Chuck Yeager reenacts historic flight
October 16, 2012 ·
On October 14, 1947, Gen. Chuck Yeager became the first man to sound barrier. On Sunday, the general reenacted his historic flight to commemorate its 65th anniversary.
General Yeager strapped into an F-15 that took off from Nellis
Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday morning. The reenactment took place at the
precise time and location as his 1947 flight. Yeager says that Sunday’s event
stirred up memories of his original flight.
“I’ve been flying airplanes at supersonic speeds ever since
then but I haven’t been up in about the last couple years because I’ve retired.
So, they gave me an F-15 and I went from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas and I flew down to Edwards and made a sonic boom and
buzzed the runway.
"And then I went up in
the High Sierras where I used to backpack and fish for golden trout and look
the country over. It was really sort of reminiscing and I was just damn lucky
the Air Force would let me do something like that.”
Yeager was quick to point out how far technology has come
since his initial record breaking flight.
“Basically, all fighters today smoke out beyond the speed
of sound. It’s part of duty. Our
technology has given us the capability of getting out to even three times the
speed of sound. That’s just the way of life.”
General Yeager was at a loss to describe the feeling of
flying at those high speeds.
“There’s really no
sense of cockpit around you. You don’t have
a hell of a lot of feeling because everything around you is going along with
you.”
Originally from Hamlin, West Virginia in Lincoln County, Yeager now resides in California. The general is 89 years old.