Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager
Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeageris a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force and record-setting test pilot. In 1947, he became the first pilot confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPilot
Date of Birth13 February 1923
CityMyra, WV
CountryUnited States of America
airplane flying dying
I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.
military flying use
The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.
differences flying chinese
I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.
hard-work things-in-life flying
There is no such thing as a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime's learning experience. For the best pilots, flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best. Experience is everything. The eagerness to learn how and why every piece of equipment works is everything. And luck is everything, too.
When I was picked to fly the X-1, it was my duty to fly it, and I did.
fanatic god understand
It's really difficult for fanatic churchgoers to understand God can't help me. I'm the only one who can help me.
bring emotional laid room sort
That room is really well laid out, ... It was sort of emotional to go through the display. You see a lot of things that bring back a lot of memories.
budgets clinton glenn guy hype john nasa needs payoff picked publicity space support
It's a payoff to John Glenn for his support of (President) Clinton and also the NASA budget. NASA needs the publicity and they couldn't have picked a better guy to hype the space program.
airplane thinking noses
As we went through mach one, the nose started dropping, so we just cranked that horizontal stabilizer down to keep the nose up. We got it above mach one, and once we got it above the speed of sound, then you have supersonic flow over the whole airplane, so you have no more shock waves on it that are causing buffeting...You really don't think about the outcome of any kind of a flight, whether it's combat, or any other kinds of flights, because you really have no control over it...
regret people speculation
I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.
It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.
school years space
I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained.
air air-force force
All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.
pilots aviation flight
There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.