Yeager: An Autobiography

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.