Yeager: An Autobiography

THE FIRE NEXT TIME

The plan was for me to continue flying the X-1 until we had exhausted the airplane's research capabilities while flying supersonic at high altitude. Between breaking the sound barrier and my next flight, there was a two-week delay to overhaul the engine. Meanwhile my ribs healed, and I felt good crawling again into that familiar cramped cockpit on the morning of October 27. I was supposed to go out to 1.08 Mach, but when I was dropped from the mother ship, I just plummeted like a thirteen-thousand-pound boulder. All my electrical controls and switches-dead.

While strapped to the B-29's bomb bay, we ran the X-1's electrical system off the mother ship's battery to save power. Only after being dropped do I discover my main battery switch is out. Without power, I can't actuate the propellant valve or ignite the rockets. Loaded with fuel, I'm able to glide, but I'm falling fast, with no way to land safely.

It looked like a sure splat on the deck, with the only possible way out to jump for it and make it past those razor wings. And that's exactly what would've happened, if not for Dick Frost, who was a great "what if" engineer. He would actually bolt upright in bed, dreaming up "what ifs." And fortunately for me, he is the one who thought, "What if they drop the X-1 and the battery becomes disconnected?" He thought of that before the first powered flight, went out and bought a twenty-five-dollar valve, which he attached to a bottle of nitrogen gas. That way, I could manually open the jettison valve to slowly blow out my fuel.

It didn't take me very long to realize that Dick's valve was all that I had left. It was now or never to expel 604 gallons of fuel. I was down to 10,000 feet and falling, and the emergency jettison was twice as slow as normal. And without radio contact with the mother ship or chase planes, I had no way of knowing whether the emergency valve was really working. I made my turn toward the lakebed at 5,000 feet, and noticed that we were slowing down, which meant I was getting rid of fuel. The question was, how much fuel? All of it or some of it? The landing gear release lever worked, but I had no way of knowing whether or not the wheels were locked down. I needed time to blow out all that fuel; otherwise, I'd land heavy, crack the gear, and probably blow up.

My best chance was to come in at high speed, keep it a few feet above the ground, gradually slow it down, so that if I stalled, I would drop onto the lakebed. And that's what I did: delayed, delayed delayed while only inches above the lakebed, until I could delay no longer and we bounced in. By the time we stopped rolling, Frost came running up. I got out a little unsteady. "Well, pal, I owe you one," I said. Dick laughed. "You sure as hell do, pard, and don't you forget it."

The cause of the electrical failure on board was a tiny deposit of corrosion between one of the battery terminals and a cable connector. It was so minor that a light pull on the cable reestablished contact, and from then on our preflight check included disconnecting the X-1 from the B-29 electrical supply. But this incident was a reminder of how complicated and potentially dangerous these missions really were. There was no way to be too careful, and even when we were, the X-1 kept finding new ways to bite.

We began having a few heart-thumping problems with the bomb shackle release that dropped me from the mother ship. In early November, the crew forgot to pull the safety pin out of the release mechanism. I heard a loud pop, was dropped an inch or two, then just hung there in the bomb bay, the weight of the undropped X-1 straining that shackle with the safety pin bound into it. I was suspended precariously between mother ship and mother earth. The B-29 couldn't continuously maintain the 240 mph dive necessary to keep the X-1 from stalling, but they kept diving while Ridley and Cardenas wondered what in hell to try next. They dove through 18,000 feet, but the X-1 just wouldn't fall free. Cardenas finally decided we were diving so low that it was becoming dangerous.

No choice but to dump the X-1 fuel and land with the orange beast still attached to the B-29's belly, but not with this test pilot still sitting inside. I had to get back out and up that ladder. That was touchy, too, because the X-1 could've dropped while I was climbing out. I scrambled out in record time, joining the others in the cockpit to sweat out the landing. We made it back without any damage, but not by much.

Despite an overhaul of the release system, on the very next flight the same thing happened. This time the safety pin was released, but for some unfathomable reason, the X-1 wouldn't drop. Cardenas dove below 18,000 and had just pulled out, when the X-1 suddenly lurched free. I was caught by surprise, having just started to unbuckle my safety harness. We fell about twenty miles an hour under the stall speed, and I had to fight against that stall real fast. I finally recovered after dropping five thousand feet and ignited the rockets about twelve thousand feet lower than planned.

That wasn't the end of the release problem, either. In late November, the damned safety pin stuck again. Once again, I sat in there, dangling. This time, one of the crew, a big red-headed sergeant, came down the ladder with a hammer. That dedicated nut stood on the fuselage of the X-1, pounding on the safety pin stuck in the shackle release. He wore a chute and an oxygen mask, but if he did knock out the pin, we were going to drop as a team. I watched him from the cockpit window, thinking, "Man, that guy is pure guts."

