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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.'"
A re-enactment other than with a different model of aircraft and a different pilot.
...got a stick of Beemans?
Really?
No, sorry, it is not a re-enactment. He just went for a supersonic flight as a passenger.
the new method of return from the ISS in hard economic times?
'Yeah, I was scared to death.'
Joking or not, once you have been Pilot in Command, when you fly with someone else, you do get kind of twitchy. Kind of like riding in a car with a newly licensed 16 year old. When YOU are not in control, things seem different and possibly scary.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Interesting, if that's so then exactly 65 years minus 1 day after the first human to cross the sound barrier in an airplane, we have the first human to cross the sound barrier without airplane (yesterday)!
And with that in mind, this quote "Yeah, I was scared to death." sounds different than fun sarcasm. And at the end "For his part Yeager said nothing special was going through his mind at the time of the re-enactment." It's kinda like yeah, whatever. I've talked to a few people who've talked to several of the great old timers and they seem to agree Yeager isn't a very pleasant person.
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.
There were a few pilots during and shortly WWII who claimed to have gone more than Mach 1.0. Some said the P-51 was capable of it in a power dive. Of course it was often fatal which makes Yeager's willingness to make the flight all the more impressive.
Calling it a reenactment is just journalistic hyperbole.. As for the first to break the sound barrier, there are several contenders according to criteria.. Yaeger was the first to do it deliberately, measurably, in level flight, and survive. Geoffrey DeHavilland broke it in the DH108 but died in the process. The xf-86 prototype with George Welch almost certainly did it before him, but once again, in a barely-controlled dive. The same with all the other claims, they were not in control and they were lucky to survive, if they did.
Yeager has done a fine job milking his past achievements for his own personal gain.
But this is old stuff and it is boring now.
If you want to see some people who really are putting it on the line
this year, check out the Vendee Globe sailboat race which runs
around the world nonstop and is singlehanded.
If that isn't proof he's sporting a huge pair and was one tough son of a bitch, I don't know what is.
These guys were awesome.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Surely you mean a Miles M52? ;-)
Yeager did it in level flight - a huge difference
Yeager's plane was called "X-1" and Welch's "F-86"--huge difference.
FTFY
Set your phasers on "funky"!
This would have been a lot better if he just made jet noises, and a plane shape out of his hand, and after going.. boom and thrusting his hand forward exclaimed.. "And that's how I broke the sound barrier!"
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, he broke two ribs while riding a horse. He was so afraid of being removed from the mission that he went to a veterinarian in a nearby town for treatment and told only his wife, as well as friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about it. Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis (or some variation thereof), after his wife. Yeager in the Bell X-1 cockpit. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the airplane's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch of the X-1.
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Chuck Yeager was actually nursing an injury on that day. And that he hid the fact that he was medically unfit to test that plane from his commanding officers. Because that flight was successful, everyone forgave Chuck. But he could have crashed the plane and set the program back by an year. In my eyes he is just a glory seeker, who put his personal ambition ahead of the interests of his mission.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And a hundred or so other Air Cadet pilots, at our graduation ceremony. To celebrate to 50th anniversary of the RCAF, special guests were brought in to pin the wings on the graduating pilots at ceremonies around Canada. Ontario got the Prince of Wales, the Maritimes got Chuck Yeager. Usually Ontario gets the special treatment in Canada, but as newly minted pilots, having the first (official) man to break the sound barrier and decorated WWII fighter pilot decorate us, I think we all agreed that we won out that day!
... anyone can break the sound barrier in a fucking plane ...
Anyone can fall to the ground
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.
Dude is 89 and could probably still kick your ass. Go back to your little consulting gig, you zero.
The airlines still operating it could not make a profit with the rising cost of fuel. Yes, it has a sonic boom, but, given that most of its high demand routes were over water, that was hardly an issue. It's cost per seat mile was many multiples of what the cost per seat mile was on traditional aircraft. With the advent of the Wide Body twin jets with full ETOPS certifications, (the 767-ER, 777s, A-330 and some 320 variants), the seat mile cost plummeted and the business case disolved. In their final years they were a novelty played with by the super rich, the few governments that would pay for someone to go that fast, and a few novelty travelers. They were rarely at above a 50% load factor and lost money for half a decade or more before being retired.
