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The Yeager Thread


flynhigh

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Gentlemen,

I respect your right to have strong opinions and to express them – but I'd like to share with you what I see as facts.

I can't claim personal friendship with Chuck Yeager and can't even say I know him closely; I do not have that privilege. I've never flown with him, either in the same cockpit, or wing-to-wing. But I recently had an opportunity to communicate with him in person in the course of several days, and to witness him chatting informally with dozens of military pilots of all ranks (including a bunch of TPS students and instructors). From what I could observe, Chuck Yeager can sometimes be tough and challenging, but more often I found him charismatic, and sometimes sweet and charming. In his conversations with pilots he was inevitably open and friendly. A man who's known him for a few years mentioned to me that Yeager tends to react negatively when people try to suck up to him or seek his approval. He's also characterized by having strong opinions about things and about people – just like the respected members of this forum (except Chuck Yeager expresses his opinions without relying on the comfortable Internet anonymity).

I also had a chance to communicate with Mrs. Yeager, and I'd like to tell you that it's clear to me that having met and married her is probably the best thing that happened to Chuck Yeager ever since he survived the NF-104 crash. I saw how caring she is of him, and I'm pretty sure that it's largely thanks to her that Chuck Yeager today, at 88, is alive and in good health and still flies military aircraft. It's also very obvious to anyone who ever had a chance to see Chuck Yeager and his wife, that they are in a truly loving relationship and happy together, their age difference notwithstanding. That's what you'd recognize, too, if you took the trouble of objectively looking at the photo published here by one of the previous posters.

Seeing things the way they are, I must say I felt embarrassed reading this thread, and I found it disturbing to see American military aviators (?) gossiping away like a bunch of bored housewives, and trashing the reputation of one of this nation's last living heros. On the other hand, no one so far has cancelled the First Amendment. I'm only wondering if any of you gentlemen would dare to express your strong negative opinions to the man himself, directly to his face.

Can be a good dude to the right people, don't treat him like a general and he seems to be a better dude. I like Robin Olds better, but I also like Chuck, he did some historic crap, that is cool. What are you, his offspring or a new TPS grad, read his book, he'll tell you what he thinks of TPS dudes.

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I'm only wondering if any of you gentlemen would dare to express your strong negative opinions to the man himself, directly to his face.

Never met the guy, but if he's still got a hair on his old fighter pilot ass, he'd throw up on me if I looked him in the eye and called him "sweet and charming". Not sure what your background is, but you lose any credibility you have with this statement..."trashing the reputation of one of this nation's last living heroes." You obviously have NO idea what you are talking about because our nation is blessed with thousands of living heroes, most of them under the age of 30 (many under 20). They are fighting in places you've probably never heard of, and are performing acts of heroism that make breaking the sound barrier seem kind of boring.

But thanks for the lecture.

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You obviously have NO idea what you are talking about because our nation is blessed with thousands of living heroes, most of them under the age of 30 (many under 20). They are fighting in places you've probably never heard of, and are performing acts of heroism that make breaking the sound barrier seem kind of boring.

But thanks for the lecture.

Thinking of going in and creating another screen name just so I can "Like" this post again.

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Damn, we're busted. I so loved selecting old military aviation "heroes" and then just running them into the ground for no apparent reason. What the hell am I going to do now? Guess I'll go back to cooking and cleaning...

BTW, something tells me if someone were to call him an asshole to his face, they wouldn't be the first.

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Let's not forget his class-filled reaction to Scott Crossfield's death in '06

"Yeager says he's "sure sorry to hear" about Crossfield's death.