On one of those shackle problem flights, I was dropped in a stall, fought it successfully, only to discover that none of my rocket chambers would ignite! I thought, "My God, what next?" I finally got two chambers lit and we rocketed up. One chamber never did fire; nevertheless, I flew out to 1.07 Mach that day. In between these problems, I had already flown out to 1.35 Mach at 48,600 feet-about 890 mph, or twice as fast as I had ever flown in a conventional Mustang during the war. The myth of a sonic barrier was destroyed, but many questions about aircraft stability and control remained. Flying supersonic was becoming almost routine with similar flight characteristics revealed on every mission: light buffet and instability between .88 and .91 Mach, decrease in elevator effectiveness between .94 and .97 Mach, and a single sharp bump, similar to flying through "prop wash," while accelerating through .98 Mach. Decelerating from supersonic speed, I would experience all of these effects in reverse. Meanwhile, we were gaining invaluable data. I was flying the X-1 twice a week, while in between doing all kinds of flight and service testing on other airplanes.

By January 1948, I was outfitted in a pressure suit and began to resemble a spaceman. The plan was now to drop me at 30,000 feet, instead of 20,000 feet, giving me more fuel for higher climbs to 50,000 feet and beyond. Until now, most of our problems had been peripheral to the ship itself. But that quickly changed.

Toward the end of January, I was at 38,000 feet having just leveled off after achieving 1.10 Mach, when I heard an unusual noise in back. It sounded like an oil stove burning too much fuel. A high frequency vibration began shaking me in the cockpit. I glanced at the instrument panel and noticed smoke hanging in the still air. Even though there was no fire warning light, I quickly turned off the engine, dumped remaining fuel, and landed. Fire is the pilot's terror, especially in the X-1. I sat in the nose just waiting to be blown to pieces because I couldn't see what was happening in the back. After I landed, the crew found a small fire had burnt insulation in the engine compartment. I was shaken. On the next flight, while I was climbing to altitude, I turned on chamber number four and saw the pressures climb too high. I turned it off immediately, but the fire warning light came on, and I quickly aborted the mission. The crew found that the motor cowling on number four was badly burned. I was really worried now. And the following flight, I not only suffered another fire warning light, but the cabin filled with dark smoke.

You're sitting on volatile fuel and if it goes-pooh, you're gone with it in a flash. But there was nothing I could do to save myself, except sit there and sweat it out. The fire warning light glaring from my instrument panel means I'm burning back there. If I hit the jettison fuel switch, I've got to worry that my fuel lines are burnt out, so I may be dumping all that fuel directly into an engine fire. So you sweat helplessly, knowing there's a critical point where you've got to make your move to dump fuel. Your engines are shut off and you're losing altitude fast. The chase planes are far below and can't tell you what's pouring out of your engine. You're all alone and nobody is in the position to help you decide what to do. I know more about what's happening up there than Ridley or Frost. Finally, when you can't wait a moment longer, you hit that jettison switch and tense.

Nothing happens. You breathe again. You start setting up your landing pattern and speed. You watch your nitrogen gas pressure because if you use it up there's nothing left to force out the fuel or blow down the flaps and landing gear. You land soaked in sweat. After three straight flights like this, I marched on Jack Russell, our crew chief. "Hey, Jack," I said "goddamn, man, fix this thing before I blow to pieces."

This went on flight after flight, through February and March, seven or eight flights in all. Every time I started up an engine, the fire warning light would flash, and the cabin filled with smoke. The problem made no sense. I began to wonder whether or not the X-1 was really designed to do the kind of high-speed, high-altitude testing we were attempting. Frankly, I didn't know what to think, and neither did Jack Russell. He and his crew broke down that engine piece by piece, ground tested it, then Jack stuck his head inside the engine and poked around with a flashlight. He couldn't find anything wrong.

Meanwhile, the problem was really getting to me. I never showed any emotion, and I always stayed cool in these emergencies, so not even Jack Ridley understood what I was really feeling inside. I was scared. I crawled into the X-1 feeling like a condemned man. And I began having really bad nightmares, dreaming I was being burned alive inside the X-1, only to have Glennis shake me awake just as I was trying to jump out of our bedroom window that was shaped like the X-1 door. She would get me calmed down, but she was shaken, too. Until that point, I had never brought my apprehensions home. Seeing me so afraid scared her, even though I purposely didn't tell her what it was all about. Maybe if Andy were around, I would've confided in him. Ridley was worried enough, and I didn't want to add to his burdens. But I was miserable in secret.

