, Yeager assisted the guerrillas in duties that did not involve direct combat; he helped construct bombs for the group, a skill that he had learned from his father. General Yeager became a familiar face in commercials and made numerous public appearances. Yeager was born Feb. 23, 1923, in Myra, a tiny community on the Mud River deep in an Appalachian hollow about 40 miles southwest of Charleston. Yeager married 45-year-old Victoria Scott DAngelo in 2003. News of the then-astounding accomplishment was kept from the public until June 1948 but that didnt matter to Yeager. She was 82. He was chosen over more senior pilots to fly the Bell X-1 in a quest to break the sound barrier, and when he set out to do it, he could barely move, having broken two ribs a couple of nights earlier when he crashed into a fence while racing with his wife on horseback in the desert. His signal achievement came on Oct. 14, 1947, when he climbed out of a B-29 bomber as it ascended over the Mojave Desert in California and entered the cockpit of an orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-powered experimental plane attached to the bomb bay. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces out of high school in September 1941, becoming an airplane mechanic. GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) Retired Air Force Brig. Today, the plane Yeager first broke the sound barrier in, the X-1, hangs inside the air and space museum. I was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride, he said. In combat from February 1944, Yeager had accounted for an Me-109, over Berlin, by early March, when, on his eighth mission, he was shot down near Bordeaux. "He got himself shot down and he escaped," van der Linden says. [11], At the time of his flight training acceptance, he was a crew chief on an AT-11. Xi Jinping is unveiling a new deputy - why it matters, Bakhmut attacks still being repelled, says Ukraine, Saving Private Ryan actor Tom Sizemore dies at 61, The children left behind in Cuba's mass exodus, Snow, Fire and Lights: Photos of the Week. Yeager died Monday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement, calling the death "a tremendous loss to our nation.". You do it because it's duty. Any airplane I name after you always brings me home. You can see the treetops in the bottom of the pictures., Yeager flew an F-80 under a Charleston bridge at 450 mph on Oct. 10, 1948, according to newspaper accounts. One day I climbed up on my roof with my 8 mm camera when he flew overhead. Yeager flew for what was then his monthly USAF pay of $283. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager, a military test pilot who was the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound and live to tell about it, died Dec. 7 in Los Angeles. [52], The new record flight, however, did not entirely go to plan, since shortly after reaching Mach 2.44, Yeager lost control of the X-1A at about 80,000ft (24,000m) due to inertia coupling, a phenomenon largely unknown at the time. He then managed to land without further incident. They had to wait for rescue. He was 97 when he passed away. [100], Army of the United States(Army Air Forces), Yeager named his plane after his wife, Glennis, as a good-luck charm: "You're my good-luck charm, hon. A message posted to his Twitter account says, "Fr. But life continued much the same at Muroc. Away from The Right Stuff, some critics charged that the vastly experienced Yeager had simply ignored advice about the complexities of the new jet. Famed test pilot, retired Brig. (AP) Retired Air Force Brig. [121] Subsequent to the commencement of their relationship, a bitter dispute arose between Yeager, his children and D'Angelo. Ketia Daniel, founder of BHM Cleaning Co., is BestReviews cleaning expert. 1953, when he flew an X-1A to a record of more than 1,600 mph. Air Force Captain Charles Yeager, 25, in Los Angeles on Jan., 21, 1949. It was not until 10 June 1948 that the US finally announced its success, but Yeager was already soaring towards myth. He was 97. [86] Later that month, he was the recipient of the Tony Jannus Award for his achievements. [123][124], Yeager lived in Grass Valley, Northern California and died in the afternoon of December 7, 2020 (National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day), at age 97, in a Los Angeles hospital.[125][126]. Aviation Remembers Chuck Yeager. His death, at a hospital, was announced on his official Twitter account and confirmed by John Nicoletti, a family friend. (Photo by Jason Merritt . rules against Chuck Yeager's daughter in dispute with stepmother", "Chuck Yeager, who made history for breaking the sound barrier, dies at 97", "Chuck Yeager, pilot who broke the sound barrier, dies at 97", Biography in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, General Chuck Yeager, USAF, Biography and Interview, "Chuck Yeager & the Sound Barrier" in Aerospaceweb.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chuck_Yeager&oldid=1142035779, United States Air Force personnel of the Vietnam War, People from Lincoln County, West Virginia, Recipients of the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States), Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army), Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents, United States Army Air Forces pilots of World War II, Pages using cite court with unknown parameters, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Yeager, Chuck, Bob Cardenas, Bob Hoover, Jack Russell and James Young, This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 04:40. A message posted to his Twitter account says, "Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. [49], Yeager went on to break many other speed and altitude records. [27][28] Yeager said, "I'm certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. The X-1A began spinning viciously and spiraling to Earth, dropping 50,000 feet in about a minute. Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Two days later, Yeager was scheduled to fly the rocket-powered, orange-painted Bell X-1 plane nicknamed Glamorous Glennis, to Mach .97, just below Mach 1, the speed of sound. Gen. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, the first pilot to fly aircraft exceeding the speed of sound, has died at the age of 97. [21] "I raised so much hell that General Eisenhower finally let me go back to my squadron" Yeager said. He was also a key supporter of the Marshall University's Society of Yeager Scholars, which was named in his honor. He played "Fred", a bartender at "Pancho's Place", which was most appropriate, as Yeager said, "if all the hours were ever totaled, I reckon I spent more time at her place than in a cockpit over those years". My accomplishments as a test pilot tell more about luck, happenstance and a persons destiny. He flew his 61st and final mission on January 15, 1945, and returned to the United States in early February 1945. He was also one of the first American pilots to fly a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, after its pilot, No Kum-sok, defected to South Korea. The pain took his breath away. But you dont let that affect your job., The modest Yeager said in 1947 he could have gone even faster had the plane carried more fuel. On Oct. 14, 1947, Yeager, then a 24-year-old captain, pushed an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane past 660 mph to break the sound barrier, at the time a daunting aviation milestone. He trained as an Army Air Corps mechanic, but by July 1942 he was flight training in California, where he met his wife-to-be, Glennis Dickhouse. After high school, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps where he didn't have the education credentials for flight training. It's not just flying the airplane, it's interpreting how the airplane is flying and understanding that. It might sound funny, but Ive never owned an airplane in my life. The actor Sam Shepard, left, and General Yeager on the set of the 1983 film The Right Stuff, in which Mr. Shepard played General Yeager. Yeager died Monday, his wife, Victoria Yeager, said on hisTwitter account. Chuck Yeager at Edwards Air Force Base in California, on October 14, 1997. They're suing", "C.A. A tweet posted on the former U.S. Air Force pilot's . According to sources, James "MF" Yeager passed away this morning, September 2, 2022. 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. . A tweet posted on the former U.S. Air Force pilot's official Twitter account and attributed to his wife, Victoria Yeager, confirmed the World War II ace died just before 9 p.m. Monday. Battling stormy weather as he took the plane aloft, he analyzed its strengths and weaknesses. Yeager had two brothers, Roy and Hal Jr., and two sisters, Doris Ann (accidentally killed at age two by six-year-old Roy playing with a firearm)[4][5][6] and Pansy Lee. His decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star. He had reached a speed of 700 miles an 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.