He married Glennis Dickhouse of Oroville, California, on Feb. 26, 1945. 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". Pilot Chuck Yeager Dies At 97, Had 'The Right Stuff' And Then Some US Air Force officer and test pilot Chuck Yeager, known as "the fastest man alive," has died at the age of 97. He was 97. The Interstate 64/Interstate 77 bridge over the Kanawha River in Charleston is named in his honor. GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) Retired Air Force Brig. Such was the difficulty of this task that the answer to many of the inherent challenges was along the lines of "Yeager better have paid-up insurance". Chuck Yeager, a World War II fighter pilot, the first person to break the sound barrier and one of the subjects of Philip Kaufman 's The Right Stuff has died. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. I recovered the X-1A from inverted spin into a normal spin, popped it out of that and came on back and landed. [23], Yeager demonstrated outstanding flying skills and combat leadership. He spent four years from 1962 as commandant of the USAFs aerospace research pilot school. Van der Linden says Yeager became a fighter ace, shooting down five enemy aircraft in a single mission and four others on a different day. ", Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies, "The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club", "Famous pilot Yeager re-enacting right stuff 65 years later", "Chuck Yeager, Pioneer of Supersonic Flight, Dies at Age 97", "Chuck Yeager is honored by Tuskegee Airman", "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement", "The Daily Diary of President Gerald R. Ford: December 8, 1976", "Ground-Level Monuments Honor Heroes of the Air", "Harry S. Truman The President's Day, November 2, 1950". General Yeager broke the sound barrier again in an F-15D on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight in 1997. [82], In 2009, Yeager participated in the documentary The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a profile of his friend Pancho Barnes. [83], On October 14, 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight past Mach 1, he flew a new Glamorous Glennis III, an F-15D Eagle, past Mach 1. You concentrate on results. 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.. Gen. Chuck Yeager, along with his remains, to his funeral in West . In December 1949, Muroc was renamed Edwards Air Force Base, and it became a center for advanced aviation research leading to the space program. Its your job.. He also had a keen interest in interacting with PAF personnel from various Pakistani Squadrons and helping them develop combat tactics. [99], The Civil Air Patrol, the volunteer auxiliary of the USAF, awards the Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager Award to its senior members as part of its Aerospace Education program. With the aircraft simultaneously rolling, pitching, and yawing out of control, Yeager dropped 51,000ft (16,000m) in less than a minute before regaining control at around 29,000ft (8,800m). It was a dangerous quest one that had killed other pilots in other planes. Yeager also commanded Air Force fighter squadrons and wings, and the Aerospace Research Pilot School for military astronauts. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. He said he was just doing his job. You don't do it to get your damn picture on the front page of the newspaper. [32] After Bell Aircraft test pilot Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin demanded US$150,000 (equivalent to $1,820,000 in 2021) to break the sound "barrier", the USAAF selected the 24-year-old Yeager to fly the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight. Then he faced another challenge during a dogfight over France. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian award, from President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He was 97. "He got himself shot down and he escaped," van der Linden says. All I know is I worked my tail off learning to learn how to fly, and worked hard at it all the way, he wrote. General Yeagerpreparing to board an F-15D Eagle in 2012. Yeager's wife, Victoria, paid tribute on Twitter. He was worried that the injury would remove him from the mission and reported that he went to a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond, who taped his ribs. His record-breaking flight opened up space, Star Wars, satellites, he told Agence France-Presse in 2007. The family later moved to Hamlin, the county seat. 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 . Yeager retired from the Air Force in 1975 and moved to a ranch in Cedar Ridge in Northern California where he continued working as a consultant to the Air Force and Northrop Corp. and became well known to younger generations as a television pitchman for automotive parts and heat pumps. President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Collier air trophy in December 1948 for his breaking the sound barrier. ", Yeager strikes a pose with Sam Shepard, who played him in the movie version of The Right Stuff. 