Two broken ribs? Don’t stop a real aviation pioneer! On October 12, 1947, Charles E., nicknamed “Chuck” Yeager, fell from his horse while shying away from a closed gate. But the most important flight of his life to date was scheduled for October 14: With the Bell X-1 experimental aircraft, the captain of the US Air Force, which had just been formally founded, wanted to be the first person to fly faster than sound.
So Yeager didn’t go to the medical officer at Muroc Air Force Base, California (better known by its later name, Edwards Air Force Base), who presumably wrote him unfit to fly. But to a civilian doctor in the nearby small town of Rosamond, who fixed his ribs, but of course knew nothing about the planned flight. His wife Glennis and his friend Jack Ridley were the only ones he told about his mishap – in case he needed help.
On October 14, 1947, the time had come: A converted B-29, with the X-1 attached to its fuselage, took off from the air base and flew at a service ceiling of more than 10,000 meters. There, Yeager triggered the 9.45 meter short rocket plane with a wingspan of only 8.53 meters, ignited the engine, climbed to around 13,000 meters and reached a measured speed of 1125 kilometers per hour in level flight. At this altitude and with the prevailing air pressure, the speed of sound is exactly 294.4 meters per second – almost twelve percent less than at sea level (331.5 meters per second). It was the first confirmed supersonic flight; other pilots claimed to have broken the sound barrier in a dive, but this was not measured.
After the record, Yeager’s X-1s landed safely on the vast salt flats in the Mojave Desert that belonged to the Air Force Base; it was the 50th flight of this aircraft. At first, the US authorities kept the success a top secret, but on December 20, 1947 the news leaked out: Someone – presumably he came from the base crew – had informed a reporter from the magazine “Aviation Week”, and two days later they reported “Los Angeles Times” on the front page. In aviation circles, “Chuck” Yeager had achieved immortality at the age of just 24. The strange thing was that he had only flown for the first time (as a passenger) five and a half years earlier, in January 1942 – and had promptly thrown up.
Born in West Virginia in 1923, Yeager had enlisted in the US Army Air Forces at age 18 before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Here he first received training as an aircraft mechanic, until the personnel requirements of the air force meant that the young man with unusually sharp eyes was admitted to pilot training. He graduated in March 1943 and was shipped to Britain with his squadron in November.
Here he flew missions on a P-51 Mustang, which he named “Glamorous Glen” after his girlfriend. On his eighth patrol flight, on March 5, 1944, after a confirmed shooting down, he himself was taken out of the sky. He was able to land almost unharmed and found support from Resistance fighters, who enabled him to flee to Spain at the end of March. Six weeks later he arrived back at his unit in Britain.
Actually, he would have been banned from working. But he was able to personally convince the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to let him fly missions over France and Germany again. In just one day he managed to shoot down five German planes. With a total of 11.5 official kills (actually at least 12.5), he was “only” around 120th among the US aces, but he was the first US pilot to shoot down a Messerschmitt Me-262.
Yeager was considered an unusually gifted aviator. After 60 enemy flights (one more than usual for US pilots), he returned to West Virginia in January 1945 and married his girlfriend there. Unlike most of his comrades, he stayed with the greatly reduced Army Air Forces – even when they were reorganized into the independent US Air Force in 1947.
Of course, he also named “his” Bell X-1 after his wife – like his three consecutive P-51s in Europe. That’s why “Glamorous Glennis” was emblazoned on the bow of the orange machine with which he broke the sound barrier. Yeager remained a test pilot until 1955 and achieved further records, for example in December 1953 the first flight with far more than double the speed of sound, namely at Mach 2.45.
He then returned to regular service in the US Air Force, commanding squadrons in Germany, California and Spain, among other places. From 1966 he commanded a squadron of tactical bombers in the Philippines and made another 127 enemy flights in the Vietnam War. Brigadier General from 1969, he retired in 1975 at the age of 52. In 1990 his Glennis, to whom he had been married for 45 years, died.
As an absolute natural talent for self-portrayal, Yeager remained present in the media into old age. His last supersonic flight was in 2012 in the second seat of a USAF F-15 Eagle. According to his own statements, he collected a total of 17,000 flight hours on more than 200 different machines. So he spent two whole years of his life in the air. In December 2020, “Chuck” Yeager died in Los Angeles at the age of almost 98.
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