X-Nico

11 unusual facts about Chuck Yeager


Gardner Army Airfield

Gardner AAF is historically significant as Brigadier General Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager first learned how to fly an airplane there.

Hans Guido Mutke

Only after learning about the supersonic flights of Chuck Yeager in 1947 did he attribute these phenomena to the effects of supersonic flight and claim to have broken the sound barrier—years before Yeager did.

Mutke also made the controversial claim that he broke the sound barrier in 1945 in an Me 262, but mainstream opinion continues to regard Chuck Yeager as the first person to achieve this milestone in 1947 in a Bell X-1 .

Joe Ritchie

Ritchie and his long-time personal friend, record-setting balloonist Steve Fossett, broke Chuck Yeager’s transcontinental speed record flying his Piaggio on February 6, 2003.

Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center

A replica of the X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager, Glamorous Glennis, used in the filming of The Right Stuff

The only replicated items in the Cosmosphere are the model of Glamorous Glennis, the Bell X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager, and the life-sized space shuttle replica that greets visitors.

Leiston

Famous American test pilot and fighter ace General Chuck Yeager (who, later, first broke the sound barrier) flew out of RAF Leiston.

Lockheed NF-104A

One of the aircraft was destroyed in an accident while being flown by Chuck Yeager.

The third NF-104A (USAF 56-0762) was delivered to the USAF on 1 November 1963, and was destroyed in a crash while being piloted by Chuck Yeager on 10 December 1963.

National Space Society

The 2006 recipient was retired Air Force Brigadier General Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager for his pioneering efforts in aeronautics with the Bell X-1 rocket-powered flights of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The Sound Barrier

Contrary to what is depicted in the film, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier was the Bell X-1 flown by Chuck Yeager of the United States Air Force in 1947.


Weatherby Mark V

This is due in part to Roy Weatherby who presented the rifles to royalty, politicians, gun writers and actors including Prince Abdorreza Pahlavi of Iran, Generals James Doolittle (USAF) and Chuck Yeager (USAF), Jack O'Connor, Warren Page, Elgin Gates and Lorne Greene and was able to use this fact as a marketing tool.