Chuck Yeager, ‘Right Stuff’ US test pilot who broke sound barrier, dead at 97
- World War II fighter ace was the first man to travel faster than sound
- Exploits were immortalised in the Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Right Stuff’
Chuck Yeager, the steely Right Stuff test pilot who took aviation to the doorstep of space by becoming the first person to break the sound barrier more than 70 years ago, died on Monday at the age of 97.
Yeager’s death was announced on his Twitter account by his wife, Victoria.
“It is w/ 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, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever,” Victoria Yeager said in the tweet.
Yeager, an unlikely candidate to become one of the most famous aviators in history, joined the US Army Air Corps in 1941 just to work on the engines of aeroplanes, not to fly them. His first plane ride made him throw up.
Yeager was passed over for the burgeoning US space programme because he never went to college but he was hardly heartbroken not to become an astronaut. He considered them mere passengers “throwing the right switches on instructions from the ground.”
Author Tom Wolfe was so impressed by the mien of the rough-hewn man from Hamlin, West Virginia, that he made Yeager a prominent character in The Right Stuff, his 1979 book about the early days of the space programme.