Few people have taken a screw the fear attitude further than Chuck Yeager. Most people know him for breaking the sound barrier, but he had been facing down his fears in a big way well before this. He wasn’t even supposed to be a pilot because he didn’t have the educational requirements. But when supply ran low, good eyesight was his ticket to the cockpit. Most people might have called it a day after hitting a tree during a training mission. He was grounded for a week and climbed back in a plane.
World War II Ace
Yeager only managed to shoot down one enemy aircraft before he was shot down on his 8th mission. Most people would have been happy to survive the landing and try to make it home to safety. Instead, he spent the next two months with the French resistance showing them how to make bombs. He later received the bronze star for helping another injured soldier cross the Pyrenees to safety.
Normally this would have been the end of him flying missions during war time. The policy was that if you were shot down, they wouldn’t send you back if you were in a position to be shot down again and potentially jeopardize resistance activities in the event you were caught. In typical Yeager style he appealed to General Eisenhower and got himself returned to flight status. A few months later on October 12, 1944, Yeager became an ace in a day by downing 5 enemy aircrafts.
The X-1 Test Flight
After the war, Yeager was a maintenance check pilot at what now is Edwards Air Force Base. He got permission to break the sound barrier because the designated test pilot, ‘Slick’ Goodlin, wanted $150,000 to do it. Yeager said he would do it for free. History almost didn’t play out the way it did because Yeager broke two ribs riding a horse a couple days before. Rather than jeopardize his chance to fly, he had a veterinarian tape him up rather than telling the flight surgeon. And since he couldn’t close the hatch on his own plane, his friend Jack Ridley cut off a broom handle so he could get to the handle. The rest is as they say – history.
My Connection to Chuck Yeager
In the years following the X-1, Chuck Yeager had many traditional Air Force jobs eventually rising the rank of Brigadier General before his retirement in 1975.
My Air Force career started a few years later. My first boss in the air force was originally a C-130 pilot. One day they were on a training mission and were told to divert to an air base to pick up a distinguished visitor. When they landed, they pulled up and outcomes General Chuck Yeager who gets on the plane with instructions to take him to his destination. I don’t know the details beyond that other than things got a little turned upside down – literally.
Once they get to altitude, General Yeager comes up to the cockpit and says, ‘mind if I take the stick for awhile?’ Now this is a jet fighter pilot who is now wanting to fly a four-wing prop vehicle. So my boss relinquishes the stick to the General, and Yeager scraps himself in. He promptly does a role with the C-130. It’s not designed to do that. He actually exceeded the design specifications of the aircraft by doing what he did. Not only that, he didn’t tell anybody who was going to do it. I believe one airman in the back of the plane broke his arm as he was thrown to the ceiling.
This one didn’t seem to make it to the history books, but screwing the fear isn’t always about making history. It’s about finding out what you are capable of.
Never Stop Screwing the Fear
I’m sure there’s lots of other Yeager stories that didn’t make it into movies. The thing that impressed me is that he just kept challenging himself during his lifetime. At 89 he broke the sound barrier again. This time he was a passenger in an F15, but how many people are still pushing the limit after 65 years. Now that’s one for the record books.