Yeager: An Autobiography

ON A PEDESTAL

The X-1 made me famous. The awards, medals and plaques began piling up, and at first, collecting them was fun. All that was asked of me was to show up at places like the White House in a freshly pressed uniform, smile for the birdie, collect the Collier Trophy from the President, shake his hand, and say thank you. Or go with Glennis, who was dressed to the nines in an evening gown and looked gorgeous, to attend a classy banquet in Dayton, where the International Aviation Federation presented me with a one-pound solid gold medal. We stored it in a bank vault.

The flight was compared in importance to Lindbergh's solo across the Atlantic in 1927, but I received no ticker-tape parade down Broadway-nothing like it. By the time the Air Force announced the flight eight months later it was old news to official Washington, and a couple of other pilots, including Colonel Boyd, had also punched through Mach 1. But there were big headlines about it, and reporters came out to our house, scaring the hell out of the boys who were awakened from their nap to have flashbulbs popped in their sleepy faces.

I felt the flight should have received recognition sooner than it did, but figured it was kept secret to give us time over the Russians to develop a moving tail on new fighters then on the drawing boards. I was a little miffed, but not like Larry Bell, who wanted the prestige for his company, or like ol' Pancho, who called pals like General Doolittle and General Spaatz and told them that by the time the Air Force got off its ass, the Navy would probably have flown out to Mach 2.

"Those assholes in Washington are blowing this whole thing," she complained to me. "You're getting a royal screwing." I told her, "Well, up theirs. My flight is in the history books, and that's the whole nine yards for me. All the other crap doesn't mean a thing." That was how I felt about it.

Hell, I was being practical, not modest. Movie stars put up with all the demands that go with fame because it means bucks. As a blue suiter I wasn't going to get a dime out of the deal. And being famous with the public meant absolutely nothing to a guy living out in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The public wanted heroes, and to me, I was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride. But then, I was naive as could be, living a cloistered life out at Muroc, where the flying was fun and the living was easy.

It was a tight little circle. My life was flying and pilots. I didn't spend a whole helluva lot of time doing or thinking about anything else, unless it was quail hunting at Hansen's Ranch near Jawbone Canyon, or fishing for golden trout high in the Sierras. At a party we were like a bunch of damned doctors, talking a lingo no outsider could understand; our wives would say, "Oh, God, pilot talk again." We were an obsessed bunch, probably worse than other military pilots because we were so isolated. About the only civilians we knew were company test pilots, who flew in to run test programs. The outside world was mostly a place we flew over. But that quickly changed.

Being famous didn't serve any useful purpose for me as far as I could tell. The only compliments that really mattered came from guys like Larry Bell, Dick Frost, and Jack Ridley, who had been intimately associated with my flights. The only reward that really mattered came from Colonel Boyd, who assigned me the testing of the XF-92, the experimental prototype of the first deltawing airplane. Convair pioneered delta-wing configuration, and if this prototype proved itself in testing, they would proceed with the F-102, the Air Force's first delta-wing supersonic jet fighter.

The old man raised hell with Convair because their own test work proceeded so slowly, their chief test pilot had flown the airplane for almost a year, but was so spooked by the XF-92's supersensitive handling characteristics that he refused to take off if the wind was blowing at more than ten miles an hour. He had only had it out to .85 Mach and landed it no slower than at 170 mph. The Air Force yanked it away from Convair and gave it to me shortly after my supersonic flight.

The controls were the first to be hydraulically operated, so light there was hardly any feel. My comment after flying in it for the first time was that it would be easy to handle if the damned stick were eighteen feet long. It was a tricky airplane to fly, but on only my second flight I got it out to 1.05 Mach, and coming in, I decided to see how slow I could land it, and kept pulling up the nose until it was pointing at a forty-four-degree angle of attack. I was amazed and landed at a speed of only 67 mph, more than 100 mph slower than Convair's pilot-a good example of how experience in high-performance aircraft pays off. I had hundreds of hours more flying time in jet fighters than he did.

In its own way, the XF-92 was as interesting and challenging as the X-1, so I had plenty to keep me busy without worrying about medals or recognition. In fact, I was busy on this program when the Air Force announced my supersonic flight in June 1948. The first trophies and awards meant a lot because they were so prestigious in aviation. I figured there would be a few more awards, then back to business as usual. Then I got a phone call from some colonel at the Pentagon, setting up a personal appearance schedule around the country and telling me I had to make speeches. I said to him, "Colonel, I'm only a fighter pilot. I don't do speeches."

He set me straight in a hurry. The orders to go out and give speeches came directly from the Chief of Staff's office. "And you'd better get used to it, because dozens of business and civic groups are asking for you." Hearing that got me hot. "Sir," I said, "you've got the wrong guy. I'm not some damned preacher. I can't just pick up and go make a talk in the middle of a test program. I'm flying eight hours a day on the new delta-wing."

"I'm not arguing with you, Captain," he replied. "Travel orders are being cut and that's that. You will attend these functions-every one of them."

