Saturday, October 14, 2006
This Day in American History
On this day in 1947, U.S. Air Force Captain Charles Yeager rode the X-1, attached to the belly of a B-29 bomber, to an altitude of 25,000 ft. over dry Rogers Lake in California. After the X-1 was dropped like a bomb from the B-29, Yeager lit up and rocketed to an altitude of 40,000 ft. and became the first person to break the sound barrier, that is, to fly faster than sound waves, probably 650 mph up there. Yeager flew P-51 Mustangs in 1944 over France and Germany. He shot down a Messerschmitt 109 on his 7th mission. On the 8th he was shot down after being jumped by three Focke-Wulf 190s. He made it back to England with help from the French Resistance. On October 12, 1944, he became an ace in a day--he caused a German pilot to veer into his wingman, two planes down, then shot down three more. He was even a rat catcher for the German jet, the Me-262, that is, he followed the jet down as it slowed to land at an airfield and shot it down. Yeager is the real hero in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff as he well deserves to be.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 8:17 AM 
