Chuck Yeager
I first chanced upon Chuck Yeager when I picked out a book from the bookshelf at my Mum and Dad’s house, I was probably 14 or 15 years old, the silver fighter plane on the cover and the word YEAGER across the top caught my eye. It was the autobiography of Chuck Yeager probably the most famous test pilot of all time.
I started reading and was instantly hooked by vivid stories of dogfights over Germany. As I read more and more I had began to wonder if it was really non fiction pretending to be an Autobiography. Surely nobody could have packed all this action and drama into their life.
So that’s why he’s my Saint, not only because he’s done so much, but because he’s achieved greatness. From humble beginnings he became an icon for a generation, faced death on numerous occasions and walked away. He has an ability to remain cool and think straight under the most intense pressure, analysing, assessing and finding a way out of a life and death situation. He’s a hugely gifted pilot and massively brave, above all he’s a real life action hero.
Chuck Yeager was born in 1923 and grew up in Hamlin, West Virginia, the son of a gas driller, he was always surrounded by machinery and spent his teenage years hustling pool. I don’t think College was ever an option for him, instead he joined the US Army Air force as a mechanic then found his way into a flight training program.
He earned with Wings and soon took hold of a P51 Mustang and arrived in England in 1943, no doubt a cocky young pilot, supremely confident in his own abilities and itching to shoot down Germans.
After 7 missions over Europe he got his wish and shot down his first enemy plane. The next mission didn’t quite go the same way, he was shot down himself and bailed out of his stricken Mustang over occupied France. He was wounded but managed to link up with the French Resistance and for weeks avoided capture, moving from safe house to safe house, slowly making his way towards the Spanish border. After a harrowing climb through the Pyrenees he made it to the Allied authorities in neutral Spain and was shipped back to the UK.
Regulations prohibited pilots from returning to combat, However Yeager was having non of it and appealed personally to General Eisenhower to let him back into combat. His wish was granted and Yeager became the first pilot to return to combat having evaded capture. It proved to be a good decision.
Yeager returned to his unit desperate to make up for lost ground, he was back in a P51 and back doing what he did best, dog fighting. Not only was he very good at it, he enjoyed it, it was the ultimate test of skill and airmanship. His score started to climb he even managed to bring down 5 enemy planes in one fight. Two collided as he lined up on them and he shot the other three down, becoming an “ace in a day”. What made him so successful apart from flying ability and aggressiveness was his eyesight. He simply could see the enemy planes before they spotted him, in the days before fighter planes had radar and heat seeking missiles, this meant a lot, it meant the difference between winning and losing. Yeager even managed to shot down a German jet fighter. The Me 262 could fly 200mph faster, but no matter, Yeager found one landing and duly brought it to the ground sooner than the hapless pilot had intended. After 64 missions Yeager had shot down a very respectable 11 ½ enemy planes, (you got a half for a shared kill).
After the war he quickly found himself posted to test flying and started on the supersonic program to punch through the sound barrier. The Americans had developed an experimental plane called the X-1, shaped like a bullet with wings and a tail and powered by a rocket motor.
It must have taken a huge amount of raw courage and nerve to fly the X-1 over and again as they edged closer and closer to the speed of sound. No one was really sure if a human could survive going through the sound barrier. There was a mystery around it, in Britain Geoffrey De Havilland had famously been killed whilst flying close to the speed of sound, no one new or understood why. He was one of the most experienced test pilots at the time and a house hold name; his death added to the aura and fuelled the belief that the sound barrier was impassable.
Then on the 14 October 1947 the worlds first sonic boom echoed around the dried lake beds of Muroc Army Air Field. Having been dropped like a bomb from the bomb bay of a B-29 bomber, Yeager lit up the rockets and took the tiny X-1 rocket ship through the sound barrier. The mystery had been unveiled, the ghosts layed to rest and the door had been opened for developments like the space program, the moon landings and Concorde.
He was propelled into the media spot light and became known around the world. The funny thing was, not only had he just done the aviation equivalent of the 3 minute mile or the first accent on Everest, he’d done it with broken ribs. A few days before he’d been out horse riding with his wife Glennis and was thrown from his horse. Afraid to miss out on the sound barrier attempt, he strapped up his ribs and kept quite, afraid of being grounded, he couldn’t even shut the cockpit door properly, all this at the age of 24.
Throughout the late 1940’s and early 1950’s Yeager continued to be at the sharp end, testing new planes and constantly going faster and faster. He felt insecure around other test pilots with College degrees; however he routinely fought them in dog fights. "I went through the entire stable of test pilots and waxed every fanny," he wrote in "Yeager."
By 1953 Yeager had reached Mach 2.44 (1,650mph) and became the first pilot to discover and experience a phenomena called inertia coupling, his plane started tumbling head over heals as it plummeting towards the earth. It took 40,000 feet to recover, most other pilots simply would not have survived, even rival test pilot Scott Crossfield later admitted it was "probably fortunate that Yeager was the pilot on that flight” "so we had the airplane to fly another day."
He then went onto fight in Korea and continued test flying after that, testing the latest experimental US planes. In 1963 he very badly injured when his plane lost control at 100,000 feet. Yeager ejected at 8,500 feet. While ejecting, his seat smashed into his helmet, tore open his visor, and the flame from his seat's ejector rocket severely burned him. Although he parachuted to safety, he required several skin grafts.
In the late 1960s he was back commanding fighter Squadrons in combat this time over Vietnam, flying 127 missions. He retired in 1975 a General, one of very few to have started off as an enlisted man and rise to the rank of General. And so ended an incredible career, the fact that he was still living and breathing to be able to retire at all was an achievement. He remains an inspiration to this day an example of what you can achieve with raw talent, hard work and shire bloody mindedness.
Ben Ross - January 2008