Yahoo Autos Chuck Yeager Was a Hero to Speed Demons Everywhere
Brigadier General Charles "Chuck" Yeager passed away last night at a California hospital. He was 97 years old. Yeager will be remembered best as the man who broke the sound barrier, a widely publicized achievement that he chased bravely. While Yeager’s achievements brought him notoriety, we admire a different Yeager—the speed freak who chased his passions, including cars and motorcycles, without an ounce of pretension.
You might not suspect that from a man whose life reads like action-movie fiction. Yeager’s prodigious talent behind the yoke of a fighter plane (plus his keen eyesight) landed him a seat in the U.S. Air Force 363rd Fighter Squadron. Yeager flew P-51 Mustangs, mostly, and remains one of just a handful of pilots to become an ace in a single encounter, scoring five kills in the fray. Later in the war, Yeager was shot down over Europe, only to become a member of the French resistance, cross the Pyrenees, return to base, and keep flying fighter missions.
That was just one chapter of the man’s life. After the war, Yeager began his stint as test pilot in cutting-edge experimental aircraft. It was dangerous work. But for Yeager, pushing the limits of flight technology was more than a job (one that didn't even pay all that well). It was a sacred passion beyond his life’s calling, something closer to spirituality.
You get a sense of that devotion in his sometimes reflective, sometimes boastful autobiography, Yeager. After he broke the sound barrier in that orange Bell X-1 on October 14, 1947, the U.S. government sent Yeager on tour to promote the triumph of our nation. The achievement made Yeager a reluctant international star. While Yeager was a true patriot, his fealty was always to thrilling, dangerous machinery of the highest order.
"They were jealous of me," Yeager wrote of a time when, while on his publicity tour, he spotted a group of young test pilots gawking at him. "And I was jealous of them for being everything I was before everything hit the fan. Nobody asked me if I was having any fun."
Of course, Yeager was a car guy. His autobiography, and other accounts from the time, brim with tales of test-pilot machismo, racing hopped-up hot-rods down the endless straights near Muroc Army Air Field, which he once called home. For a boy like myself, obsessed with military planes and Ford V-8s, Yeager sat up on the top shelf of worship.
But mostly, accounts about the man give you a sense of Yeager’s humility. At the end of the day, he only ever thought of himself as a boy from Myra, West Virginia, who liked to go really, really damned fast.
"Chuck Yeager was a car tinkerer," Carl Bellinger, a fellow test pilot, recalled in a passage he wrote for Yeager. "I remember driving to his place one Sunday morning to borrow some tools. We went into his garage, and I was startled to see the Collier Trophy, which he had received at the White House, sitting there on his work bench. He was using the most prestigious award in aviation to store his nuts and bolts."
For many, Chuck Yeager became a kind of ultimate blueprint for ultra-masculinity, an unapologetic alpha of the highest order. We honor the myth, but remember the man: Courageous, hard-nosed, humble, profane, and human. Yeager will be missed not only because he accomplished so much, but because he inspired the rest of us to dig deep and push our own worldly limits. He will be missed.
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