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.
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
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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!
Still remember reading in our Weekly Reader about the X15
The article refers to a “Flying Tail” but was in fact using the elevator trim tab for pitch control. The flying tail came later. Jack Ridley and Yeager figured out how to use the trim to control the aircraft.
It was Jack Ridley (I think I may have me a stick), who actually invented the flying tail used by most supersonic aircraft today. He should have been a very rich man for that brilliant invention. His insight into using the trim for control enabled the supersonic control.
Colossal balls!!
Not too many like him.
Sort of wonder why he was not part of the astronaut ranks.