Chuck Yeager, Leo Janos
Yeager: An Autobiography
I NEVER KNEW WHEN I MIGHT BE TAKING MY LAST RIDE
With so many ways to bust my butt flying research aircraft, I knew better than to think that any test flight was routine. Even so, on the morning of October 27, 1947, I was feeling confident in the cockpit of the X-1 research rocket airplane. On the previous flight, the bullet-shaped X-1 had zoomed me into the history books by cracking through the sound harrier. I always had butterflies before being dropped from the belly of the B-29 mother ship, but my tensions this day were minor compared to the sound barrier mission.
"Are you ready, Chuck?" they ask from the mother ship.
"All set," I reply.
The release cable pops and we plunge clear from the shadows of the mother ship, falling fast. I reach for the switch to ignite my engine. It clicks. Nothing happens.
"Hey, I've got total electrical failure," I report. My words travel no further than the cabin because my radio is powerless, too.
The ship is dead and I'm dropping like a bomb, certain to blow a giant crater into the desert floor 20,000 feet below….
YEAGER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
"Ever since Tom Wolfe's book was published, the question I'm asked most often and which always annoys me is whether I think I've got 'the right stuff.' I know that golden trout have the right stuff and I've seen a few gals here and there that I'd bet ha] it in spades, but those words seem meaningless when used to describe a pilot's attributes. I don't deny that I was damned good. If there is such a thing as 'the best,' I was at least one of the title contenders. I've had a full life and enjoyed just about every damned minute of it because that's how I lived.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of various friends and former colleagues who enriched the pages of this book with their perspectives and recollections. Among them: Clarence "Bud" Anderson, Bob Hoover, Maj. Gen. (retired) Fred J. Ascani, Russ Schleeh, Richard Frost, Charles K. Peters, William R. O'Brien, Bill Overstreet, Robert H. Smith, Carl Bellinger, Aldene Tarter, Vi Strauss-Pistel, Margaret Ann Curlin, George Hupp, Emmett Hatch, Don Jacques Dr. Robert S. "Buck" Buchanan, and Don Emigholz. Particular thanks to Glennis Yeager for her patient insights, to Del Riebe for his friendship and support, to Ian Ballantine, the wise and resourceful father of this project, and to Betty Ballantine for her skilled editing.
ALWAYS THE UNKNOWN
I never knew when I might be taking my last ride. With so many ways to bust my butt flying research aircraft, I knew better than to think that any test flight was routine. Even so, on the morning of October 27, 1947, I was feeling confident in the cockpit of the X-1 research rocket airplane. On the previous flight, the bullet-shaped X-1 had zoomed me into the history books by cracking through the sound barrier. That first Mach 1 ride launched the era of supersonic flight. I always had butterflies before being dropped from the belly of the B-29 mother ship, but my tensions this day were minor compared to the sound barrier mission, when I was scared, knowing that many of my colleagues thought I was doomed to be blasted to pieces by an invisible brick wall in the sky. The X-1 proved them to be wrong, and I breathed easier knowing what to expect on my second attempt to fly faster than the speed of sound.
"Are you ready, Chuck?" they ask from the mother ship.
"All set," I reply.
The release cable pops and we plunge clear from the shadows of the mother ship, a thirteen-thousand pound load, falling fast. I reach for the switch to ignite my engine. It clicks. Nothing happens.
I try another engine switch. Nothing happens.
"Hey, I've got total electrical failure," I report. My words travel no further than the cabin because my radio is powerless, too.
The ship is dead and I'm dropping like a bomb loaded with five thousand pounds of volatile fuel, certain to blow a giant crater into the desert floor 20,000 feet below. Without power, I can't ignite my engines or actuate the propellant valve to blow out my fuel. The X-1 can't land with fuel on board; its landing gear would buckle under the weight, and we'd dig a trench into the lakebed and blow up.
My mind races. I've got only a couple of seconds to find a way to save my airplane or risk a dangerous parachute jump. I remember an emergency valve above and behind my seat that manually opens the jettison valve to slowly blow out my fuel. I have no idea how long it will take and the force of gravity is relentless. I'm down to 5,000 feet and turn toward the lakebed. A chase plane is keeping up with me, but without radio contact I have no way of knowing whether the pilot can see the escaping fuel vapor streaming from my engine, the sign that the emergency valve is working.
The lakebed fills my windscreen and I reach for my landing gear release, but with no internal power the only way to lower my gear is by gravity. All I can do is rock the ship and pray. My only chance is to come in fast and high over the lakebed, keeping the nose up and those wheels off the deck until the last possible moment. I need time, every precious second I can manage to squeeze out of a delayed landing, to blow out that fuel. My fuel gauge is as dead as everything else, and I can only go by feel. We feel lighter by the second, but we're almost out of seconds. The ground is sweeping by as we glide in for a touchdown. My eyes are on the ship's raised nose. In a moment we are going to stall, I can sense it.
Inches from the lakebed I feel the X-1 shudder slightly. We've slowed into a stall, and the ship's nose lowers. Instinctively I hunker down, bracing for the impact. If there's still fuel in those tanks, I'm finished.
The wheels hit hard.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
When President Truman presented me with the Collier Trophy in 1948 for breaking the sound barrier, my dad attended the White House ceremonies, but refused to shake hands with the President. He glowered at Truman, acting like a revival preacher trapped into meeting the pope. As far as Dad was concerned, the first good Democrat had yet to be born. Mom had battled to get him to the ceremony, then chewed him out glory for being so rude. But Dad wasn't going to shake that damned Democrat's hand; hell, he hated Truman. Mom tried to cover up by exchanging corn bread recipes with the President, while Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington and Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg saw what was happening and fought against the giggles. "My husband is a little firm in his ways," Mom explained to Symington. He broke up.
There were two Methodist churches in Hamlin, West Virginia: one was for the Southern Methodists, all Democrats; the other congregation was Northern
Methodists, the hardcore Republicans of Lincoln County. You can guess which church we belonged to. On election day, Dad traveled the hollers armed with two-dollar bills and pints of whiskey, trying to buy votes for the GOP. But there wasn't enough booze or bucks to beat FDR Democrats, and Dad fumed.
Albert Hal Yeager had plenty of Dutch and German blood. He was stubborn and opinionated about what he believed and didn't care who knew it. He stood only about five feet, eight inches, but weighed two hundred pounds-about half that weight in each of his two powerful arms. Dad's word was his binding contract; if he said he'd do something and shook hands on it, that was his unbreakable commitment. Susie Mae Yeager was a couple of inches taller than her husband, a big-boned, no-nonsense churchgoer who lowered the boom on any of us if we got out of hand. Mom was half-Dutch with some French ancestry in her family. Like the Yeagers, her kin were West Virginia country people, small farmers planted in the hollers of the Appalachians since the early nineteenth century. Dads family name was originally "eager," but it was changed phonetically; in German, Yeager means "hunter. '