Name: Chuck Yeager Says Sex Is Still Better Breaking The Sound Barrier | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-10-13T22:00:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Yeager Says Sex Is Still Better Breaking The Sound Barrier | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Yeager Says Sex Is Still Better Breaking The Sound Barrier | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-13. Transcript available.

My next guest was one of the pioneers of America's race to space on October 14th,
1947.
He became the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound,
breaking the barrier in the experimental X-1 aircraft.
He was hailed as a hero and soon became America's most respected test pilot
and eventually a brigadier general in the Air Force.
As Tom Wolfe explains in his book entitled The Right Stuff,
he was the role model for every pilot in America.
Now, to help illustrate what you will be seeing next,
we have an animated simulation of General Yeager's arrival onto the set
and his positioning in the chair next to my desk.
If we can see that footage now, I think you'll get an idea of what's ahead.
There, that would be me.
This is a simulation, ladies and gentlemen.
I've just introduced Chuck Yeager. There he is.
And he...
Fine.
My thanks to the NBC News Department for that clip.
And now, please welcome...
I believe this is our first brigadier general ever on this show, Chuck Yeager.
I had trouble keeping her out of my eyes when I had animation, didn't I?
Oh, yes.
This is...
Even this...
Now, you broke the record in...
Or broke the speed of sound in 1947.
And even today, this is a fascinating story.
I know it's a long story, but briefly, how were you selected for the job?
Well, I was a fighter pilot in World War II in Mustangs.
I came back in 1945 in the war and was assigned to right field as a maintenance
officer in the fighter test section.
And I went through the test pilot school in 1946, and then I was selected for
the X-1 program in the summer of 1947 after the bail test pilots had gotten
into a hassle on bonus money.
And probably because of my maintenance background and the air shows I used to
put on.
Now, you mentioned money.
What was the fee being paid to break the speed of sound here?
Well, mostly, the bail test pilots had two phases.
First, phase one, he took the airplane to .8 Mach number and 40,000 feet.
That was worth about 50,000.
And then to take it to 1.1 was worth about 150,000 bucks.
But he wanted it paid over a five-year period.
He couldn't blame the guy.
Yeah.
Now, you didn't get the same kind of deal, though, did you?
No.
No.
No, we were Air Force test pilots, and we did it because we wanted to and liked
to, and I think I was paid about $2.45 a month, which was okay.
Now, this is hard to imagine because it's old hat now.
What described the aircraft?
Was it just a rocket with wings?
Yeah, the bail X-1 you saw.
Incidentally, what you saw on the film is the only time that the X-1 made a
ground takeoff.
All the other times, it was dropped from a B-29 mothership, and the reason was
we only had two and a half minutes of power with the rocket engine under full
power.
So they took us up to around 12,000 feet, and you got on a ladder and came into
the X-1 and got hooked up, and they locked the door on.
And then they took you up to 25,000 feet and dove the B-29 up above 240
indicated and dropped you out.
Then you ignited your rockets and went on out to the Mach numbers that you were
aiming for that day.
Mach, of course, being the sound barrier.
Mach 1 is the speed of sound.
Named for whom?
Dr. Mach, an Austrian.
What are you trying to do?
Test me?
I just...
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mach was an Austrian who discovered that the speed of sound changes with
altitude.
Here at sea level, it's around 760 miles an hour.
At 36,000 feet, it's around 660.
Now, you were a kid at the time, 24 years old.
Well, it's a matter of opinion.
Well, chronologically speaking.
Now, it was a real mysterious barrier, wasn't it?
We had never had an airplane into the region of the speed of sound.
Where I, as a fighter pilot in World War II fighting Germans, any time you got
in a dogfight at 36 or 38,000 feet, you'd end up in a dive after a guy.
And you would get our Mustangs up to about 80% of the speed of sound.
The shock waves would form on them, and you run into buffeting and lose control
of your airplane.
And the X-1 was really designed in 1943 and built in 1944 to find out what was
causing all of this.
And we'd never had an airplane in the region of the speed of sound, but the X-1
was built strong enough and had rocket thrust.
And the secret behind the X-1 was that it was designed with a flying tail.
And it was classified almost for a year after we did it.
And the reason was we didn't want anyone to know how we'd gotten the airplane
up above Mach 1.
And to tell you, Dave, how it really pays off, during the Korean War, we were
shooting down about 12 MiGs for every F-86 we lost.
And later on, a guy defected with a MiG-15, and I went over and tested the
airplane, and it had a fixed horizontal stabilizer, whereas the F-86 had a
flying tail.
We had found that out with the X-1.
Yeah.
That pays off.
I don't know what the flying tail is, but it's a great story.
Quite a tail, incidentally.
Well, you want to tell them?
That would probably take blueprints and all sorts of things to explain a flying
tail.
No, the old airplanes had a fixed horizontal stabilizer with an elevator on it.
That's the wing in the back, right?
That's right.
Yeah, the tail in the back.
Tail in the back.
And had an elevator on it.
Well, with the X-1, we changed the angle of incidence of the whole tail plane.