Give speeches! Me! I hated English worse than any other subject because I had to stand in front of the class and give a book report. I thought, "No way, goddamn it. No way I'm gonna do that." I'd rather fight a flame-out on the deck than battle a talk in front of a strange audience. I was self-conscious about my lack of education, my bad grammar; I was just a pilot, not a stump-winding politician. Man, I was terrified, so I called Colonel Boyd at Wright Field, hoping he could protect me against the Pentagon because he wanted to keep me flying instead of running around the country. But he wouldn't take my call. Colonel Ascani told me, "We've already got the word, Chuck. You're going to have to bite the bullet. General Vandenberg thinks you're great p.r. for the Air Force and Colonel Boyd isn't about to argue with him."

I was trapped. I told Ridley, "I wish you had taken that damned ride in the X-1 instead of me." Jack laughed and said, "Me, too, son."

It was summer, boiling hot. We flew early in the morning to keep from being roasted in an airplane left out in the sun, or being scorched from touching its metal skin. So, we finished work early, but while the other pilots headed to Pancho's to splash in her pool and have a cold beer, I took off for Cleveland or Des Moines to make a speech every time the Pentagon blew its whistle. I told Glennis, "I'd rather be ignored than put up with this crap." She said, "Just be yourself. People don't expect a great speech. They just want to see a hero." I looked around. "Where? Where's a damned hero? Show me."

I don't even remember my first speech, or where it was. I'm sure I was scared, kept it short, and made it conversational. One of Bell's p.r. guys who knew me advised me to make eye contact with the prettiest gal in the audience and talk directly to her. He also told me to keep my hands below the rostrum so nobody would see them shaking. Most of these audiences were Kiwanis or Elks or Jaycees and the only gals were the waitresses. I kept my hands behind my back.

I worked up a ten-minute talk, inviting questions from the audience at the end. It took about six or seven speeches before I began to loosen up, but the experience wasn't near as bad as I thought it would be. People liked me for what I had done and liked what I said as long as I kept things light and didn't get too technical. They liked that I was young and just an average person. My talk was simple and patriotic. I said, "You folks can be proud that our country has the best trained Air Force pilots in the world. They took a guy like me, who had never been to college, and trained me to be a proficient pilot. I happen to be the lucky one chosen to fly the X-1. But a dozen other test pilots could've done it as well. All of us receive the same excellent training."

Soon, I was making fifteen to twenty speeches a month, but still the requests for personal appearances continued pouring in, to be king of a winter carnival in upstate New York, or guest of honor at a state fair in the Midwest. A town in North Carolina named its airport Yeager Field, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce named me one of the country's ten outstanding young men. Glennis stored all these awards and trophies in cardboard boxes in the garage, but accepting them could be a fulltime job.

Time put me on its cover, and Pancho hung it right over the bar, just daring any of the regulars to make a wisccrack. The guys gave me a hard time about the speeches and the publicity. "Hey, Yeager what kind of b.s. you feedin' those damn civilians?" they asked. I said, "Yeah, they rinse the horseshit from their ears when I say you other weenies could have made it through Mach 1, too." It really frosted me that guys were jealous because I made speeches. I wanted to tell them, "Hell, take my place, be my guest." But that would only make it worse. I used reverse psychology, telling them what they wanted to hear-about the motorcycle escort from the airport, the colonel who carried my bags, the good-looking women hot to make it with a hero.

That wouldn't be bad, but the truth was different. I was sometimes taking off at dawn to make it to Topeka for an Optimists' lunch. I'd grab a taxi in from the airport, change out of my flying suit into my uniform in the Holiday Inn john, rush into the banquet room with three minutes to spare to have somebody say, "Oh, you must be our guest speaker," and escort me to the head table and seat me next to some two-hundred-pound honcho who never once glanced my way until dessert was cleared and he lit up a ten-cent cigar. Then, he'd say, "Tell me, son, what is this sound barrier you're famous for? I've got to introduce you in five minutes."

I'd get home at nine o'clock at night just madder than hell. I couldn't see where attending something like that did me or the Air Force a bit of good. It was just a tiring waste of time, but then I'd be told that Congressman X or Senator Y had called the Pentagon and told the Air Force to get me to these functions because their constituents wanted me. And these particular congressmen had clout in getting appropriations or whatever. I thought it stank, but I was only a captain obeying orders.

I recall one occasion where four or five Muroc test pilots flew into an Air Force base in the Midwest for some test work, and I happened to be taxiing in ahead of them because I had a speech to make in town. Whenever I traveled to a local air base, the base commander usually came out to meet me and have his picture taken shaking my hand. The Muroc guys saw this one-star general meet my airplane, which was slightly unusual treatment for a visiting captain, and their eyebrows practically peeled off their heads. They were jealous of me, and I was jealous of them for being the way I was before everything hit the fan. Nobody asked me if I was having any fun.

