General C Yeager RIP

[2R]

Thank you for your service

[200hr Wonder]

Could have gone to space if he had a degree. Real shame he was a pilots pilot. On more than one occasion his superior technical knowledge managed to get him back to the ground in one piece.

[DanWEC]

He was my first hero in aviation, and the subject of the first real book I owned. "Yeager".
The anecdote about him wiring his own ejection seat charges, at night in the rain, as a high ranking officer, when he was told "We have techs for this" has always stuck with me.

[RedAndWhiteBaron]

To me he wasn't just an aviation hero. He demonstrated that things are only impossible until they are not. I suppose it's time to read his biography now.

[jpilot77]

The most interesting thing I remember from his autobiography was him stating that his air to air combat record in WW2 (ace in a day, shooting down a ME262 and being shot down and hiding out with the resistance to escape to Spain) was what he though the pinacle of his career was. Nobody will ever have that kind of aviation experience again.

[boeingboy]

He was a true aviation legend. War ace, test pilot, record holder and for a while "fastest man alive".

He flew combat in both WWII and Vietnam. He held numerous world records including one I found very interesting...On one such flight - flown on behalf of Piper aircraft - Yeager piloted a Cheyenne 400LS to a time-to-height record: FL350 (35,000 feet) in 16 minutes, exceeding the climb performance of a Boeing 737 at gross weight.

He has been awarded many honors and awards including...

Air Force Distinguished Service Medal
Distinguished Service Medal
Silver Star
Legion of Merit
Distinguished Flying Cross
Bronze Star
Purple Heart
Air Medal
Air Force Commendation Medal
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Harmon Trophy
Collier Trophy
Mackay Trophy
Congressional Silver Medal

They just don't make them like that anymore.
RIP General Yeager. May you have clear skies and favorable winds...

[rookiepilot]

CNN Biography:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/us/. ... index.html

[Squaretail]

I know it’s dating myself, but one of the getting into aviation bits of maybe many’s past, was playing . Yeager’s Air Combat. As I recall, he actually lent his voice to, now forever memorialized. 97 years is a good run for anyone who saw active duty in the Second World War.

God speed General.

[geodoc]

Cleared direct to the HVN VOR. It’s CAVU all the way, sir, and Bob Hoover will be joining on your wing.

[Civic]

One of the finest aviators if not the best that ever lived.

" 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 a cockpit."

I carry this quote of his on me and read it before I go flying, so powerful! Rest in Peace

[pelmet]

.

[RedAndWhiteBaron]

. Yeager was born in 1923 in rural West Virginia. It should not surprise anyone that he had a long, documented history of racism and misogyny. It should disappoint everyone that over 7-plus decades as a conscious adult, he never apologized for or demonstrated any change in these views.

Definitely seems like a case of right place, right time, right gender, right color of skin (and yes, a certain amount of natural ability), rather than Right Stuff.

A good, if anecdotal, example:

I unfortunately met . Yeager and his "lovely" wife. I will not bash the man because he passed, but I will just leave it as, it wasn't pleasant, and I lost any respect for him.

He's done a lot of good for aviation despite his shortcomings. RIP.

Edit: I told him I wanted to be a pilot, he looked at me and said that Blacks don't belong anywhere near a cockpit. This was in 2010. Had the same sentiment about females and other minorities. His gold digging wife enabled it.

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comment ... ?context=3

Jesus man, he's not even cold yet. Too soon. This is one of the most disrespectful and out of line posts I've ever seen on this board.

For @#$!'s sake, at least wait until after his funeral before speaking ill of the man, even if it's rightly deserved.

[TG]

. Yeager was born in 1923 in rural West Virginia. It should not surprise anyone that he had a long, documented history of racism and misogyny. It should disappoint everyone that over 7-plus decades as a conscious adult, he never apologized for or demonstrated any change in these views.

Definitely seems like a case of right place, right time, right gender, right color of skin (and yes, a certain amount of natural ability), rather than Right Stuff.

A good, if anecdotal, example:

I unfortunately met . Yeager and his "lovely" wife. I will not bash the man because he passed, but I will just leave it as, it wasn't pleasant, and I lost any respect for him.

He's done a lot of good for aviation despite his shortcomings. RIP.

Edit: I told him I wanted to be a pilot, he looked at me and said that Blacks don't belong anywhere near a cockpit. This was in 2010. Had the same sentiment about females and other minorities. His gold digging wife enabled it.

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comment ... ?context=3

To quote someone on reddit: “ RIP as a person but I hope we as an aviation community can now move on to a bigger, better era”

[2R]

You do realize he actually fought and killed real racists , racialists and fascists in the air over Nazified Europe .
Without the efforts of men like Yeager this conversation would be in German .