I see.
That's a flying tail.
So that was part of the reason you were successful.
Now, some folks ahead of you were not quite so successful, and we'll continue
talking with Brigadier General Chuck Yeager about that, right?
Brigadier General Chuck Yeager is here, the man who broke the speed of sound.
The others attempted before you, and there were not some bad results, weren't
there?
Well, basically, David, the British and the DH-108, the Havilland Swala, were
doing some work in the region of about 90% of the speed of sound,
and they busted up a couple airplanes, lost a couple pilots.
Coming apart, yeah.
Because they did all of their work in vertical dies, because they didn't have
the thrust that we had in the X-1.
Most of the work that I did in the X-1 was in a slight climb, somewhere around
40,000, 45,000 feet.
Is the story true about you breaking the sound barrier with broken ribs?
Yeah.
Now, explain that, and why would they let that take place?
Well, basically, when we were at Miroc Air Base back in 1947, we were pretty
well on our own, just myself, Bob Hoover, and Jack Ridley, a team that was
flying the X-1, of course, the B-29 crew, too.
And on a Sunday night, I took my wife out to Poncho's, which was a local
watering hole near Miroc Air Base, and we were boozing it up.
And so we went riding on horses later that night, and I was out racing with my
wife, and somebody closed the gate that we had come out of.
And I saw it, laid my horse over, and it didn't respond like airplanes do, and
so I hit the fence and flipped and broke a couple ribs, and then on Tuesday, I
was to fly the X-1.
But it really was no problem.
Once I got in the X-1, they got the door locked on the side.
Then you're okay, but...
You had to use a broom handle or something to wedge yourself in?
Well, the door was hard to close, and my ribs were busted on the right, and old
Jack Ridley gave me a broom handle about that long to give me a mechanical
advantage, and I could do it with my left arm.
But that's the way it goes.
So you test pilots lead a pretty rigorous training program for a big...
Now, when you finally did it, was there a sensation that you perceived
different?
Nah, never replaced X.
I'm not sure that was the question, wasn't it?
No, but...
What's going wrong here?
When you're doing...
So that was the purpose of the experiment, huh?
When you're doing that sort of thing, you know, you're so intense.
It was so intense in watching what's going on that you don't give any thought
to the outcome.
And basically, when we got the airplane up above Mach 1, it was a feeling of
achievement, sure, but no big deal.
Did it handle any differently?
Oh, yeah, sure.
Was there any sort of...
See, we ran into buffeting at about 88% of the speed of sound.
Then we lost the ability to control the airplane at about 9, 3, and that's
where...
Well, that's fun.
Good heavens.
That's where we took a hard look at the horizontal stabilizer and then used it
as a flying tail, and we controlled it on through Mach 1, and then as the
airplane went supersonic, and we got it supersonic flow over the whole airplane,
all the buffeting smoothed out, and we got our elevators back then.
Tom Wolfe in the book, The Right Stuff, says that you and your voice have been
the pattern and the speech mannerisms for commercial and military air pilots in
the United States.
Is that...
Well, yeah, I came out of West Virginia, and I did have quite a draw for a long
time, but I learned to speak differently, obviously.
You can tell.
But do you believe that commercial pilots today are talking like you talk?
Well, I don't know.
It's a matter of opinion, so...
I've noticed it when people get on the PA and start talking.
You mean they have an emergency every time you get on?
No, no, not an emergency, but just, you know, pointing out things and...
Yeah, well, it's calming, you know.
It is.
It's very soothing to know that.
And to their own selves, too.
You've had, as a test pilot, you must have had some close calls.
Is there any that come to mind at this point?
Well, yeah, you get...
Sure, when you stick your neck out, you get bit every once in a while.
I got shot down in World War II.
I lost a tail off a P-39 in training, and then in the NF-104, I ended up
getting burned in a pressure suit when I ended up about 108,000 feet and got in
a flat spin and ejected out, so...
Now, you're so casual about describing that that I think that's probably not a
bad idea, you know, the way you say that.
But you said 108,000 feet.
Well, you know, we had a rocket-boosted 104 that, when I was running the
astronaut school, we were training the guys, we were getting them above, well,
giving them about 70 seconds of zero-G in a full-pressure suit with reaction
control, sidearm control, attitude controllers, like was on the Mercury, Gemini,
and capsule, and the shuttle.
I'm gone again.
I don't know what that is.
Attitude controllers in space.
Yeah.
And we could give them that experience cheaply.
And I was doing the test work on the airplane.
I was a commandant of the school and ended up trying to establish where we
would run into problems, and then we got bit in a hurry.
And when I ejected in a flat spin, then the seat hit me in the damn face, and I
got on the bar.
You ruin your whole day.
Now, that wasn't...
It's a thrill to meet you, General.
Thank you very much for your time.
Chuck Yeager, ladies and gentlemen.
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Thank you very much.
Hi there.
We're just about finished.
First of all, I want to thank the studio audience.
You folks were wonderful, as always.
Also, my thanks to Brother Theodore.