Chuck Yeager by Joe Stepanek

Chuck Yeager

I enjoyed this assignment because it gave me the opportunity to select and research my childhood hero Chuck Yeager.When World War II ended, I was just starting grammar school and I was very impressionable. All the men and women returning home from Europe and Asia after World War II were considered heroes. Some were exceptional and Chuck was one of these.In addition to being an American war hero, Chuck Yeager is also the most famous test pilot of all time.He won that distinction by being the first man to break the sound barrier, but that is just one of many extraordinary feats he performed in service to his country.

Chuck Elwood Yeager was born in Myra, West Virginia in 1923. He was raised and went to school in the town of Hamlin. Directly out of high school he joined the Army Air Corps as an enlisted man.

He was shot down over occupied France in 1943. He was wounded but evaded capture, and with help from the French resistance he escaped to neutral Spain. From Spain he was able to return to his squadron in England. Pilots that were shot down and survived were prohibited by Air Corp. policy from flying further combat missions. Chuck appealed directly to General Eisenhower and was permitted to return to combat. He flew a total of 64 combat missions during World War ll. He shot down 13 enemy aircraft including one jet aircraft with his prop plane.

After the war, Chuck continued on in the new United States Air Force as a flight instructor and test pilot.  In October 1947 Chuck was assigned to fly the Bell X-1 rocket powered plane. In 1947, no one knew if a plane could hold together at speeds approaching the speed of sound or if a human being could survive the experience. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. When asked about the experience he said,” it’s your duty to fly the airplane. If you get killed in it, you don’t know anything anyway.” He set a new speed record of 1650 mph in 1952.

When the space race with the Russians started in 1956, Yeager was Commander of the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilots School. This school was started to train pilots for the space program. As commander, Yeager supervised the development of the space simulator and the introduction of advanced computers to Air Force pilots. While Chuck never went to space, nearly half of the astronauts who served in the Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo programs were graduates of Yeager’s school.The Air Force Space School was closed in 1966, when NASA took over astronaut training.

During the Vietnam War Colonel Yeager commanded the 405^th fighter wing out of the Philippines. In addition to training bomber pilots he flew 127 combat air-support missions. In 1968 Yeager was promoted to brigadier general. He is one of a very small group who has risen from enlisted man to general in the Air Force. In 1970, General Yeager served as U.S. Defense representative to Pakistan and supervised Pakistan’s air defense in its war with India. He retired from the Air Force in 1975, but continued to serve as a consulting test pilot for some years after. Chuck made his last flight as a military consultant on October 14, 1997, the 50^th anniversary of his history making flight in the Bell X-1.He celebrated the occasion by once again breaking the sound barrier, this time in an F-15 fighter.