World War II On September 12, 1941, Yeager enlisted as a private in the
U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), and became an aircraft mechanic at
George Air Force Base,
Victorville, California. At enlistment, Yeager was not eligible for flight training because of his age and educational background, but the entry of the U.S. into World War II less than three months later prompted the USAAF to alter its recruiting standards. Yeager had unusually sharp vision, a
visual acuity rated 20/10, which once enabled him to shoot a deer at . At the time of his flight training acceptance, he was a crew chief on an
AT-11. He received his
pilot wings and a promotion to
flight officer at
Luke Field,
Arizona, where he graduated from Class 43C on March 10, 1943. Assigned to the
357th Fighter Group at
Tonopah, Nevada, he initially trained as a fighter pilot, flying
Bell P-39 Airacobras (being grounded for seven days for clipping a farmer's tree during a training flight), and shipped overseas with the group on November 23, 1943. in the
United States Army Air Forces. Stationed in the United Kingdom at
RAF Leiston, Yeager flew
P-51 Mustangs in combat with the
363d Fighter Squadron. He named his aircraft
Glamorous Glen after his girlfriend, Glennis Faye Dickhouse, who became his wife in February 1945. Yeager had gained one victory before he was shot down over France in his first aircraft (P-51B-5-NA s/n 43-6763) on March 5, 1944, on his eighth mission. He escaped to Spain on March 30, 1944, with the help of the
Maquis (French Resistance) and returned to England on May 15, 1944. During his stay with the
Maquis, Yeager assisted the guerrillas in duties that did not involve direct combat; he helped construct bombs for the group, a skill that he had learned from his father. He was awarded the
Bronze Star for helping a navigator, Omar M. "Pat" Patterson Jr., to cross the
Pyrenees. Despite a regulation prohibiting "evaders" (escaped pilots) from flying over enemy territory again, the purpose of which was to prevent resistance groups from being compromised by giving the enemy a second chance to possibly capture him, Yeager was reinstated to flying combat. He had joined another evader, fellow P-51 pilot 1st Lt Fred Glover, in speaking directly to the
Supreme Allied Commander, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, on June 12, 1944. "I raised so much hell that General Eisenhower finally let me go back to my squadron" Yeager said. "He cleared me for combat after
D Day, because all the free Frenchmen – Maquis and people like that – had surfaced". Eisenhower, after gaining permission from the War Department to decide the requests, concurred with Yeager and Glover. ,
Glamorous Glen III, is the aircraft in which Yeager achieved most of his aerial victories. Yeager demonstrated outstanding flying skills and combat leadership. On October 12, 1944, he became the first pilot in his group to make "
ace in a day," downing five enemy aircraft in a single mission. Two of these victories were scored without firing a single shot: when he flew into firing position against a
Messerschmitt Bf 109, the pilot of the aircraft panicked, breaking to port and colliding with his wingman. Yeager said both pilots bailed out. He finished the war with 11.5 official victories, including one of the first air-to-air victories over a jet fighter, a German
Messerschmitt Me 262 that he shot down as it was on final approach for landing. Yeager's official statement of the 12 October mission states: In his 1986 memoirs, Yeager recalled with disgust that "atrocities were committed by both sides", and said he went on a mission with orders from the
Eighth Air Force to "
strafe anything that moved". During the mission briefing, he whispered to Major
Donald H. Bochkay, "If we are going to do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we are on the winning side". He also expressed bitterness at his treatment in England during World War II, describing the British as "arrogant" and "nasty" on Twitter. Yeager was commissioned a
second lieutenant while at
Leiston, and was promoted to
captain before the end of his tour. He flew his 61st and final mission on January 15, 1945, and returned to the United States in early February 1945. As an evader, he received his choice of assignments and, because his new wife was pregnant, chose
Wright Field to be near his home in
West Virginia. His high number of flight hours and maintenance experience qualified him to become a functional test pilot of repaired aircraft, which brought him under the command of Colonel
Albert Boyd, head of the Aeronautical Systems Flight Test Division.
