WRIGHT-PATTERSON Yeager`s link to Wright-Patt was strong
Aviation legend dies at 97; base a critical part of supersonic flflight.
When legendary pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in October 1947 45,000 feet above the Mojave Desert, it was brainpower atwhat becameWright-Patterson Air Force Base that helped make it possible.
There was always a connection between Yeager andWright-Patterson, the birthplace ofmuch of the technology that made Yea ger’ s record-breaking deeds possible. YeagerdiedMonday. Hewas 97. Yeager was the fifirst pilot in history confifirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flflight. When his bullet-shaped Bell X-1 broke the sound barrier above the Southern California desert, muchof that technological power was tied towhat was thenWright Field here outside Dayton.
The rocket-powered, soon-to-be supersonic plane was nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” after Yeager’s wife.
KevinRusnak, an historian for the Air Force Research Laboratory, based at Wright-Patterson, said the supersonic X-1was the brainchild of the then-Wright Field Aircraft Laboratory’s Ezra Kotcher, who “conceived of an airplane designed and built fromscratch solely for experimental research, in this case high-speed, rocket-powered flflight past the speed of sound.”
“When the head of Wright
Field’s Flight Test Division, an organization connected to the modern Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, surveyed his 125 pilots to find one bestsuited to flying the experimental, and highly dangerous, Bell X-1 airplane, he chose Chuck Yeager,” Rusnak said in an email Tuesday. “The young lieutenant was known for his precision flying and natural feel for an airplane — the quintessential ‘stick-and-rudder man’ — and his record as an ace in WorldWar II attested to his coolness under fire.”
“Gen. Yeager was a hero and a legend,” Gen. Arnold W. Bunch Jr., commander of AirForceMaterielCommand, said Tuesday. “Ihadthe good fortune of multiple interactions with Brig. Gen. Yeager and he always inspired our test pilots and test teams to push through barriers. May herest in peace, our thoughts and prayers are with his family as they go through this trying time.”
“Gen. Chuck Yeager truly embodied the innovative spirit of the Wright Brothersandliterallybrokethrough barriers. He leaves behind an incrediblelegacyandwillcontinue to be an inspiration to America’s pilots,” U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, said.
“Itprovedthattheso-called sound barrierwas no barrier whatsoever,” BobvanderLinden, curator of special purpose aircraft at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., told the Dayton Daily News in 2017, then the 70th anniversary of Yeager’s historic flight.
The X-1 programwasmanaged at Wright Field. Both Yeager and his backup pilot, futureair showlegendRobert A.“Bob” Hoover, wereWright Field test pilots on “temporary” duty at Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base, said Timothy Gaffney, a former Dayton Daily News military affairs and aviation writer.
“TheX-1programis a good example of how(Wright-Patterson’s) work often goes unrecognized: The development and management are done here, but the dramatic flights over the desert get all the attention,” Gaffney said. “Just like Dayton and Kitty Hawk.”
Yeager is also a National Aviation Hall of Fame enshrinee and one of four X-1 rocket planes is in the NationalMuseum of theU.S. Air Force, he added.
Then as now, Wright-Patterson is the beating heart of
AirForce researchand development, and in the 1940s, work there helped pave the wayforsupersonicflight. Yeager flewmilitary planes here beforemoving to California, said Doug Lantry, historian at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
After World War II, Yeager’s career as a test pilotwas launched at what became Wright-Patterson.
Yeager had completed the school for test pilots recently established at Wright Field and was already flying airplanes with experimental newtechnologies developed there by the Air Force laboratories, the AFRL’s Rusnak said.
“In January 1947, he had his turn on theWright Field Aero Medical Laboratory’s (now part of AFRL’s 711th Human PerformanceWing) centrifuge, hitting 3.8 Gs (or nearly four times the force of gravity),” he said. “His qualifications and experience made him ideally suited to flying through the largely unknownand unpredictable transonic speeds and faster than sound.”
JeffDuford, a curator at the NationalMuseum of theU.S. Air Force, said Yeager’s connections to the base are historic and deep.
“He actually flew in the skiesrightaboveourmuseum, right above Wright-Patterson,” Duford said.
Yeager flew in several aircraft currently on display at theAirForceMuseum, including the X-3, the X-4, the Convair XF-92 and a MiG-15. The latter plane was flown from North Korea to South Korea by a defector before being flown in a transport to Okinawa, Japan, where Yeager and another American test pilot flew it.
ThemuseumhasanX-1like the one Yeager flew, but not one that he did in fact pilot, amuseum spokesman said.
The flight suitYeagerwore during the record-breaking flight surpassing the sound barrier is not displayed, but the museum has that suit in its possession, a spokesman said.
Yeager formally retired from the Air Force inMarch 1975 as a brigadier general. In the 1980s, Yeagerworked with GeneralMotors, publicizing AC Delco, the company’s automotive parts division, which had its ownDayton connections.
In 1986, he drove the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 andhasbeenin highdemand for public appearances over the years.
“Yeager passing awayis the end of an era with a group of pilots whomade enormous leaps in humanunderstanding,” Dufordsaid. “He’s a legend, really,”