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. The airport that serves Charleston, West Virginia, is named after Chuck Yeager. After they were bested, Ridley and Yeager decided to beat rival Crossfield's speed record in a series of test flights that they dubbed "Operation NACA Weep". [48] During 1952, he attended the Air Command and Staff College. Chuck Yeager (@GenChuckYeager) . His Dutch-German family the surname was an anglicised version of Jger (hunter) had settled there in the 1800s. It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. US test pilot Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier, has died aged 97, his wife says. Battling stormy weather as he took the plane aloft, he analyzed its strengths and weaknesses. As for the X-1, its rocket engine was conceived in pre-war Greenwich Village, but the plane itself strongly resembled the British Miles M-52 jet, whose plans were shown to Bell in 1944. Yeager broke the sound barrier when he tested the X-1 in October 1947, although. 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. This. He said the ride was nice, just like riding fast in a car.. When he was asked to repeat the feat for photographers, Yeager replied: You should never strafe the same place twice cause the gunners will be waiting for you.. An Air Force captain at the time, he zoomed off in the plane, a Bell Aircraft X-1, at an altitude of 23,000 feet, and when he reached about 43,000 feet above the desert, historys first sonic boom reverberated across the floor of the dry lake beds. Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. 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. He then went on to break several other speed and altitude records in the following years. Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in the tiny West Virginia town of Myra. My beginnings back in West Virginia tell who I am to this day, Yeager wrote. 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. -. [84] The chase plane for the flight was an F-16 Fighting Falcon piloted by Bob Hoover, a longtime test, fighter, and aerobatic pilot who had been Yeager's wingman for the first supersonic flight. [65][67] Yeager recalled "the Pakistanis whipped the Indians asses in the sky the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing 34 airplanes of their own". [97], Yeager was an honorary board member of the humanitarian organization Wings of Hope. Chuck Yeager, first to break the sound barrier, dies at 97 It concluded with Yeager, 16 years on from his exploits in Harry Trumans America, in the 1963 of JFKs new frontier. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? Charles Elwood Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in Myra, W. Va., the second of five children of Albert and Susie Mae (Sizemore) Yeager. . [87], On October 14, 2012, on the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, Yeager did it again at the age of 89, flying as co-pilot in a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle piloted by Captain David Vincent out of Nellis Air Force Base. Glennis Dickhouse was pilot Chuck Yeager's wife of 45 years. Yeager was not present in the aircraft. He grew up in nearby Hamlin, a town of about 400, where his father drilled for natural gas in the coal fields. 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.. James Yeager, RIP - The Truth About Guns In a tweet, Victoria Yeager wrote: "It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET.". You do it because its duty. [88], In 1973, Yeager was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, arguably aviation's highest honor. [23] In the meantime, Yeager shot down his second enemy aircraft, a German Junkers Ju 88 bomber, over the English Channel. He was 97. "[116] Yeager and Glennis moved to Grass Valley, California, after his retirement from the Air Force in 1975. Their job, flying a T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the North American X-15. He got back to England, and normally, they would ship people home after that. For that same series, executive producer Rick Berman said that he envisaged the lead character, Captain Jonathan Archer, as being "halfway between Chuck Yeager and Han Solo. He passed away on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, with not enough fanfare. 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. By the time he was 6, Chuck was shooting squirrels and rabbits and skinning them for family dinners, reveling in a country boys life. Gen. Chuck Yeager, who passed away Monday at the age of 97. 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. Chuck Yeager dies at 97, Air Force pilot who first broke speed of sound. [47] The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. President Gerald Ford presented the medal to Yeager in a ceremony at the White House on December 8, 1976. Air Force Captain Charles Yeager, 25, in Los Angeles on Jan., 21, 1949. When he was five years old, his family moved to Hamlin, West Virginia.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 . Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Plane Said to Fly Faster Than Speed of Sound", "Mach match: Did an XP-86 beat Yeager to the punch? It was a matter of keeping them from falling apart, Yeager said. At least that was my perspective when I was young.
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