Charles “Chuck” Yeager, the retired Air Force Brig. Gen. pilot who was the first to break the sound barrier and later inspired The Right Stuff book and eponymous movie, has died at the age of 97. Yeager’s wife, Victoria Yeager, confirmed her husband’s death Monday on the former World War II pilot’s Twitter account, writing, “It is [with] profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET.”
“An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, [and] a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever,” she continued. Yeager leaves behind an impressive legacy, having been first to break the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947 while flying the Bell X-1 as a test pilot and also having shot down more than 11 aircraft as a P-51 pilot during the second World War. Yeager’s career would be chronicled in The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe, and the movie adaptation by the same name, directed by Philip Kaufman.
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Yeager was born in Myra, West Virginia in 1923, and would enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces after graduating high school, where he developed his passion for planes as a mechanic. Come WWII, Yeager transitioned to becoming a pilot, where he often cited his abnormally sharp vision as a key to his success. Following the end of WWII, he continued his career in as a test pilot in the Air Force, which is how he came to break the sound barrier in 1947, traveling at nearly 700 mph.
In a 1987 essay for Popular Mechanics, Yeager recounted the moment he achieved his record-breaking achievement, made even more difficult by the pain and difficulty moving he had after having two ribs broken by a horse. “I’d had a bad night’s sleep – from the pain in my side, but also from the indecision about whether or not to fly the mission incapacitated,” he wrote in the essay. “Tossing and turning, I decided to make up my mind in the air. If it became physically impossible to climb into the X-1, then I’d scrub the mission. If I could get into the pilot’s seat, I knew I could fly.”
Of the moment he broke through the sound barrier, Yeager wrote, “I had flown at supersonic speeds for 18 seconds. There was no buffet, no jolt, no shock. Above all, no brick wall to smash into. I was alive.” The legendary pilot is survived by wife Victoria and children Susan, Don and Sharon, whom he shared with his first wife Glennis, who died of cancer in 1990. His fourth child, a son named Mickey, died in 2011.
