First pilot to break sound barrier, Chuck Yeager, dies at 97.
US Aviation legend, Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, has died. This sad news was announced by his wife on Monday, 7th of December, 2020.
”It is with profound sorrow that I announce to you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET,” Victoria Yeager tweeted on her husband’s account.
”An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, and a legacy of strength, adventure and patriotism will be remembered forever.” She however did not specify the cause of her husband’s death.
A World War II fighter pilot, Yeager, 97, rocketed into history by breaking the sound barrier in the experimental Bell X-1 research aircraft in 1947, helping to pave way for the US space program.
”It opened up space, Star Wars, Satellites,”. Yeager said in a 2007 interview with AFP.
Born on February 13, 1923, in the tiny town of Myra, West Virginia, Yeager grew up fixing pickup trucks alongside his father.
His test pilot exploits were later immortalized in the 1983 Hollywood blockbuster; ”The Right Stuff.”
He joined the Army Air Corps in September 1941, three months before the US entered World War II, and started out as an aircraft mechanic before undergoing flight training.
Yeager would go on to set numerous other flight records, but most of his career was spent as a military commander directing US fighter squadrons throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He retired from the US Air Force in 1975.
