All-Time Top 100 Stars of Aerospace & Aviation Announced

Lycos - PR Newswire ^ | 06/18/2003 | Chris Meyer of Aviation Week

[RoughDobermann]

Yes, I've read both of his tomes many times. When he and Armstrong were stuck, Armstrong kept the engines at max power in a futile attempt to get unstuck. After a while, Yeager said (paraphrasing), "Neil, why don't you just turn the sumb*tch off? We ain't goin anywhere." Our future fist man on the moon, indeed! :-)

[MikeD]

OK, John Glenn is 89 and Howard Hughes is 94? Are they on crack? They didn't call Glenn the "Mig Mad Marine" for nothing. He deserves to be on the list without his astronaut achievements...

MD

[Doctor Don]

Where is Wiley Post? He flew the Winnie Mae solo around the world - the first pilot to do so. He also was the first to invent a pressurized suit for high altitude flying.

[Doctor Don]

I agree absolutely! I knew his younger brother Gordon who lived in Oklahoma City.

[VOA]

Jimmy Doolittle....(led)...the first air raid on Tokyo (16 land-based, twin-engined
USAAF B-25 bombers that launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in what
was essentially a suicide mission)

Probably in the early 1990's, Smithsonian Magazine had a good article on Doolittle.

I'll never forget him saying that as he sat next to the wreckage of his plane
after "The Raid", all he could think was that he was going to get
court-martialed for wrecking so many bombers.

An American classic.

[VOA]

63 James "Jimmy" Stewart

I've told some undergraduates that Stewart quit his Hollywood gig and then
PUT ON WEIGHT just so he could have the honor of having the Luftwaffe try to
kill him with flak.

Thank goodness, at least a few of the kids seem to grasp the sort of
greatness this selflessness reveals.

[Atchafalaya]

Yeager is just going to love the fact that he came in ahead of Hoover.

[USMMA_83]

You have to put Yuri Gagarin in the top 5. Just have to!

[MarkL]

It's ridiculous that Armstrong ranks before Yeager, IMO.

Well, I guess I can understand it... Both are pilots with very serious "firsts."

However, I guess I'm suprised that Buzz Aldrin ranks below Armstrong. Sure, Armstrong was first on the moon, and Aldrin was #2, but Aldrin is a really first class engineer, and he's the one that came up with a lot of the innovations that allow for EVAs, including, I believe, the underwater training for simulating microgravity.

Mark

[Hank Rearden]

Sally Ride just went along for the . . . . errrr . . . ride. It's not like she rode the first Shuttle launch and landed it herself manually.

Babe in Space - chalk one up for the feminist Top 100.

[MarkL]

I've told some undergraduates that Stewart quit his Hollywood gig and then PUT ON WEIGHT just so he could have the honor of having the Luftwaffe try to kill him with flak.

Thank goodness, at least a few of the kids seem to grasp the sort of greatness this selflessness reveals.

IIRC, wasn't he a training officer who pretty much badgered his COs to get into a combat unit? I seem to recall that General Stewart (I know he was a full bird colonel, but didn't he get promoted to general?) worked very hard to get into combat.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I didn't find Wiley Post either.

[RoughDobermann]

Yeager took over the X-1 project when Slick Gooden, a civilian test pilot, was demanding more and more money to go faster and faster. Yeager was a captain at the time, and basically took on the project because he didn't believe the NACA engineers. He did it because he was a skilled and very brave pilot. While I respect Armstrong, as well as all the other astronauts, I don't think that what he and Buzz did reach the same level of "unknown" as what Yeager did, somehow. Yes, they were the first to land on the moon; a never before accomplished feat. Yet, they had a MASSIVE effort of scientists, physicists and engineers behind them. Yeager and Ridley basically grabbed the bull by the horns and rode it. They, at least to me, displayed a certain amount of good, old American "can do it" mentality that deserves and demands recognition.

And, yes, Aldrin should have been first out the door, IMO. IIRC, his doctoral thesis (from MIT?) was the foundation of EVA activity.

[RoughDobermann]

Yeager is just going to love the fact that he came in ahead of Hoover.

Ain't that the truth! Of course, Hoover ranks #1 in the crazy pilot department. Anyone that'll loop an AeroCommander without engines turning ain't all there!

[RoughDobermann]

Well, how about Joe Kittinger?

Talk about nuts! What was HE thinking!?

[MediaMole]

They left off too many great aircraft designers like Glen Martin and Ed Heinemann while including too many sci-fi writers.

Gene Roddenberry created a popular TV show, he never built or flew anything.

[Ready4Freddy]

Thanks for the post, Ernest.

Surprised that Jackie Cochran isn't on the list. Also, Gus Grissom, but no Ed White (first American to do an EVA)?? Both died with Chaffee on Apollo 1, of course.

[Ready4Freddy]

"6. The designers of the P-51 Mustang - for sheer genius in combining beauty with lethality. "

The American designers, or the Brits who thought of slapping a Merlin in it, thus saving the 51 from the dustbin of history?

[yarddog]

Jackie Cochran was a far better pilot than Earhart. My Father knew the guy who pulled her out of a local spring when she nearly drowned as a little girl.

Cochran grew up in extreme poverty literally having to forage for food in the woods. She married one of the worlds wealthiest men and regularly sent checks to the man who had saved her life.

She was the first woman to break the sound barrier. I recall in Yeager's book how he described her as a really fine pilot.

[Ready4Freddy]

First woman to Mach 2, as well. Yeager flew wing for her on most if not all of her jet records.

Won the Bendix Trophy in 1938, first person to make it from LA to Cleveland non-stop.

Led the WASP in WWII after ferrying planes for the Brits because the US wasn't ready for that yet. First female to fly a military plane (bomber) across the Atlantic. Received the DSM.

Started & ran her own cosmetics company.