Name: Chuck Yeager on Letterman, September 10, 1982
Uploaded: 2020-12-08T17:13:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Yeager on Letterman, September 10, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Chuck Yeager on Letterman, September 10, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-08. Transcript available.

thank you very much 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 x1 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 wolf 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 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 uh my thanks to the nbc news department for
that clip and now please
welcome i believe this is our first brigadier general ever on the show chuck yeager
i had trouble keeping her out of my eyes on that animation didn't it oh yes uh
this is even this
you broke the record in there broke the speed of sound in 1947 and even today
this is a fascinating
story uh i know it's a long story but briefly how were you selected for the job
well i was a fighter
pilot 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 47 after the bail test
pilots had gotten into a
hassle on bonus money in there and probably because of my maintenance
background and 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 a fake two phases first phase one he took
the airplane to
point eight mock number and forty thousand feet that was worth about fifty
thousand and then the
take it to one point one was worth about a hundred fifty thousand bucks but he
wanted to paid over
five year period he couldn't blame the guy yeah now what did you didn't get the
same kind of
deal though did you no no no i we we were air force test pilots and uh we
worked did it because we
wanted to and like to and i think i was paid about 245 a month which was okay
uh now this is uh it's hard
to imagine because it's it's old hat now what described the aircraft was it
just a rocket with
wings yeah the bell 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 twelve thousand feet 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 twenty five thousand feet and
dove the b-29 up above
240 indicated drop you out then you ignited your rockets and and went on out to
the mock numbers
that you were aiming for that day mark of course being being on mark one is a
speed of sound named
for whom a doctor mark an austrian wait randy test me back and i just yeah dr
mark is an austrian
who discovered that the speed of sound changes with altitude here at sea level
is around seven or sixty
miles an hour at thirty six thousand feet it's around six sixty now you were
you were a kid at the time
twenty four years old well it's a matter of opinion uh well chronologically
speaking now what uh it was
a real mysterious barrier wasn't it we had never had an airplane into the
region the speed of sound and
and where i as a fighter pilot where we're two fighting germans anytime you got
in a dog fight
say at thirty six or thirty eight thousand feet you'd end up in a dive after a
guy and you would get our
mustangs up to about eighty percent of the speed of sound the shock waves would
form on them and you
run into buffeting and lose control your airplane and the x1 was really
designed in 1943 and built
in 44 to find out what was causing all of this and we'd never had an airplane
in the region the speed
of sound but the x1 was built strong enough and had rocket thrust and the
secret behind the x1 was that
it 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 know want anyone to know how we'd gotten the airplane up
above mach one 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 fixed horizontal stabilizer whereas the f-86 had a flying tail we
found that out with the
x1 it pays off i don't know what the flying tail is but it's a great story
quite a tail incidentally
uh the i well we you want to tell them what that would probably take blueprints
and all sorts of
things to explain a flying tail now the old airplanes had a fixed horizontal
stabilizer with an elevator
on 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 x1 we changed the angle of incidence of the whole tail plane i
see that's a flying
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
uh brigadier general chuck yeager is here the man who broke the speed of sound
the others attempted before you and uh... there were not some bad results weren't
there
well basically uh... david uh... the british and the dh-108 that i have a
swallow
were doing some work in the region of about ninety percent of the speed of
sound and
they uh... busted up a couple airplanes lost a couple of pilots
coming apart yeah because they did all of their work in the 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 forty forty five thousand feet but is there the story true
about you breaking the sound barrier with broken
ribs yeah now explain that and and why would they let that take place uh...
well
basically when we were at mirrock airbase 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 ponchos which was a local water right
watering hole near mirrock airbase 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'd 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 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 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 you test pilots
lead a pretty rigorous training program for a big uh... now where when you
finally did it was there a
sensation that you perceive different that never replace sex
when you're doing so that was the purpose of the experiment huh when you're
doing that sort of
thing right it you know you're so intense in in watching what's going on that
you don't give any
thought to the outcome and uh... basically when we got the airplane up above
mach 1 it was a
a feeling of achievement sure but no big deal did it handle any differently oh
yeah sure see we ran
into buffeting at about eighty eight percent of the speed of sound then we lost
the ability to control
the airplane at about nine three and that's where we took a hard look at at the
horizontal stabilizer
and then used it as a flying tail and we control it on to mach 1 and then as
the airplane was supersonic
and we've got it supersonic flow with the whole airplane all the buffeting
smoothed out and we got our
elevators back then um any uh tom wolf in the book uh... the right stuff says
that you and your voice
have uh... been the pattern and the uh... speech uh... mannerisms for
commercial and military air
pilots in the united states is that well i yeah i came out of west virginia and
i did have quite a draw
for a long time without i learned to speak differently obviously you can tell
but do you believe but do you
believe that commercial pilots today are talking like you talk why it's i don't
know matter of opinions
it's i've noticed it when people get on the uh... pa and start when they have
an emergency every time
no no no not an emergency but just you know pointing out things and uh... yeah
yeah well
it's coming it is it's very soothing to know into their own self uh... uh...
you've had as a test
pilot you must have had some close calls are any that come to mind at this
point well yeah you get
sure when you stick your neck out to get better once in a while i got shot down
in world war ii
i lost the tail off of the p-39 in training and then in nf-104 i ended up
getting burned in a
pressure suit when i added 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 probably not a
bad idea you know the
way you say that but you you said a hundred eight thousand yeah 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 just attitude controllers in space and uh we could give them that
experience cheaply and i
was doing the test work on the airplane i was coming on the school and uh ended
up trying to establish
where we would run into problems and then we got bit in a hurry and uh and when
i ejected in a flat spin
then the seat hit me in the damn face and i got on the bar it ruined your whole
day now that wasn't
uh it's a thrill to meet you uh general thank you very much for your time chuck
yeager ladies and
gentlemen once again ladies and gentlemen here's marshall crenshaw