Yeager: An Autobiography

Chuck and Glennis came back out to the desert in 1973. Chuck was stationed at Norton, just down the dusty old trail from Edwards. His new assignment was safety director of the Air Force, which made him, m effect, the only general officer who was allowed to pilot an airplane. Of course, like all generals, he had to have a pilot along with him, but Yeager never in his life sat in the second seat. He argued with the Pentagon, "Look, how in hell can I be in charge of Air Force safety if I can't fly airplanes myself to see if they are safe?" So, he was the exception to the rule and loved every minute of it.

He traveled constantly, going around to all the bases to hold safety inspections, and when he got to where my son was stationed, he asked for him to fly in the cockpit with him. He said, "I hear Captain Anderson is one of your best young pilots." Jim didn't know what in hell was happening when he was ordered to go fly with some general. When he saw it was Chuck, he burst out laughing. But Chuck told me, "Hey, ol' Jim can really fly."

I know he had had his heart set on his son Don becoming a pilot, but Don really wasn't that interested, and although it pained Chuck a lot when Don couldn't get into the Air Force Academy because of some minor thing with his eyes, he eventually saw the light about it. He told me, "Hell, I went to test pilot school with Jimmy Doolittle, Jr., and I remember the pressure on that guy trying to live up to his dad's reputation. Same thing would've happened to Don. No matter what he would've done, people would expect him to do as much as me, and there was no way, because those kinds of opportunities are long gone." My son Jim didn't have the famous father problem. I was only "famous" as Chuck's friend.

In fact, I was responsible for Chuck's last airplane ride on active duty. He was running out of time, and so was I. He had thirty-four years in and I had thirty. Five years was the limit he could serve as a brigadier general, although if he got a second star, he could serve seven more years because he wasn't commissioned until 1944, and the law allowed him to serve thirty-five years of commissioned time. He was really of two minds about it. He was only fifty-two, very young to retire, especially as a general officer. It was one of those deals where he would've liked to be asked to become a major general, for the honor of it. He and Pete Everest had always been rivals: both from West Virginia; both great test pilots, and both one-star generals. I'm sure he would've enjoyed edging Pete out, but he knew damned well a second star would mean serving at the Pentagon. Chuck just rolled his eyes about that. He said, "Shit, there won't even be any flying to speak of." When the time came, he was ready to hang it up.

So 1975 was it for him. And a few weeks before he was scheduled to retire, he came to Edwards to hold a safety inspection, and the officers involved came to me for advice about the best way "to please General Yeager." I laughed. I told them, "Get him an airplane to fly and stick a pilot in the back seat, and you won't hear any complaints out of him." And that's what they did. But before he took off, he called me at my office and said, "Listen, I'm too damned old to bail out. I don't want you within a hundred yards of that flight line. Hell, I don't want you to even look out your goddamn window."

I wasn't in the sky with him that day, so he didn't have to bail out of that F-4 Phantom. But before he landed, he came down right over the deck at 500 knots and did a couple of beautiful slow rolls. I know because I peeked.

In the end he logged ten thousand hours flying in 180 different military aircraft, including foreign or experimental rocket aircraft. And to another pilot, that was the most enviable thing about Yeager s career; no matter what he was doing, he never stopped flying. Being Chuck, he made damned sure that retirement wouldn't keep him from continuing to fly military airplanes. Dave Scott, who was a student at his space school and took over NASA's high-speed flight research center at Edwards, called him and said, "Chuck, how would you like to be a NASA consultant for no pay? All you have to do is fly 104s when you want to." Chuck said, "Hell, yes." The Air Force also made him an unpaid consultant at Edwards for the same reason.

Before he retired, he was enshrined in the Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, the youngest member ever to be inducted. Jackie enshrined him in the ceremonies down there, and then Edwards honored him by unveiling a huge oil painting of him and the X-1 in the lobby of the base officers' club, directly opposite the front door. Hell, parking spot one was reserved there for him; the second spot was for the base commander.

But the retirement ceremonies were at Norton, where he was headquartered. General Boyd, who was long retired, flew all the way from Florida in his own Bonanza, and said, "Chuck, there are damned few people in the world that I would do this for." He conducted the retirement ceremonies on the stage. General Doolittle and his wife Jo were there, and Jackie and Floyd Odlum. Most of the guys he had flown with in flight test were there, as well as guys he commanded in his squadrons, and a bunch of us from World War II, including Obie O'Brien, Don Bochkay and Chuck McKee. It was a typical Yeager crowd: fighter pilots, test pilots, a few generals, and a couple of millionaires, sheepherders, and drunks. General Boyd read the special orders retiring Chuck and then there was a pass-in-review parade in his honor.

After the ceremonies, he came up to me with tears in his eyes. He said, "Jesus, not one damn piece of equipment in the sky." Bob Hoover was going to fly by in a P-51 Mustang to honor Chuck, but he got socked in in fog back in L.A. Chuck was really upset. He said, "I spent my life flying and there wasn't even a pigeon in the air when I said good-by."