Finally, Bell's engine designer came out and discovered the cause of the problem: the wrong gaskets were installed during one of the engine overhauls. I flew the X-1 a couple of times more, and after my twenty-third powered flight, during which none of the engines ignited because of a short in a cut-off switch, Colonel Boyd thought I'd had enough for a while and ordered me to take a break. I didn't argue. Two other Air Force test pilots flew the X-1 missions for a Couple of months. Pard Hoover was out, he broke both legs bailing out of his burning Thunderjet when the air stream slammed him into the ship's tail.

Over the next year, a half-dozen test pilots achieved Mach I or better while flying the X-1, and because I knew the systems so well, I flew chase for many of them. Jack Ridley finally got his chance to fly the orange beast, too. I was right behind him in a Shooting Star when he was dropped. He fired up his rockets and smoke appeared around his instrument panel. "Hey, Yeager, I got a fire warning light." I told him, "Hell, Jack, you're in a pure nitrogen environment. Nothing in that cockpit can burn." He replied: "The hell there isn't. I'm in here."

He decided to go for it anyway, and off he streaked, achieving 1.23 Mach. He landed like a little kid who had soloed for the first time on a two-wheeler. He said to me, "You son of a bitch, you made it all look so easy, especially the landings. That lakebed is treacherous."

It was true. Pilots complained about sun glare that blinded them from seeing the instrument panel, and a couple of them dinged the X-1 trying to land it. One pilot dinged it twice. Another had his door fly off as he was gliding in. Still another had his windshield blow out-a very hairy moment. Bad luck and maybe a lack of feel for machinery caused several of these tense moments. And while few of them would ever say so, I think that those who actually flew the X-1 realized that piloting the orange beast was a lot tougher than I had made it appear. Even Colonel Boyd admitted that. The old man came out to fly it. I suggested that maybe he'd want to start with an unpowered glide flight to get a feel for the ship, but he said, "No, I don't have time to waste. We'll go for a powered flight. I want to go as fast as that thing will fly." We developed a flight profile where I would chase him in an F-86 and be in constant communication, positioning myself to be at his side for the lakebed landing.

So, off he went. The old man didn't fool around. The moment he was dropped, he threw the ignition switch and whistled out of sight. But apparently he blew a fuse in his radio, because I could hear him but he couldn't hear me. He got up to 55,000 feet arcing out over the California coastline, seeing the Pacific far below, and I heard him calling, "Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!" I knew damned well he was worried whether he was too far from the Mojave to be able to glide down to the lakebed, but I picked him up visually after he turned and jettisoned, and flew out to meet him as he dove to line up with Rogers Dry Lake. He, too, landed with a little-kid look. He said "I think I burnt up more calories than fuel. You're so busy in there. There're so many instruments to watch. And that restricted cockpit visibility. I didn't expect that." I had never seen him so happy and excited; he had reached 1.2 Mach.

In December 1947, Aviation Week leaked the news of the sound barrier flight, but it wasn't until the following June that the Air Force confirmed it. I went to Washington and received the MacKay Trophy from General Vandenberg, the Chief of Staff; later that year, President Truman awarded me the Collier Trophv at the White House. Requests for public appearances began flooding in. But there wasn't much I could say about the Flights because all details were restricted. But I did attend a top-secret meeting at Wright at which the nation's leading aircraft manufacturers and high ranking officers from various branches of the military were briefed in detail on our flights. The consensus among the experts was that breaking the barrier was much easier than expected, but that many questions remained about whether or not large size supersonic aircraft could now be built. The X-1 was small, flown at high altitudes where air loads on the structure were less than at lower altitudes. There were plans (soon abandoned) for using the X-1 to research aerodynamic heating and weapons systems for supersonic aircraft. The Air Force contracted with Bell and other manufacturers for four additional X research planes.

The publicity about my supersonic flight really heated the rivalry between the Air Force and the Navy, which had contracted with Douglas for a research airplane of its own. This kind of rivalry was good for aviation (the more research the better), but the Navy began taking cheap shots at the X-1 by announcing that their Douglas D-558-I Skystreak was the first truly supersonic airplane because it could take off from the ground and didn't have to be dropped from a mother ship like a bomb. (Ironically, that is exactly what they would later do with the D-558II Skyrocket. Ironically again, I flew chase for Navy pilot Bill Bridgeman on many of his Skyrocket test nights.)

Anyway, I was real annoyed at the Navy, and when they brought the Skystreak to Muroc, they invited in the press to see a demonstration flight by the Douglas civilian test pilot, Gene May. He was the same pompous little guy who had challenged Hoover and me at Pancho's about why we thought we could break the sound barrier. Definitely, he wasn't one of my favorites.

The morning of his fly-by demonstration, I took off in an F-86 and climbed to about 40,000 feet, right above the reviewing stands loaded with Navy brass and press people. I sat up there and watched May take off in the Skystreak, heading toward the Antelope Valley, where he was going to turn then rip past those stands flying just under Mach 1. I timed it then rolled over, came in over the lakebed, roared past those stands ahead of May, did a slow roll, pulled up and left, just as May began his approach over the field. The Navy never knew what hit them. But when I landed, a Navy admiral was standing there, purple with fury. "Captain," he said, "if you were in the Navy I'd have you hung from the yardarm."

