The Right Stuff or just dumb luck? Chuck Yeager, born with 20:10 eyesight, faster reflexes, and much more stamina than most, never did go for the "Right Stuff" myth. Sure, he met writer Tom Wolfe and he worked on the movie, "but a lot of that stuff is fictitious," says Yeager. "Tom Wolfe, he's a poet and a dreamer. He's not a pilot."
Surrounded by mahogany stools and bored cowboys at a hotel in the little Gold Rush town near his Northern California Home, Yeager is not at ease. Not at all. There is the public Chuck Yeager, the one who autographs his bestsellers, files in the Reno Races, and picks up awards, stooping to advertise occasionally. Then there is the private Chuck Yeager, who would just as soon be backpacking up in the High Sierras on the trail of elk or bear.
It is now forty-two years since Gen Charles E. Yeager burst the barrier of sound--"like poking through Jell-O"--in a Bell X-1 research craft, and even longer since he flew P-51 Mustangs on combat missions, clocking a total 270 hours of combat during what he calls, in his inimitable West Virginia twang, "Worrul-Wor-Tew" in his "er-plen." The Yeager end score: sixty-three missions, thirteen German planes totaled, three damaged, one Silver Star for bagging five Messerschmitts in one night, a Cluster for four Focke-Wulf 190s on another, Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Broze Star, Air Medal with six Clusters, and one Purple Heart.
And he hasn't stopped flying since. Recently, he served on the president's Space Commission in the wake of the Challenger disaster. He tests the latest F-teens for the military on highly classified missions, and appears at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to tell what it was like.
You've flown everything from World War II tail draggers to
the latest F-teens, and you've had a lot of time to think
about pilot training. How has it changed?
In the old days, you went out with a pilot and got your dual instruction. It was a long learning process. Today, before you even get inside an airplane, you spend a lot of time in simulators learning all the procedures of actually flying a plane; and because you've got so many good visual cues it's almost like real flying.
So do you feel you need less training to become a pilot
these days?
No, it's still down to a matter of getting enough experience in the airplane. The only problem I see today inside commercial aviation is a lack of real tight supervision and discipline. The military have squadron commanders and flight commanders, and they're on top of their pilots all the time because they're on top of their pilots all the time because they're very safety conscious. The airline pilots are safety conscious, but in my opinion there has not been enough supervision of airline pilots. And in the case of certain airlines, you had a lot of incidents and problems because of complacency, where the crews weren't disciplined and didn't follow the checklist.
Even with good air
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