Big sacks of mail began arriving at my desk in the ops building. Pete Everest asked, "What in hell are you gonna do about that?" I said, "Answer it, I guess." Hundreds of letters a month, requesting autographs and photos. I suppose guys were jealous about that, although no one asked me how long it took to sign all those requests or who paid for the postage when people failed to provide a self-addressed stamped envelope. After John Glenn made his earth orbit, we sometimes appeared together at banquets, and he asked me what I did about all the mail. NASA wanted him to use a mechanical device to sign his name; he wondered if I used one. I said, "John, I don't care if it takes you the rest of your life, but if a kid writes wanting your autograph, sign it yourself." He said, "I know I should, but, my God, they arrive by the thousands." I said, "That's right. By the goddamn thousands. But stay honest. Don't use a signing machine." He agreed.

Then the word got around that I was going to make a movie with John Wayne. That knocked the socks off everybody in night test. Guys asked me about it. I said, "Well, yeah, but it's no big deal. Just one hot love scene with Janet Leigh." The name of the movie was Jet Pilot, starring Wayne and Leigh. The Air Force thought it would be a good movie to publicize itself, so they ordered full cooperation. And they volunteered yours truly to do all the dangerous stunt flying. I never saw Duke or Janet; I spent my time at 15,000 feet, being filmed by the great aviation cameraman, Paul Mantz, chasing me in a bomber, his camera poking out of a special glass compartment.

We went to Kelly Field in Texas because the producer wanted to film big cumulus clouds. The director said to me, "We need the kind of balls-out flying that only you can do, Chuck." I flew for free in an F-86, doing stunts that would've cost them a fortune if I were a professional stunt pilot. They asked me to dive into the overcast inverted at 12,000 feet, with another pilot on my tail, then roll out and pull out down on the deck. I dove too steeply, reaching .92 Mach straight down, and when I tried to pull out, I came back too hard on the elevator and the damned thing ripped right off my tail, taking with it about one-third of my horizontal stabilizer. My wing man shouted, "Get out!"

He hit his speed brakes and pulled up. My instinct told me it was too late to eject myself; I was pulling seven Gs attempting to pull out with only part of my stabilizer left. I leveled off just above the fence posts and climbed back into the overcast. The wingman never saw me and went back to tell them that Yeager went in. The transmission bonding on my radio was also gone, so I couldn't transmit. But I could hear the excited chatter about my "crash." I managed to make it back on what was left of my stabilizer, but it wasn't easy. And a couple of days later, while climbing to altitude to continue the filming, the turbine wheel of my engine came right out the side of my airplane, leaving me sitting at 20,000 feet with no engine. I was feeling good that day, which is why I decided to stay in the airplane and dead-stick it back into Bergstrom Air Force Base. But those were the kinds of deals I was forced into.

Before Jet Pilot was released, the Air Force sent me to New York to attend the opening of a British movie called Breaking the Sound Barrier. It wasn't about me; supposedly, it was based on the life of Geoffrev De Havilland, Jr., who was killed flying the tailless Swallow while trying to break Mach 1. It was a good and very realistic action picture. They used a World War II Spitfire to break the barrier, which was amusing because that airplane wouldn't go faster than .75 Mach in a power dive. When the actor discovered that his stick froze at Mach 1, instead of pulling back, he pushed the stick forward and it somehow released. Any pilot who really tried that stunt would've drilled himself into the ground, but it worked as a dramatic moment in the picture, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

When the lights came on, I realized that people seated around me thought they had watched a true story. I overheard one guy say to his wife, "Where in hell was Uncle Sam?" I said to him, "Hey, that was only a movie. We broke the barrier not the damned British. And I'm the guy who did it." I might have saved my breath. That movie was a hit, and many who saw it believed it was a true story. Even the new Secretary of the Air Force believed the part about reversing the controls. Secretary Finletter stopped me at a Washington dinner and asked me if that's how I had done it in the X-1. I told him, "No, sir. If I tried that, they would've found the X-1's nose poking out the ground in China."

The public really didn't understand the concept of the sound barrier, but the press description of a brick wall in the sky made me seem like a young Captain Marvel. Sometimes I just winced reading stories that credited me with feats that were wildly exaggerated. Glennis saved them all, filling big scrapbooks, but she'd get mad watching me get mad reading them. "Boy, you're hard to please," she said. I told her, "It's hard enough being a test pilot without dragging around a ten foot reputation that just isn't true. Everyone expects miracles from me and that's a perfect way to get killed."

That ten-foot reputation stuck with me over more than twenty years of my Air Force career, creating a lot of jealousy and enemies. The Air Force insisted on putting me up on a pedestal, and there was no lack of volunteers trying to knock me down. A few of them came damned close to wrecking my career. That was part of the price of having been singled out ahead of the pack to fly the X-1. Being famous got me nothing in the way of promotions or better assignments, but among the intensely competitive pilots in flight test, there were some who would never forgive me for taking that historic Mach 1 flight. The Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff knew me and called me by my first name, the mail and speech assignments kept rolling in, and powerful politicians asked me for my autograph. Yet, my family and I had gone from bad to worse in our living conditions out on the desert. We lived no better than a damned sheepherder-maybe worse. And I was still outranked by all the senior test pilots. As far as I know, none of those jokers at Pancho's were jealous of that.