I will grant you that the sonic boom limited them from some routes that could have made them somewhat profitable, especially a New York to LA run that would have brought in quite a penny in seat fees, but when they couldn't come up with a business case for a snowbird route from New York to Miama, that would have been all over water, and could have cycled four times a day, the writing was on the wall. They were expensive to keep up, requiring more expensive parts than comparable sized passenger aircraft (afterburners are not cheap to maintain, nor is the skin that is speced for supersonic airflows and thermal loads) and many more manhours of work per flight hour. All that adds up. You can only charge so much per seat.
Now, this space is being taken up by the time share gulf stream crowd. Planes ready when you are, that fly higher than regular comercial jets, at .96 mach all day long. It'll get you to London from New York over an hour faster than any commercial, once you take in all the hastles of regular comercial travel. The dirty little secret is that that's what those jets are "certified" for for cruising speed. They have lots of excess range, take off with rather full tanks and land nearly empty. That doesn't happen when you're flying in your cruise envelope...
Let me tell you a little something about the F-15. The Eagle was developed, at a tremendous cost, to counter what was thought of to be a super jet, the Mig-25, which was developed to counter the bomber the Air Force was testing, the Mach 3 XB-70 (which never went into production). Mig-25's were routinely out running F-4's from Israel, so the Air Force wanted something better. Not knowing anything about the Mig's performance or anything other than it was FAST, McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) in St. Louis started work on what would become the F-15. TWO BIG HUGE jet engines were centerlined around the frame. It was built at the very infancy of computers. It was, for lack of a better term, overbuilt. In the 70's, a pilot defected with a Mig-25 Foxbat in Japan, and our military pretty much took it apart and found that other than the two big engines used to obtain the speed, the Mig-25 was a piece of junk. The enviromental system sucked among other problems with the panels not fitting. They laughed at the vacuum tubes at the time, but I think now tubes might handle an EMP burst a little better than IC's. The F-15 has never been bested in air to air combat. One Israel F-15 even LOST THE ENTIRE STARBOARD wing, and landed safely! The F-15 is still a very capable aircraft, and could be modified to be a little more "stealthy", but, the air force has already wasted a ton of money in the F-22 (now they know what caused the Oxygen problem it should be back in service). The brass hats in the air force are like little kids, always wanting a new toy to play with. The "St. Louie Slugger" will be around a LONG time to come, despite its age. And the age part? most have been built in the 80's that are in front line combat. D's, E's are for the most part flying. Probably not too many A models left. The team that came up with the Eagle should be congratulated. Every once in a while, a near perfect design comes along. The P-51 Mustang, the B-17, the F-86...the F-15 Eagle.
He's a fighter ace and a test pilot. A trained killer, and an officer. Pleasant? If he were really in a bad mood, he'd strangle you with one quick grab and walk off. None of these guys are "pleasant".
That is Hollywood BS. Read Yeager's biography. Here is some insight into his view of combat and killing. After famously shooting down several German aircraft in a single mission he was asked by a PR person for a comment. He did not tell the superior American pilot story the PR person wanted. He said that several of the German pilots were barely trained, could not fly their aircraft very well and seemed to have little combat training, that the German officer who ordered such novices into combat should be charged with murder.
In Chuck's day, WW2, millions of Americans were "trained killers". I literally grew up around guys (relatives, teachers, bosses, etc) who fought at Normandy, Bastogne, Guadalcanal (both onshore and up the slot), flew over Germany in '43, ... They were very "normal" people and not prone to the behavior you suggest. I've also worked for some Korea and Vietnam era fighter pilots. I found them pleasant people as well, perhaps my interest in aviation helped.
What such men often have is a low tolerance for stupidity. If you heard from someone that Yeager was unpleasant I suspect that this person sunk below his stupidity tolerance level.
Fuck off junior. First of all, Chuck Yeager went to Columbia as an undergrad, I thought, and second, he wasn't the only person to have gone to Columbia.
If there's one thing that's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes, Chuck Yeager is healthy and undeformed.
God, you've really be an asshole to read my comment and think "Chuck Norris". I suppose you have pictures of him photoshopped with a bone through his nose, too. Let me make a note for future reference: "Chuck Norris is a racist asshole, probably a right-wing tool on top of it." OK, got it.
Being 89 years old and breaking the sound barrier has to be a record on it's own.
Yes, I have pictures of Chuck Norris with a bone photoshopped through his nose.
I also have pictures of Chuck Yeager photoshopped with a pussy on his forehead. There is also a though balloon with the words "The Right Stuff" pointing to the pussy.
You are welcome on my lawn.