But the first man to break the sound barrier says "complacency" seems to have led to the accident. Yeager says Crossfield often flew in bad weather and sometimes "exceeded his capability and got in trouble.""

http://www.wistv.com/global/Story.asp?s=4800081

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Never met the guy, but if he's still got a hair on his old fighter pilot ass, he'd throw up on me if I looked him in the eye and called him "sweet and charming". Not sure what your background is, but you lose any credibility you have with this statement..."trashing the reputation of one of this nation's last living heroes." You obviously have NO idea what you are talking about because our nation is blessed with thousands of living heroes, most of them under the age of 30 (many under 20). They are fighting in places you've probably never heard of, and are performing acts of heroism that make breaking the sound barrier seem kind of boring.

But thanks for the lecture.

Fuckin' A.

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Never met the guy, but if he's still got a hair on his old fighter pilot ass, he'd throw up on me if I looked him in the eye and called him "sweet and charming". Not sure what your background is, but you lose any credibility you have with this statement..."trashing the reputation of one of this nation's last living heroes." You obviously have NO idea what you are talking about because our nation is blessed with thousands of living heroes, most of them under the age of 30 (many under 20). They are fighting in places you've probably never heard of, and are performing acts of heroism that make breaking the sound barrier seem kind of boring.

But thanks for the lecture.

Fuckin' A! I guess the recent batch of MOH recipients don't count as heroes in his book. Nor, apparently, do the dudes they pinned the AF Cross and Silver Star on at HRT yesterday... Just to list a few off the top of my head...not that you have to get a medal to be a hero…

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Gentlemen,

I respect your right to have strong opinions and to express them – but I'm a ignorant douche who has no idea what I am talking about.

//Signed//

Mad Russian

CAP Commander, AFJROTC Drill Team Member, and currently unable to pass a PT Test.

FIFY.

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I lived near him during my last stint at Beale. Short story long: He likes to shop at the commissary. I followed him on my way into work a couple times (license plate: BELLX1A). Apparently he gave up breaking speed records a long time ago. On one occasion I passed his ass at the first piece of straight road we came to and received the "You're #1!" signal for my troubles. I respect his accomplishments but dude is just your standard grumpy ORF at this point.

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Saw Yeager at an airshow about fifteen years ago. The Mustang he was flying was parked up near the crowd line and he came over to greet some of the people standing by the fence. Being a longtime aviation fan I walked over and shook his hand, and then stepped back and listened to him answer questions from some others, just average aviation fans who wanted to meet someone that they obviously looked up to. A little surprising to say the least, a lot of the answers that weren't "Read my book" were just insulting - including his comments to a guy and his son from his hometown in West Virginia who asked if he ever got back to WV, basically saying 'I'd never set foot in that state again if I didn't have to...' A lot of surprised people who after he turned and walked back to his P-51 looked at each other asking, "What the hell was that?" For better or for worse you're an ambassador whenever you talk to people, and he didn't sell a lot of books that day.

Have had a couple of chances to meet him since then, but I figured, why bother?

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  • 11 months later...

The aircraft broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. Sunday, exactly 65 years to the minute the then-Air Force test pilot made history. At the time, the F-15 was flying over Muroc Dry Lake in California where he accomplished the feat in 1947.

That's pretty sweet.

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Yeager's wife, Victoria, said he had been looking forward to re-enacting the historic flight.

"This is so cool. I'm excited," she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "He's in the back seat where the instructor pilot sits because he's the elder statesman."

Or because he's not qualified to fly the jet.. I've heard it both ways.

Edited by Buddy Spike
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I follow Sully Sullenberger on Twitter, and he retweeted something from Yeager. Being curious, I went to Yeager's Twitter, and this was posted..

Chuck Yeager@GenChuckYeager

Who has a jet in Reno area, willing to give a ride to General Yeager to Las Vegas on Oct 13?

Can't fly SWA like the rest of us?

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EAGLE!!

When is the F-22 going to crush these records? Someone on TR-2 should get on that.

Anyway, It's a cool throw back to history but it certainly doesn't take any skill to fly supersonic in a modern fighter - as long as you can figure how to get the throttles over the hump into afterburner.

It's impressive that he passed his physical at his age though. I wonder how he did in the G-X?

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