RIP Chuck Yeager

[20series]

Just read that the first man to go supersonic and live has died

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dail ... ed-97.html

RIP
Alan

[Blackstuff]

I hope they can find a coffin big enough for his brass nuts!

RIP

[shugie]

Nice story about him on Radio 4 this morning, apparently he appears as the barman in the film "The Right Stuff", and when asked about his role, explained he spent far more time in the bar than in the aircraft.

[Chuck]

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/chuck-ye ... 08456.html

One heck of a brave man for sure. never mind the coffin size, those brass balls will be seriously heavy!

They made a movie about his effords did they not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_rFAo358bU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkBodaTcZvA

[GeeRam]

They'll need a even bigger coffin for his ego......

Even all these years later, he still couldn't stop having a nasty dig at the British, as I personally experienced at Nellis AFB in 1997. Unpleasant man.
Complete contrast to his fellow WW2 squadron flyer Bud Anderson, who was the complete opposite at Nellis that day, so we ignored Yeager and had a lovely chat with Bud Anderson instead who was a real gent.

Glad that Bud survived longer than his nasty mate.

[andrew375]

His autobiography is a good read. In The Right Stuff he plays the janitor who donated his mop handle to Yeager so he could lock the cockpit hatch on the Bell X1 despite injuring his arm horse riding the day before.

[yellowhand]

Men who have faced death on numerous occasions, are not known for suffering fools with grace, just saying.
Common little everyday issues like being polite in the face of ignorance, well, men such as this, just got no time for that.
Between combat missions in the non friendly skies over Europe, flying test vehicles, that often fell apart in the sky, I'm surprised General Yeager could even hold a basic conversation with normal folks.
He belong to a small exclusive club of survivors.
May his memory be a blessing.

[John Gunn]

The Right Stuff.
Well, I just read "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe
A history of Yeager era test pilots and those who went on to be astronauts.
A lot of politics and stuff the general public didn't hear about..

[1066]

No doubt about it, the early jet age test pilots must have had nerves of steel. When you think about the Farnborough disaster when the prototype DH110 disintegrated killing John Derry and his observer and 20+ of the crowd - After seeing what had happened Neville Duke went ahead and did a stunning display of the prototype Hunter.

I really don't think the USA officially recognised just how much we helped them with jet technology in the early days, and if wasn't for the labour government cancelling the Miles M52 at the last minute and handing all the data to the US we would probably never have heard of Chuck Yeager - although he was gracious enough to admit that the Bell X-1 wouldn't have succeeded in going transonic if it wasn't for the Miles "all moving" elevator design.

The USA must have been absolutely spitting feathers when Peter Twiss broke their air speed record by over 300 mph to fly at 1,100 mph in the Fairey Delta 2 in 1956.