Chuck Yeager Flew From Here to Eternity

By DENNIS ANDERSON, LCSW

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Army Vet, Marine Dad, Iraq Embed

One of my aerospace historian friends noted that Chuck Yeager died on Dec. 7, the anniversary date of America’s entry into World War II, following the Empire of Japan’s surprise Sunday morning attack on the US fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

Yeager joined the Army in 1941 as an enlisted private, intending work as an Army Air Forces mechanic. Charles Elwood Yeager, originally of Hamlin, W.V., ended his career as an Air Force brigadier general, but more to the point, the world’s most famous test pilot. That’s not bad for a country boy from the “hills and hollers” of West Virginia.

Enrolled in the WWII “flying sergeants” program, the war made an officer out of a kid who joined, barely out of high school. His flying war buddy, Bud Anderson, said that his West Virginia hill country accent made his speech difficult to decipher.

The Antelope Valley of Southern California's high desert country has a pantheon of heroes who made their home here in the 80-plus years since Muroc Air Field became the crucible of military aviation eventually known as Edwards AFB.

Yeager stands in a company that included William J. “Pete” Knight, still holding the record as “fastest man alive” from a record established in the X-15 rocket plane, Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon and Buzz Aldrin, second. The Mercury 7 astronauts passed our way and we even have the late R. Lee Ermey, easily the world’s most famous Marine Corps D.I.

But it was Yeager’s record flight in the Bell X-1 that put him in the history books, breaking the sound barrier for the first time on Oct. 14, 1947, in an orange rocket with stubby wings. Like his other aircraft, the X-1 bore the nose art name of his bride “Glamorous Glennis.”

In Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” book about test pilots and the early astronauts, the barrier was a demon that might shatter an aircraft and any human flying it. Yeager busted that myth along with busting mach, the measurement of speed for the sound barrier — different at various altitudes and temperatures, but something like 761 mph that morning in the clear skies that makes Edwards AFB the center of the test flight universe.

After that, the records would fall like four-minute miles. Rivalries were set and pilots described by Wolfe as having the “right stuff” would keep busting records in a series of bravura technology advancements that made jet airline travel accessible and set America on course to put men on the moon in the span of a decade.

Yeager exemplified the “right stuff,” even though he personally never put much stock in the term. Confidence approaching cocky, suppression of fear, facing oblivion with “an even strain.” Fast cars, an easy approach to beautiful women, holding one’s liquor, it was all part of the mystique.

Obituaries state it was the 1983 film, “The Right Stuff” that rocketed Yeager to fame. In his autobiography, he noted that he made the cover of Time magazine a couple of times before the movie made him an icon amplified by his biography, “Yeager,” written with Leo Janos.

Leaving Earth at the age of 97, on Remembrance Day for Pearl Harbor, seems appropriate, as World War II was the crucible that forged Yeager’s iron-clad skill and confidence. His P-51 Mustang shot down, he escaped the Nazis after an interlude with the French Resistance. Escaped fliers were supposed to be sent home, but his passion to return to the fight persuaded Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, future president and architect of D-Day. Yeager went on to shoot down a dozen more Nazi fighter planes — five in one day. That’s the stuff of legend and fact.

The days of legendary aviatrix Pancho Barnes and her notorious “Happy Bottom Riding Club” saloon outside the Edwards gate are long gone, but former Lancaster mayor Barbara Little recalled “many times at the ‘O-Club’ at Edwards enjoying stories from Chuck and his buddies. Comment at close of the evening was, ‘Hell’s bells, the first liar doesn’t stand a chance.’”

Through the decades he flew, beating the adage “there are no old and bold pilots.” I watched him fly backseat into Edwards in a supersonic fighter for the 50th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier.

Edwards base spokesman Danny Bazzell, like Yeager, a one-time Army sergeant, recalls hoisting a shot of Jeremiah Weed with the general and now many of us who chanced to know or meet him, can do the same. Hoist a jar and consider the Edwards test flight motto, “Ad Inexplorata.”

“Toward the Unknown,” Chuck Yeager and until Valhalla.

Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. A former Valley Press editor and aerospace journalist, he interviewed Yeager several times for the Associated Press.