Episode 1316
Chuck Yeager
Wed, 2020-Dec-09 01:04 UTC
Length - 2:46
Direct Link
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 499,071 views on Tuesday, 8 December 2020 our article of the day is Chuck Yeager.
Charles Elwood Yeager ( YAY-gər, February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.
Yeager's career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army Air Forces in 1941. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942, he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II USAAF equivalent to warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft (the half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown).
After the war, Yeager became a test pilot and flew many types of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered aircraft for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. As such, he became the first human to officially break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m), for which he won both the Collier and Mackay trophies in 1948. He then went on to break several other speed and altitude records in the following years.
Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In recognition of the outstanding performance ratings of those units, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1969, retiring on March 1, 1975. Yeager's three-war active-duty flying career spanned more than 30 years and took him to many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. Throughout his life, he flew more than 360 different types of aircraft.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:04 UTC on Wednesday, 9 December 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Chuck Yeager on Wikipedia.
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This has been Joanna Standard. Thank you for listening to popular Wiki of the Day.
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