[x]

They treated Yeager, a West Virginia country boy, as a dumb hillbilly and beneath them so it’s was very much a class thing.

Maybe, but the RAF was more egalitarian and open to class mobility than the British Army or Navy. RAF officers might have acted snobbishly, but a lot of them weren't top drawer in their own country themselves.

I notice that Chuck Yeager was shot down over France and escaped with the aid of the French Resistance. There were rules against fliers who'd been shot down doing additional combat missions, because if they were shot down again and captured, they could be tortured and reveal secrets about the Resistance.

Chuck wanted to fly anyway -- and did. Maybe his troubles with the British go back to that. Or maybe he was a guy who liked to break rules as he liked to break the sound barrier, and that put him at loggerheads with the RAF bureaucracy.

[pfflier]

FWIW Yeager appealed his case all the way the chain of command, finally to Eisenhower to get a waiver to return to combat in Europe. When he got back in there, he became an ace in a day.

That is how you win wars. Know any leaders we have now with that kind of motivation?