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Chuck Yeager - RIP

Don Johnson

By Don Johnson
in Daily Texan

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NateHitch

NateHitch 1282

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One bad motherfucker. He was a bit before my time but I have strong memories of him. My best friend and I started mowing lawns when we were around 10 and my first two purchases from the ample proceeds was a slingshot and his autobiography which I've probably read 10 times since. Still have it. We need more men like him. RIP Chuck.

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AUS-97HORN

AUS-97HORN 11824

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if you just looked at his war record, he was a hero, escaped POW, a bronze star, silver star, and distinguished flying cross & 11.5 aerial victories- including an ME262 (all but 1 of which happened after he escaped)

The test pilot stuff just put him into the literal stratosphere of pilots. 

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956 Worldwide

956 Worldwide 34816

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9 hours ago, DalTxHornFan said:

This is a good time to revisit Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" -- Badass is a great term for Yeager.

Quote

Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze.

RIP to the man with the rightest stuff.

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RPM

RPM 26368

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8 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

if you just looked at his war record, he was a hero, escaped POW, a bronze star, silver star, and distinguished flying cross & 11.5 aerial victories- including an ME262 (all but 1 of which happened after he escaped)

The test pilot stuff just put him into the literal stratosphere of pilots. 

He also flew a MiG 15 that a defecting NorK pilot turned over. 

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Armybrat

Armybrat 40940

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A California friend posted this anecdote on another board...

“Chuck Yeager worked as a consultant on the Right Stuff.  
I used to work with a kid who was a gopher / carpenter on the crew of the movie.  One day they’re building a miniature set and this old guy walks up and says, “Y’all mind if an old fuck helps out?”  It was General Yeager.“

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GreenspointTexas

GreenspointTexas 9689

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12 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Holy shit I would have put the over under on "how long Chuck Yeager has been dead" at 15 years.

RIP to a true badass. Also, a great mentor to me personally

image.thumb.png.93fa4da93cdfc3c9253ee8c2fff60df0.png

Used to play this game every day growing up. Yeager was my hero when I was a kid. He was the reason I went to AFA prep school and why I have my pilots license. Saw him speak a few times as a kid at Oshkosh

 

RIP to one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century

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Johnny Sack

Johnny Sack 8397

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From Wiki

Yeager had unusually sharp vision (a visual acuity rated 20/10), which once enabled him to shoot a deer at 600 yards 

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.[18] He escaped to Spain on March 30 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.

. 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 kills 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 starboard 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.

Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, Yeager broke two ribs when he fell from a horse. He was worried that the injury would remove him from the mission and reported that he went to a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond, who taped his ribs.[36][c] Besides his wife who was riding with him, Yeager told only his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about the accident. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the X-1's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch.[37]

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.

 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89850

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5 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

The Right Stuff Indeed. 

3 hours ago, bullzak said:

Five kills in one day. Pretty, pretty good. 

Right Stuff on tap tonite. 

We could use a little more of what he had for sure. 

Speaking of, Disney is moving production of the Right Stuff TV series to California for the next season, and the in-series timeline lines up with Yeager's aerospace/whatever school, the one that had him flying the F-104 that nearly killed him in the movie. 

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Gunsup

Gunsup 56

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12 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

RIP, legend. Should have been the first man in space but didn't trust the government scientists. A man after my own heart.

He wanted to be part of the new space program but the govt wouldn't take anyone (even him) without a college degree.

 

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10938

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http://www.chuckyeager.org/nf-104-crash/

and don't miss the comments

also, for the record, re: The Right Stuff, deke slayton was scheduled to follow glenn in gemini 4, but was grounded for a heart condition, so although gordo cooper was 6th he was the last of the mercury missions in may '63, the yeager 104 zoom crash was december '63, and the astrodome opened april '65, so some hollywood liberties were being taken.

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