NOTE: This story first appeared in the June 1986 edition of MotorTrend. We’ve resurfaced it as a celebration of the life of Yeager, an American icon who passed away on December 7, 2020, at the age of 97.
General Chuck Yeager is perhaps the greatest pilot in the world. He’s now retired from military and research flying, but when you talk to him, you know he hasn’t lost his passion for any of it. He still has those fighter pilot eyes—sort of non-blinking gun-fighter models—with incredible vision. Spend some time with him and you learn that he sees things before you do or things you miss entirely. He sits in the passenger seat and asks a question—and you realize he’s reading the fine print on the dashboard gauges.
His time in the military was quite possibly the last era of almost unlimited personal freedom. He and his cohorts were two-fisted partiers and did things with their airplanes that would get them sent straight to jail today: buzzing everything in sight, flying their friends around in military planes, using big military choppers to go on hunting trips. Their attitude about life, in general, was, perhaps, a result of the dark cloud of war hanging over them, so they developed a screw-tomorrow-let’s-have-fun-now approach to almost everything they did.
A classic example: Bob Hoover, a close friend of Yeager’s, was a backup pilot in the X-1, the plane attempting to break the sound barrier. In those days, General Yeager’s only means of transportation was an old motorcycle—which didn’t have any lights. The operating mode was for Yeager to ride in front of Hoover, in the car’s headlights so he could see where he was going (and they went everywhere as fast as they could possibly go). One night, as they were roaring along in this formation, Hoover shut the lights off just before a curve so Yeager would break a leg, and he, Hoover, would get to fly the X-1.
Chuck’s phenomenal eyesight saved him that night, and he was able to avoid a crash. After it was all over, the two pilots had a drink at Pancho’s and a big laugh over the whole episode.
General Yeager has recently become a celebrity again through the magic of the boob-tube. While we were with him doing this story, the public’s reaction to him was astounding: Waitresses got all giggly, everyone wanted his autograph, and he gets recognized everywhere he goes.
We thought we would share some of his answers to questions about his life and experiences.
MotorTrend: What is your current position with the Air Force?
Chuck Yeager: I’m consultant test pilot to the commander, flight test center. It’s a non-paying civil service job but allows the Air Force to benefit from my years of experience in research flying. It also enables me to fly current aircraft.
MT: Prior to your autobiography, your name was known to the public, but not your face. Your face is now very much in the public eye—does that bother you in any way?
CY: No, it doesn’t bother me. Since the ACDelco commercials, people do notice me, and the most common question is: Are you who I think you are? I just ask them, well, who do you think I am?
MT: What airplanes do you own?
CY: My Falcon XP is the first plane I have ever owned. It isn’t an ultralight because it’s been modified to carry two people, has a radio, and goes above the regulated ultralight speed.
MT: What is your favorite airplane?
CY: No question, for propeller planes it would be the P-51 Mustang. It was the ultimate prop fighter—well-designed, fast, and with [an] over eight-hour range. In jets, the Northrop F-20 Tigershark is probably the highest-tech single-cockpit fighter out there right now.
MT: What cars do you own, and what’s your favorite car?
MT: Did you always enjoy research flying, in spite of the dangers?
CY: Yes, but sometimes the flights were awfully hard work. In the X-1 and X-1a flights, the liquid-oxygen tanks were right behind my back and there were no heaters, so it was freezing inside the cockpit until all the fuel was burned. I was bolted into the cockpit with no way out until back on the ground, so I had to develop a fatalistic attitude about it. I was disciplined enough from my combat flying that I just did it—it needed to be done. Exactly like you go into combat knowing there’s a strong chance you won’t come back.
MT: But the risk must have been enormous in some of those early rocket flights.
CY: It was, but in the case of the sound barrier, there was no risk too great not to go supersonic. It was a barrier that was limiting all progress in aviation. I was prepared to donate my life. Incredible as that sounds, I saw it as no different than thousands of combat missions I had flown. Being a military pilot, it never entered my mind not to do it—it was my job.
MT: Were the risks greater in combat or research flying?
CY: No doubt research flying was the more dangerous of the two. In combat it was one-on-one, you against him, so you could depend on your own skills. We were better trained than they were—better pilots—so we had an advantage. In research flying, the unknown factor always got you. I was doing things in those aircraft which had never been done before, and no one knew what to expect: what would break or explode. Expanding the envelope was necessary to accumulate data, so we did it, but it was dangerous.
MT: Are today’s research fliers facing any different challenges than you did, or is the envelope any different?
CY: No. Altitude and speed still define the envelope for each aircraft, but today’s envelope is totally predictable as a result of computer technology, wind tunnels, and simulators. There are no surprises now when a pilot first flies a research plane; he has done it all, many times before, in a simulator.
MT: Do modern pilots have the same skills as you?
CY: I don’t think they have the same mechanical feel for their planes today. The aircraft systems are more complex, but the planes are easier to fly because of the complexity. They have computerized flight control systems like STABAUG (Stability Augmentation), etc., which tend to spoil the pilots. When I get back in a P-51 now, I think, “How did I ever fly this goddamn thing?” It’s yawing all over the sky and you have to be on top of it all the time.
MT: What are the major differences between flying when you started and today’s jet-jocks?
CY: The amount of time in the air. I would typically fly 100 to 200 hours per month. Today it’s much less than that. During WWII, the training programs were very accelerated. In 1943, the Army Air Force reported 22,800 major aircraft accidents—excluding combat! A representative number today would be 200. We were just flying all the time for gunnery practice, skip bombing, dive-bombing, formation, etc.
MT: Who was your number one her0?
CY: General James Doolittle. He was an airshow pilot, test pilot, race pilot, and dedicated military pilot who led the raid on Tokyo. More up-to-date, I admire people like astronaut Joe Ingle, who took his crew into space and recovered, repaired, and replaced in orbit the Hughes satellite. That shows real professionalism.
MT: Flying seems like a lifetime passion. Do you still have it?
CY: It’s not something I was born with. I never saw a plane on the ground (except for one that crashed in our cornfield) until I was 15. After I started flying in the Air Force, I did learn to love it, and it’s still as much fun after all this time.
MT: How long do you plan to keep flying?
CY: As long as I can pass the physicals and continue to enjoy it.
MT: If you could replay your life, would you change anything?
CY: Nope, I couldn’t have planned it any better.