Gen. Chuck Yeager turns 96 years old today. Right stuff indeed.

Interesting how Tom Wolfe idolized Chuck Yeager in "The Right Stuff" as the coolest pilot there ever was, yet James R. Hansen's "First Man" implies that he was something of an under-educated jerk. I suspect that he is/was probably somewhere in between.

Not sure if I mentioned this on Texags or not, but I ran into him in December. I was in Fort Worth staying at a hotel and as my family was leaving to go to a restaurant, we ran into this couple in the elevator: An old man in a wheelchair and a younger (50s) woman. I see the guy has a P-51 hat on his head with 351st (or whatever) Fighter Squadron on it. Not even thinking he's famous, I still want to use the opportunity to introduce my 6 year old son to a war hero. So I introduce ourselves on the elevator down and then the woman says, "Do you know who he is?" I say no. She says, "Broke the sound barrier?" And then I said wow, Chuck Yeager.
Turns out the woman is his wife/caregiver. Obviously a second or more wife, because she's much younger. They were in Fort Worth to see a physical therapist.
We had a good chat in the lobby and I got pics and video of my son with Yeager. I've heard he can be an ass, but they were nice to us. He mentioned the story about bailing out over Germany, but we didn't talk about the X-1 flight.

Led an outstanding flight squadron in Germany 1955-56 !

I have posted before jokingly about having breakfast with him at 12AFHQ coffee shop . He was on one side and I was on the other side . He was a major then - later Brig. General .

He was downed in France near Spain in WW2 and escaped capture ! ( as I remember )

Big Jim, good to see you posting.

Yes, that was the story he told us about being shot down, although he left out some of the salacious details (I think he landed in a cathouse) in front of my family.

aalan - glad you are back safely. Tell us about your experience .

I seem to recall reading a book years ago, perhaps Yeager's biography, that Yeager had an equally low opinion of Armstrong.

Chuck Yeagers Twitter is pretty good.

aalan94 said:

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Turns out the woman is his wife/caregiver. Obviously a second or more wife, because she's much younger.

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I haven't heard a lot of good things about his 2nd wife i.e. shutting his children out of his life, controlling everything, etc.

I like the fact that in order to protect the French underground, any allied pilot returned safely with the underground assistance had to have Eisenhower's personal approval to fly more missions over France.

Yeager had a short meeting with Eisenhower , fairly close to D-day, and received the Generals permission to fly over France again.

I have heard this, too. I think it was allowed because the Allies had already captured the area where Yeager had been shot down, so that he couldn't betray any of the French Underground if he was shot down again and captured.

Tihs was before D-day