Post-World War II Test pilot – breaking the sound barrier After the war, Yeager remained in the
U.S. Army Air Forces. Upon graduating from
Air Materiel Command Flight Performance School (Class 46C), Yeager became a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field (now
Edwards Air Force Base). After
Bell Aircraft test pilot
Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin demanded to break the sound barrier, the USAAF selected the 24-year-old Yeager to fly the rocket-powered
Bell XS-1 in a
NACA program to research high-speed flight. Under the
National Security Act of 1947, the USAAF became the
United States Air Force (USAF) on September 18. named
Glamorous Glennis. He named all of his assigned aircraft in some variation after his wife. Yeager's flight was scheduled for October 14. Two nights before his flight, Yeager went horseback riding with his wife and fell, breaking two ribs under his right arm. Worried the injury would remove him from the mission, Yeager had a civilian doctor in nearby
Rosamond tape his ribs. To seal the hatch of the XS-1, the pilot needed to hold the hatch in position and use their right arm to slam down a heavy lever. Yeager would not be able to seal the hatch with his broken ribs, so Yeager secretly asked his friend and fellow project pilot
Jack Ridley for a solution. Ridley sawed off the end of a broom handle for Yeager to use as a lever to seal the hatch. Yeager broke the
sound barrier on October 14, 1947, in level flight while piloting the X-1
Glamorous Glennis at
Mach 1.05 at an altitude of over the
Rogers Dry Lake of the
Mojave Desert in California. The success of the mission was not announced to the public for nearly eight months, until June 10, 1948. Yeager was awarded the
Mackay Trophy and the
Collier Trophy in 1948 for his mach-transcending flight, and the
Harmon International Trophy in 1954. The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the
Smithsonian Institution's
National Air and Space Museum. During 1952, he attended the
Air Command and Staff College. Yeager continued to break many speed and altitude records. He was one of the first American pilots to fly a
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, after its pilot,
No Kum-sok, defected to
South Korea. Returning to Muroc, during the latter half of 1953, Yeager was involved with the USAF team that was working on the
X-1A, an aircraft designed to surpass Mach 2 in level flight. That year, he flew a
chase aircraft for the civilian pilot
Jackie Cochran as she became the first woman to fly faster than sound. The new record flight, however, did not entirely go to plan, since shortly after reaching Mach 2.44, Yeager lost control of the X-1A at about due to
inertia coupling, a phenomenon largely unknown at the time. With the aircraft simultaneously rolling, pitching, and yawing out of control, Yeager dropped in less than a minute before regaining control at around . He then managed to land without further incident.
Military command , 1959. Yeager was foremost a fighter pilot and held several squadron and wing commands. From 1954 to 1957, he commanded the
F-86H Sabre-equipped 417th Fighter-Bomber Squadron (50th Fighter-Bomber Wing) at
Hahn AB,
West Germany, and Toul-Rosieres Air Base,
France; and from 1957 to 1960 the
F-100D Super Sabre-equipped
1st Fighter Day Squadron at
George Air Force Base, California, and
Morón Air Base,
Spain. He was a full colonel in 1962, after completion of a year's studies and final thesis on
STOL aircraft at the
Air War College. He became the first commandant of the
USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, which produced
astronauts for
NASA and the
USAF, after its redesignation from the USAF Flight Test Pilot School. He had only a high school education, so he was not eligible to become an astronaut like those he trained. In April 1962, Yeager made his only flight with
Neil Armstrong. Their job, flying a
T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in
Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the
North American X-15. In his autobiography, Dwight details how Yeager's leadership led to discriminatory treatment throughout his training at Edwards Air Force Base. Between December 1963 and January 1964, Yeager completed five flights in the
NASA M2-F1 lifting body. An accident during a
December 1963 test flight in one of the school's
NF-104s resulted in serious injuries. After climbing to a near-record altitude, the plane's controls became ineffective, and it entered a
flat spin. After several turns, and an altitude loss of approximately 95,000 feet, Yeager ejected from the plane. During the ejection, the seat straps released normally, but the seat base slammed into Yeager, with the still-hot rocket motor breaking his helmet's plastic faceplate and causing his emergency oxygen supply to catch fire. The resulting burns to his face required extensive and agonizing medical care. This was Yeager's last attempt at setting test-flying records due to his apparent inability to fly the required flight profiles for optimum climb performance. In 1966, Yeager took command of the
405th Tactical Fighter Wing at
Clark Air Base, the
Philippines, whose squadrons were deployed on rotational temporary duty (TDY) in
South Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. There he flew 127 missions. In February 1968, Yeager was assigned command of the
4th Tactical Fighter Wing at
Seymour Johnson Air Force Base,
North Carolina, and led the
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II wing in
South Korea during the
Pueblo crisis.
