Posted on 10/12/2021 9:54:01 AM PDT by DFG
And a famous Freemason. What are the odds?
Not too many American men around nowadays with real cahones like that.
Balls of steel.
Today people are called “courageous” for prancing around with purple hair and fake boobs. Things that would have gotten them locked up in a rubber room in 1947. How we have fallen.
Chuck Yeager was definitely a hero of mine, we used to see a lot of those test flights out of Edwards AF Base where my dad worked for a time with Boeing when we lived in Lancaster, CA back in the late ‘50’s.
Folks should be sure to read the comments at the DM story.
Ah, the “good old days” when we could look up to real heroes.
This is what the Soviets were working on at that time. (MIG-15)
What I find amazing is how few controls in those old machines. Like John Glenn’s capsule in the Smithsonian - orbited the earth with only a few gauges
“Not too many American men around nowadays with real cajones like that.”
Chuck broke multiple ribs the previous day (horse accident) and had to have His flight engineer help make a tool to close the door - NO ONE was to know about it.
It ended up being the handle from a broom that they cut-down and he hid in his uniform. Chuck used the broom handle to decrease the force he needed to exert to close the door.
Tough guy.
My dad (USAF Fighter Pilot ‘54-’75) started bitching about “too many black boxes” when they upgraded the F101 Voodoo in about ‘67.
Yeah. Also, 1947 was the year that the F-86 made its maiden flight.
p
DAMN, that’s memorious !
A significant item not included in this article, the aircraft (a/c) design. Note the straight wings and general ‘bullet’ shape. This was a design from the brute-force approach which was why there were stability and control problems. While WW2 Germany had already deployed swept wings on the ME-163 & ME-262, the advantages from these designs were slow to penetrate in the immediate postwar era. Another feature that would help these a/c was the ‘area-rule’ concept of the ‘wasp waist’ that, with the angled wings, smoothed the airflows and reduced the ‘wall’ effect of the shockwave at Mach+ flight!
A point made in this UK article about the British Government cancelling a similar advanced supersonic test program is, while true, also misleading. Postwar Britain was WRECKED by WW2! The populace remained on rationing and high taxes until the 1950s WHILE the Labour Government implemented massive socialism in nationalizing industries and starting the National Health System (NHS)!
I still recommend the movie “The Right Stuff” for a good review of this era. Chuck Yeager and his comrades may have been flying high-tech but their assigned quarters were little more than tarpaper shacks. Quite a contrast!
The UK Labor government gave Rolls-Royce Nene engines to the Soviets hoping to improve UK-Soviet relations. Sample engines were purchased and delivered with blueprints. This engine led to the development of the jet engine that powered the Mig-15.
ME-163 - rocket-powered.
ME-262 - jet powered.
And now they have touch screens.
Still remember reading in our Weekly Reader about the X15
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