"Yes, sir," I said. "But I ain't in the Navy."

But the Navy kept at their publicity campaign by building up the Skystreak at the expense of the X-1, which they called a gimmick. Around Christmas in 1949, I was in New York to receive an award at the Wings Club banquet and had a talk with Larry Bell. I told him the Douglas people were making us look pretty shoddy. He agreed. He said, "Chuck, how would you feel about trying a ground takeoff in the X-1?" I said, "Ridley and I talked about it more than once. That landing gear is really weak, but I think we could do it." So, during cocktails, Larry steered me over to General Vandenberg. " General," he said, "Chuck and I were just talking about all the publicity the Navy has been getting with their Skystreak. I think the time is ripe for the Air Force to put on a show of its own and do a ground takeoff with the X-1.

Vandenberg turned to me and asked what I thought. I told him I thought we could do it successfully. He asked, "What are the risks?" I replied, "Sir, I don't know. The airplane isn't designed for that sort of thing, but if we take off from a smooth lakebed surface and put in maybe half a load of fuel, I think we can do it." The general nodded. Then he buttonholed Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington and brought him into our little cocktail-party conference-which was pretty stiff for an Air Force captain. "Mr. Secretary," he said, "Yeager here thinks he can make the Navy chew nails by doing a ground takeoff in the X-1." Symington grinned. "Go ahead and work up the program and do it," he said.

And we did. I sat down with Jack Ridley and asked him what he thought. He scratched his head scribbled some calculations on a pad, then laughed. "Well," he said, "the worst that could happen is the gear might fall off and you'd bust your ass. But if we keep the fuel light, you can do it." The big problem was trying to measure the amount of liquid oxygen in the fuel tank. The LOX was constantly boiling off and you couldn't tell whether you had half a tank or three-quarters. So, Jack hit on one of his brilliant ideas. We went to the base hobby shop and bought a couple of two-by-six boards. I sawed them out on a bandsaw to contour to the bottom of the X-1 wings. Jack measured out the mean aerodynamic chord on the wing and the percentage where the airplane's center of gravity would be located with the fuel tanks exactly half-full. We put jacks under the airplane at that spot. Then we measured in half a tank of water alcohol. This went into the rear tank. Then we began filling the front tank with the LOX until the airplane balanced exactly. We let down the jacks and towed the X-1 to the south end of the lake with the jeep. We figured we had fifteen minutes to take off before the LOX boiled off. Hell, if you tried doing something like that today, it would take five hundred engineers and a stack of authorizations ten feet high. But it was just Jack and myself and a couple of ground crew guys in the jeep.

We didn't even have camera coverage. I borrowed a 16-millimeter movie camera from the photo lab and gave it to a friend who was a major. The roar of the X-1 engines almost knocked the camera out of his hands, so the film is a sorry mess. But the flight was fabulous. I was so excited, I forgot to put on my oxygen mask and nearly passed out breathing all that nitrogen. But I hooked it on just in time.

There was no ride ever in the world like that one! I fired all four rockets simultaneously. From a standing start, I just streaked down that runway for about fifteen hundred feet, raised the nose at 200 mph, and we jumped into the air. It was accelerating so rapidly that when I flipped the gear handle up, the actuating rod snapped and the wing flaps blew off. Eighty seconds after starting the engines I was at 23,000 feet at 1.03 Mach! The fuel ran out, so I rolled over and came down. Despite the damage, the X-1 touched down on the lakebed two and a half minutes after taking off. That January 5, 1949, flight occurred the day before the Navy was scheduled to fly its new rocket-powered model of the Skystreak. In Air Force circles, I was a bigger hero for beating the Navy to the punch than for breaking the sound barrier.

But the X-1 program was rapidly winding down. My folks came out for a visit, and Jack Russell drove them out to the lakebed to watch me land. I came in at 500 mph only thirty feet from where they stood. Mom practically died of fright, but Dad got a big charge out of it. In all, I flew the orange beast thirty-three times and achieved the highest speed-1.45 Mach (957 mph). In the summer of 1950, Glamorous Glennis was loaded under a B-29 for the last time. Then Ridley, Jack Russell, and I flew it back east. En route, we came in over Main Street at Hamlin at about 500 feet, then pulled back up and delivered the X-1 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. At the ceremonies, a Smithsonian official perfectly summed up the role of the X-1. He said, "The X-1 marked the end of the first great period of the air age and the beginning of the second. In a few moments the subsonic period became history and the supersonic period was born."