Deputation to Pakistan From 1971 to 1973, at the behest of Ambassador
Joseph Farland, Yeager was assigned as the
Air Attache in
Pakistan to advise the
Pakistan Air Force which was led by
Abdur Rahim Khan (the first Pakistani to break the sound barrier). He arrived in Pakistan at a time when tensions with India were at a high level. One of Yeager's jobs during this time was to assist Pakistani technicians in installing
AIM-9 Sidewinders on PAF's
Shenyang F-6 fighters. He also had a keen interest in interacting with PAF personnel from
various Pakistani Squadrons and helping them develop
combat tactics. After
hostilities broke out in 1971, he decided to stay in
West Pakistan and continued overseeing the PAF's operations. During the war, he flew around the western front in a
helicopter documenting wreckages of
Indian aircraft of Soviet origin, which included
Sukhoi Su-7s and
MiG-21s. These aircraft were transported to the
United States after the war for analysis. Yeager also flew around in his
Beechcraft Queen Air, a small passenger aircraft that was assigned to him by the
Pentagon, picking up shot-down Indian fighter pilots. The Beechcraft was later destroyed during an air raid by the IAF at Chaklala airbase. Edward C. Ingraham, a U.S. diplomat who had served as political counselor to Ambassador
Farland in
Islamabad, recalled this incident in the
Washington Monthly of October 1985: "After Yeager's
Beechcraft was destroyed during an Indian air raid, he raged to his cowering colleagues that the Indian pilot had been specifically instructed by
Indira Gandhi to blast his plane. 'It was', he later wrote, 'the Indian way of giving
Uncle Sam the finger'". Yeager was incensed over the incident and demanded U.S. retaliation. It was later revealed that it was then Indian Navy pilot Lieutenant (later Admiral)
Arun Prakash who bombed Chuck Yeager's personal Beechcraft Queen Air at Pakistan's
Chaklala Airbase using a
Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft with Admiral Prakash later writing and confirming it as a bold move against American involvement.
Post-retirement and in popular culture On March 1, 1975, Yeager retired from the Air Force at
Norton Air Force Base, California.
Sam Shepard portrayed Yeager in the film, which chronicles in part his famous 1947 record-breaking flight. Yeager has been referenced several times in the shared
Star Trek universe, including having a namesake fictional type of starship, a dangerous starship
formation-maneuver named after him called the "Yeager Loop" (most notably mentioned in the
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "
The First Duty"), and appearing in archival footage within the opening title sequence for the series
Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005). For
Enterprise, executive producer
Rick Berman said that he envisaged the lead character, Captain
Jonathan Archer, as being "halfway between Chuck Yeager and
Han Solo". For several years in the 1980s, Yeager was connected to
General Motors, publicizing
ACDelco, the company's
automotive parts division. In 1986, he was invited to drive the
Chevrolet Corvette pace car for the
70th running of the Indianapolis 500. In
1988, Yeager was again invited to drive the pace car, this time at the wheel of an
Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. In 1986, President Reagan appointed Yeager to the
Rogers Commission that investigated the explosion of the
Space Shuttle Challenger. During this time, Yeager also served as a technical adviser for three Electronic Arts
flight simulator video games. The games include ''
Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer 2.0
, and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat''. The game manuals feature quotes and anecdotes from Yeager and were well received by players. Missions feature several of Yeager's accomplishments and let players challenge his records. ''Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer'' was Electronic Art's top-selling game for 1987. In 2009, Yeager participated in the documentary
The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a profile of his friend
Pancho Barnes. The documentary was screened at film festivals, aired on public television in the United States, and won an
Emmy Award. On October 14, 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight past Mach 1, he flew a new
Glamorous Glennis III, an
F-15D Eagle, past Mach 1. The chase plane for the flight was an
F-16 Fighting Falcon piloted by
Bob Hoover, a longtime test, fighter, and
aerobatic pilot who had been Yeager's wingman for the first supersonic flight. At the end of his speech to the crowd in 1997, Yeager concluded, "All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force". Later that month, he was the recipient of the
Tony Jannus Award for his achievements. On October 14, 2012, on the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, Yeager did it again at the age of 89, flying as co-pilot in a
McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle piloted by Captain David Vincent out of
Nellis Air Force Base. == Awards and decorations ==