Charles Elwood Yeager (February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.
Yeager's career began in World War II as
a private in the United States Army Air Forces in 1941. After serving as an
aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and
upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II
USAAF equivalent to warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial
victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was
credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft (the half credit is from a
second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown).
After the war, Yeager became a test
pilot and flew many types of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered
aircraft for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. As such, he
became the first human to officially break the sound barrier on October 14,
1947 when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of
45,000 ft (13,700 m), for which he won both the Collier and Mackay trophies
in 1948. He then went on to break several other speed and altitude records in
the following years.
Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons
and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In
recognition of the outstanding performance ratings of those units, he was
promoted to brigadier general in 1969, retiring on March 1, 1975. Yeager's
three-war active-duty flying career spanned more than 30 years and took him to
many parts of the world, including the Korean War and the Soviet Union during
the height of the Cold War. Throughout his life, he flew more than 360 different types of
aircraft.
Shot Down in France, Yeager Escaped to
Spain
Stationed in the United Kingdom at RAF
Leiston, Yeager flew P-51 Mustangs in combat with the 363d Fighter Squadron. He
named his aircraft Glamorous Glen after his girlfriend, Glennis Faye
Dickhouse, who became his wife in February 1945. Yeager had gained one victory
before he was shot down over France in his first aircraft (P-51B-5-NA s/n
43-6763) on March 5, 1944, on his eighth mission. He escaped to Spain on March
30 with the help of the Maquis (French Resistance) and returned to
England on May 15, 1944. During his stay with the Maquis, Yeager
assisted the guerrillas in duties that did not involve direct combat; he helped
construct bombs for the group, a skill that he had learned from his father. He was awarded the Bronze Star for helping a
navigator, Omar M. "Pat" Patterson, Jr., to cross the Pyrenees.
Despite a regulation prohibiting
"evaders" (escaped pilots) from flying over enemy territory again,
the purpose of which was to prevent resistance groups from being compromised by
a second capture, Yeager was reinstated to flying combat. He had joined another
evader, fellow P-51 pilot 1st Lt Fred Glover, in speaking directly to the Supreme
Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on June 12, 1944. "I
raised so much hell that General Eisenhower finally let me go back to my
squadron" Yeager said. "He cleared me for combat after D Day, because
all the free Frenchmen—Maquis and people like that—had surfaced." In the meantime, Yeager shot down his second
enemy aircraft, a German Junkers Ju 88 bomber, over the English Channel. Eisenhower, after gaining permission from the
War Department to decide the requests, concurred with Yeager and Glover.
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