Yesterday humanity lost one of the great test pilots of the early days of aerospace. Chuck Yeager passed away at age 97. He was a complex person who wasn’t always kind or nice but was, however, one of the best test-pilots of his day, and on October 14, 1947, he became the first person to break the sound barrier. Yeager was responsible for training many of the early astronauts, but because he only had a high school degree, he was ineligible to fly for NASA himself.

While Yeager is best known for his adventures as a test pilot, for most of his career he was a military pilot who flew in WWII, Vietnam, and in Southeast Asia during the troubles between India and Pakistan in the 1970s. He retired in 1975 as a Brigadier General but continued to work with the United States Air Force all the way until Oct 14, 2012, when at age 89 he co-piloted a McDonnell Douglas F-15 eagle on the 65th Anniversary his original breaking of the sound barrier. This may be a good time for a re-watch or re-read of The Right Stuff.

We have seen a few amusingly wrong news reports stating this generated the first-ever sonic boom, but we’d like to point out those happen naturally with things like lightning.

More Information

Associated Press article 

NASA Administrator statement