![]() He later regretted that his lack of a college education prevented him from becoming an astronaut. Yeager enlisted in the Army Air Corps after graduating from high school in 1941. “I was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride,” he said. “What really strikes me looking over all those years is how lucky I was, how lucky, for example, to have been born in 1923 and not 1963 so that I came of age just as aviation itself was entering the modern era,” Yeager said in a December 1985 speech at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. His father was an oil and gas driller and a farmer. The family later moved to Hamlin, the county seat. 23, 1923, in Myra, a tiny community on the Mud River deep in an Appalachian hollow about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Charleston. His exploits were told in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff,” and in the 1983 film it inspired. 14, 2012, Yeager commemorated the feat, flying in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) above California’s Mojave Desert. Sixty-five years later to the minute, on Oct. It was a matter of keeping them from falling apart,” Yeager said. “It wasn’t a matter of not having airplanes that would fly at speeds like this. Yeager’s feat was kept top secret for about a year when the world thought the British had broken the sound barrier first. Yeager nicknamed the rocket plane, and all his other aircraft, “Glamorous Glennis” for his first wife, who died in 1990. He said the ride “was nice, just like riding fast in a car.” The modest Yeager said in 1947 he could have gone even faster if the plane had carried more fuel. “When you’re fooling around with something you don’t know much about, there has to be apprehension. “Sure, I was apprehensive,” he said in 1968. 14, 1947, Yeager, then a 24-year-old captain, pushed an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane past 660 mph (1,062 kph) to break the sound barrier, at the time a daunting aviation milestone. “If I auger in (crash) tomorrow, it won’t be with a frown on my face. “I haven’t yet done everything, but by the time I’m finished, I won’t have missed much,” he wrote. ![]() The trick is to enjoy the years remaining,” he said in “Yeager: An Autobiography.” “Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself. Yeager, from a small town in the hills of West Virginia, flew for more than 60 years, including piloting an F-15 to near 1,000 mph (1,609 kph) at Edwards in October 2002 at age 79. Curtis Bedke, commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards. He was “the most righteous of all those with the right stuff,” said Maj. “In an age of media-made heroes, he is the real deal,” Edwards Air Force Base historian Jim Young said in August 2006 at the unveiling of a bronze statue of Yeager. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done,'” Bridenstine said. He said, ‘You don’t concentrate on risks. Yeager’s pioneering and innovative spirit advanced America’s abilities in the sky and set our nation’s dreams soaring into the jet age and the space age. Yeager’s death is “a tremendous loss to our nation,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.” “It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. Yeager died Monday, his wife, Victoria Yeager, said on his Twitter account. Charles “Chuck” Yeager, the World War II fighter pilot ace and quintessential test pilot who showed he had the “right stuff” when in 1947 he became the first person to fly faster than sound, has died. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done,’” Bridenstine said in his statement.GRASS VALLEY, Calif. Yeager died Monday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement, calling the death “a tremendous loss to our nation.” ![]() Yeager was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985. He was later portrayed in the book “The Right Stuff” and then the movie. In 1947, Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket 700 mph at 43,000 feet, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight. ![]() An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.- Chuck Yeager December 8, 2020 Fr It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. ![]()
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