The Right Stuff

 Mourning the passing of Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, USAF (ret).

"So Yeager takes [Project Engineer Jack] Ridley off to the side in the tin hanger and says: Jack, I got me a little ol' problem, here. Over at Pancho's the other night I sorta...dinged my goddamn ribs. Ridley says, Whattya mean...dinged? Yeager says, Well, I guess you might say I damned near like to...broke a couple of the sonsabitches." Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, (1979).

In fact, a few days prior to attempting the first official supersonic flight, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager had been thrown from a horse and broken two ribs. Rather than see the base doctor (which might result in his grounding) he rode an old motorcycle his friend Pancho Barnes (herself a pilot and owner of Pancho Barnes Happy Bottom Riding Club - a dude ranch and bar) and had them treated on the sly. So far, so good.

However, it meant that he could not shut the entryway door from inside the cockpit of the tiny, temperamental X-1. Jack Ridely, an accomplished test engineer and pilot, fashioned a solution using a length of broomstick handle. The rest, on October 14, 1947, is history.

Chuck Yeager grew up in West Virginia, and entered the US Army Air Forces as a private. He became an aircraft mechanic, then a non-commissioned pilot. He was shot down once, evading capture and assisting local partisans until he could be return to Allied lines. He resumed flying duties - why wouldn't he - and shot down several more aircraft, including one of the new jets deployed by Germany.

Yeager returned to the US after the war, and became a test pilot. This is where he steps onto the front page of aviation legend.

Aeronautical engineers once believed that the "Sound Barrier" actually represented something finite, an absolute wall. Hear again Tom Wolfe:

This led engineers to speculate that the g-forces became infinite at Mach 1 [the speed of sound], causing the aircraft to implode. They started talking about "the sonic wall" and "the sound barrier."

Not being an engineer, Yeager didn't believe the "barrier" existed.

How pervasive was, or is, the Yeager Legend? How deeply did his influence go in the aviation world? Wolfe:

Anyone who travels very much by airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot...

It was the [Appalachian] drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.

 There are no old, bold pilots. Somehow, a man who made a profession of testing cutting edge aircraft, who served in three wars (including combat missions in Vietnam) made it to ninety-seven.

With thanks, from a grateful nation.