In early 1947, the British government gave up on trying to break the sound barrier as their plane The Swallow self destructed at .94 mach.  At the same time, the Americans stepped in to take up the project.   At the time, it was widely believed that there was a "Wall of Air" that stopped you from approaching the speed of sound due to the experiments done at the time in which planes that neared Mach 1 were buffeted violently by shock waves.  This was called "Compressability".

    The americans responded to this by making a bullet shaped airplane, called the Bell X-1. At the time, a pilot named Slick Goodlin was flying the plane, and had already taken it to Mach .8.  At this moment, Slick Goodlin tried to renegotiate his contract, going from a few hundred dollars a week, to close to $150,000.  All work on the project stopped, as Slick and the military negotiated over this.  Slick was worried that he was being underpaid for such a dangerous mission.  To solve the problem, Chuck Yeager was brought in and placed at the head of this mission.

    He pushed the plane up to .8 mach, then to 8.5, then to .9.  The date to reach Mach 1 was set to be October 14, 1947.  Not known to the military, two nights before, Yeager was involved in an accident in which he broke two ribs on his right side.  When he got into the plane, he realized that he would not be able to close the door.  An on sight engineer named Ridley, who placed a broom handle on the hatch door, to give him the leverage to allow him to close it.

    So far only .94 mach had been achieved.  At this point, the tail was receiving heavy shock waves that threatened to tear it off.  This was rectified with a mobile tail, that allowed the shock to be distributed, and the tail would not be torn off. This modification was done by Jack Ridley.  With this done, Yeager was ready for flight.

    Yeager accelerated his flight, igniting the engines on the X-1 until it achieved .965 mach.  This needle on the airspeed gauge only went up to mach 1, which at the time was a gesture of confidence that it could be made.  With his own sense of confidence, Yeager jammed the last engine on, and proceeded to mach 1. The first man made sonic boom had been created.  When Yeager hit Mach 1, he found that all the disturbance that he was experiencing on the acceleration was no longer affecting the vehicle. Once past the wall, the plane flew smoothly.

    When the sonic boom was heard on the ground, the Engineers and piloting staff feared the worst, mistaking it for an explosion. A few seconds later, Yeager's voice crackled over the radio, informing them of what happened.  Yeager flew several dozen more flights before the information had became public. The X-1 is now in the Smithsonian, hanging up next to the first plane flown by the Wright Brothers.

Chuck Yeager: (1923 - )

    He was born 1923 in Myra, West Virginia.  After High School, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941.  He hated flying, after her threw up on his first flight, but applied to be a "Flying Sergeant" anyway. His excellent reflexes and memory allowed him to impress his flight instructors during training.

    He was first assigned to the 363rd Fighter Squadron, of the 357th Fighter Group.  He moved up to a P-39 squadron at Tonopah, Nevada.  He passed through the weeding out process, and his squadron moved to California.  In California, they trained for escorting missions, he tested new props for the P-39, and also had the chance to fly the new and larger P-47s.  Here he met his wife, Glennis. 

    He then moved to Casper, Wyoming.  While there, the engine in his P-39 exploded, and almost killed him.  Although he bailed and survived, he was hospitalized with a fractured spine.

    They joined the war in Europe in the winter of 1943-44.  They became the first P-51 equipped unit in the Eighth Air. He shot down his first enemy on his first mission.  On March 5th, he was shot down over Occupied France.  A French Resistance leader helped him escape out of France.  He made his way to France, was bartered for, and became the first shot down pilot of his group to return.

    The U.S. Military forbade him to return to action, but he appealed it all the way to General Eisenhower and eventually was placed back in Active Duty.  He married Glennis in February of 1945.

    He continued to be a Air Force Officer and Test Pilot.  In 1954, he was assigned to command of the 417th Squadron. He then served as commander of the 1st squadron in 1957.

    He flew the NF-104, which was a plane believed to be able to go to an altitude of 120,000 feet.  At 104,000 he lost control of the plane, and was forced to bail, getting caught in the spent rocket fuel, and burning his face.  He went to Vietnam as commander of the 405th Fighter Wing in 1966, flew 127 combat missions, and rose to the rank of Brigadier General.

    In 1971 he became Vice Commander of the 17th Air Force at Ramstein Air Base.  At his time of retirement in 1975, he had clocked more than 10,000 hours in more than 330 type of air planes.