[pecessix]

He did not killed real racist and fascist, he fought against people serving their country, some of them were real racist and fascist but not all of them.
Yeager was a great pilot, but as a man, he was a racist and misogynist, and it's not because he helped fighting the Germans we need to forgive this.
There were thousands of nice guys fighting the Germans, they were not all as good pilots as him, but they were nice people to talk to, he was clearly not...
We need to remember him for what he did in the aviation, but we cannot forgive and forget his «dark side».

[pecessix]

[2R]

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/an-enco ... -1.5837612
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An encounter with the real stuff


Bob McDonald's blog: Meeting the test pilot legend . Yeager

Bob McDonald · CBC Radio · Posted: Dec 11, 2020 2:53 PM ET | Last Updated: December 11

In this photo from 1997, . Yeager speaks in front of a model of a Bell X-1, on the 50th anniversary of his historic supersonic flight. Yeager died Dec. 7, 2020, at age 97. (AP Photo/Michael Caulfield, File)
In 1985, . Yeager — famous as the pilot who broke the sound barrier — was visiting Canada on a book tour. I had the privilege of meeting him briefly and got a sense of what made him so special.

Yeager, who died this week at the age of 97, had been immortalized in the best-selling book The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe, which also inspired the Oscar-winning 1983 movie. Both the book and film presented Yeager as the ultimate test pilot, glorifying his courage and boldness.

In response, he published the real version of his story in an autobiography simply called Yeager. It not only told the story of breaking the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, but covered his entire flying career. He recounted his experiences as a fighter ace in World War II, and the decades after when he served as a test pilot flying experimental aircraft through and past the sound barrier, as well as his military service at postings around the world, including Europe, Vietnam and Korea.



In this 1948 file photo, test pilot Charles E. Yeager, 25, poses for a picture in a jet's cockpit. (AP Photo/File)
The day I met him, he was about to appear on a morning TV talk show, on which I was also a guest as a science commentator. We were both waiting in the wings to go on air.

People were coming up to him seeking autographs and asking the same old questions, "What was it like to break the sound barrier?" ("Like driving a fast car.") or, "Would you like to fly on the space shuttle?" ("No.").

Of course I was just as thrilled as everyone else to be near him, but I wanted to ask a question that he might actually be interested in talking about.

I knew that even at the age of 63 he was still qualified to fly modern high performance jets, so I asked, "What do you think of the computerized fly by wire control systems on the new jets compared to the cable operated stick and rudder you flew during the war?"

His eyes lit up, a big smile came over his face and he immediately responded, "Oh, planes today can do things we never dreamed of. You can point the nose of an F-15 at the horizon, snap it over into an aileron roll, it will flip you through 360 degrees and that nose will still be right on the horizon. We could never do that."

Wonderful.



In 2003, . Yeager poses with a model of a Bell X-1 plane at a special 20th Anniversary screening of "The Right Stuff" in Hollywood. (Robert Mora/Getty Images)
I wanted to talk to him more about aerodynamics and aircraft performance, but he was called onto the set for his interview. He gave me a firm handshake, a steely eyed smile and strolled off. For a brief moment I felt a connection to the most famous pilot in the world and had shaken hands with a legend. There definitely was something different about him. He was confident, focused, totally in the moment.

During the television interview he was asked the obvious question about travelling faster than sound, to which he calmly replied that it was actually part of a series of flights where they were studying the effects of shock waves that form around an airplane as it approaches the speed of sound. Air can't get out of the way fast enough so it forms a highly compressed wave that is responsible for the thunderous sonic boom.

His "Good 'ol boy" drawl, his easy manner, and absolute love of flying anything that had wings belied an incredible talent.
- Bob McDonald on . Yeager
They wanted to know what would happen when the wave travelled down the wing to the control surfaces and whether that would affect the handling. His famous flight pushed through that boundary with success and pushed him into the history books.

. Yeager went on to fly twice that speed and set other speed and altitude records in other experimental aircraft. He flew more than 300 different types in all.


In this photo taken in 1962, American Air Force Colonel Charles "." Yeager holds a model of the Bell X-1 aircraft he flew in 1947 to become the first person to break the sound barrier. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
I have been fortunate to shake the hands of other test pilots, astronauts, cosmonauts and even people who have walked on the moon. Some of them were trained by Yeager, and they all have that same focused look, a sense of purpose and dedication to being the best they could possibly be. But Yeager carried it off in a different, almost humble way. His "Good 'ol boy" drawl, his easy manner, and absolute love of flying anything that had wings belied an incredible talent.

He didn't consider himself a hero, just someone doing a job, who happened to be in the right place at the right time. And he loved every minute of it. He also possessed a natural instinct for flying that earned him that job, an instinct many other pilots admired. Whatever right stuff he had, it was a privilege to get a small piece of it, even just for a moment.

Farewell General Yeager. Your legend lives on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob McDonald
Bob McDonald is the host of CBC Radio's award-winning weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks. He is also a science commentator for CBC News Network and CBC-TV's The National. He has received 12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.