Brig. General Chuck Yeager, who flew at the speed of sound has died
“We call the speed range just below and just above the sonic speed-Mach number nearly equal to 1-the transonic range. Dryden [Hugh Dryden, well-known fluid dynamicist and past administrator of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] and I invented the word ‘transonic’ We had found that a word was needed to denote the critical speed range of which we were talking. We could not agree whether it should be written with one s or two. Dryden was logical and wanted two s’s. I thought it wasn’t necessary always to be logical in aeronautics, so I wrote it with one s. I introduced the term in this form in a report to the Air Force. I am not sure whether the general who read it knew what it meant, but his answer contained the word, so it seemed to be officially accepted. . . . I will remember this period (about 1941) when designers were rather frantic because of the unexpected difficulties of transonic flight. They thought the troubles indicated a failure in aerodynamic theory. “1
The morning of Tuesday, October 14, 1947, dawned bright and beautiful over the Muroc Dry Lake, a large expanse of flat, hard lake bed in the Mojave Desert in California. Beginning at 6:00 a.m., teams of engineers and technicians at the Muroc Army Air Field readied a small rocket-powered airplane for flight. Painted orange, and resembling a 50-caliber machine gun bullet mated to a pair of straight, stubby wings, they carefully installed the Bell X-1 research vehicle in the bomb bay of a four-engine B-29 bomber of World War II vintage. At 10:00 a.m., the B-29 with its soon-to-be historic cargo took off and climbed to an altitude of 20,000 feet.
As it passed through 5,000 feet, Captain Charles E. (Chuck) Yeager, a veteran P-51 pilot from the European theater during World War II, struggled into the cockpit of the X-1. This morning Yeager was in pain from two broken ribs incurred during a horseback riding accident the previous weekend. However, not wishing to disrupt the events of the day, Yeager informed no one at Muroc about his condition, except his close friend Captain Jack Ridley, who helped him to squeeze into the X-1 cockpit. At 10:26 a.m., at a speed of 250 miles per hour, the brightly painted X-1 dropped free from the bomb bay of the B-29.
Yeager fired his Reaction Motors XLR-11 rocket engine and, powered by 6,000 pounds of thrust, the sleek airplane accelerated and climbed rapidly. Trailing an exhaust jet of shock diamonds from the four convergent-divergent rocket nozzles of the engine, the X-1 soon approached Mach 0.85, the speed beyond which there existed no wind tunnel data on the problems of transonic flight in 1947. Entering this unknown regime, Yeager momentarily shut down two of the four rocket chambers, and carefully tested the controls of the X-1 as the Mach meter in the cockpit registered 0.95 and increased still. Small invisible shockwaves danced back and forth over the top surface of the wings.
At an altitude of 40,000 feet, the X-1 finally started to level off, and Yeager fired one of the two shutdown rocket chambers. The Mach meter moved smoothly through 0.98, 0.99, to 1.02. Here, the meter hesitated then jumped to
7 Dec, 2020: Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.
Credits: Air Force Test Center History Office
The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the passing of Gen. Chuck Yeager:
“Today’s passing of Gen. Chuck Yeager is a tremendous loss to our nation. Gen. Yeager’s pioneering and innovative spirit advanced America’s abilities in the sky and set our nation’s dreams soaring into the jet age and the space age. He said, ‘You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.’
“Among many firsts in more than 60 years in aviation, Chuck was the first man to fly at the speed of sound, and his achievements rival any of our greatest firsts in space. Not content to rest on his laurels, he went on to break his own record and travel at Mach 2.44. But even before that he was serving his country heroically in World War II. Long after he became a legend in his own time, he continued to serve his country through the military and later in his ongoing work to test new aircraft.
Credits: Air Force Test Center History Office
“Chuck’s bravery and accomplishments are a testament to the enduring strength that made him a true American original, and NASA’s Aeronautics work owes much to his brilliant contributions to aerospace science. As a young naval aviator, I was one of many around the world who looked up to Chuck Yeager and his amazing feats as a test pilot. His path blazed a trail for anyone who wanted to pu