"FAST FLIER - Retired Brig. Gen. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager pauses for a moment on Sept. 21 while autographing several Edwards Air Force Ball posters at the 412th Operations Support Squadron's life support division."
Posted on 10/14/2007 9:24:38 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Sixty years ago today, the first sharp crack of a sonic boom echoed over the Mojave Desert, signaling man's successful assault on the sound barrier. At the controls of the pumpkin-orange Bell X-1 aircraft, dubbed "Glamourous Glennis" after his wife, sat Capt. Charles E. Yeager, a West Virginian with a high school education, a dozen enemy kills in World War II and a growing reputation as a top-notch test pilot.
The flight marked a milestone in aviation history, ushering in a new era of supersonic flight and putting the remote flight test facility at what is now known as Edwards Air Force Base on the map.
Yeager arrived at what was then Muroc Army Air Field in 1947 for flight tests of the Bell X-1 in an attempt to travel faster than the speed of sound.
"At this point, military pilots were never allowed to do research flights. That was (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics's) responsibility, and they guarded it very jealously," Yeager said recently during a presentation about his historic flight.
That soon changed, as the X-1 became the first research flight test program to use Air Force pilots.
Of the nearly 125 test pilots stationed at Wright Field in Ohio - then home to the Air Force's flight test program - Yeager was chosen for the task by Col. (later Gen.) Albert Boyd, chief of flight testing at Wright Field.
"Being a high school graduate, I didn't think I'd ever get to be a test pilot," Yeager said.
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
"FAST FLIER - Retired Brig. Gen. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager pauses for a moment on Sept. 21 while autographing several Edwards Air Force Ball posters at the 412th Operations Support Squadron's life support division."
Chuck Yeager is backing Duncan Hunter for President. Obviously Yeager thinks Hunter has “the right stuff” to be CinC.
:’)
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