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Photographs and text chronicle World War II ace Charles "Chuck" Yeager's quest to fly supersonically and profile the people and aircraft that made it possible for him to break the sound barrier.
Chuck Yeager loved to fly. His determination led him to be a fighter and test pilot. He flew as often as he could in any craft he could. Eventually, he became the expert on military aircraft. He knew just what each plane could do, and more importantly, what it couldnt. As important as knowing how far he could push a plane, he also knew when to pull back. His pioneering efforts in breaking the sound barrier made modern aviation and space exploration possible.
'The secret to my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.'General Chuck Yeager was the fist man to fly faster than the speed of sound. He was also the World War II fighting ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop-driven P-51 Mustang - Chuck Yeager is The Right Stuff.He first joined the US Air Force at eighteen, fresh from school, and by twenty-two had risen through the ranks on the wings of his heroic exploits dogfighting over the flak-filled skies of Nazi Europe. But it was in 1947 that Yeager achieved worldwide recognition as the first test pilot to smash the sound barrier, flying the super-secret Bell X-1 despite cracked ribs from a riding accident.This was truly the Golden Age of Aviation, the exciting leap into the supersonic era - the daredevil, death-defying days of the true winged heroes. And Chuck Yeager was there every step of the way - fighting and winning.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • At the end of World War II, a band of aces gathered in the Mojave Desert on a Top Secret quest to break the sound barrier–nicknamed "The Demon" by pilots. The true story of what happened in those skies has never been told. Speed. In 1947, it represented the difference between victory and annihilation. After Hiroshima, the ability to deliver a nuclear device to its target faster than one’s enemy became the singular obsession of American war planners. And so, in the earliest days of the Cold War, a highly classified program was conducted on a desolate air base in California’s Mojave Desert. Its aim: to push the envelope of flight to new frontiers. There gathered an extraordinary band of pilots, including Second World War aces Chuck Yeager and George Welch, who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called “the demon.” Shrouding the program in secrecy, the US military reluctantly revealed that the “barrier” had been broken two months later, after the story was leaked to the press. The full truth has never been fully revealed—until now. Chasing the Demon, from decorated fighter pilot and acclaimed aviation historian Dan Hampton, tells, for the first time, the extraordinary true story of mankind’s quest for Mach 1. Here, of course, is twenty-four-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager, who made history flying the futuristic Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. Officially Yeager was the first to achieve supersonic flight, but drawing on new interviews with survivors of the program, including Yeager’s former commander, as well as declassified files, Hampton presents evidence that a fellow American—George Welch, a daring fighter pilot who shot down a remarkable sixteen enemy aircraft during the Pacific War—met the demon first, though he was not favored to wear the laurels, as he was now a civilian test pilot and was not flying the Bell X-1. Chasing the Demon sets the race between Yeager and Welch in the context of aviation history, so that the reader can learn and appreciate their accomplishments as never before.
From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review) Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.
Relates how the young pilot distinguished himself in World War II and subsequently became the first person to break the sonic barrier.
"Young readers will soar as they discover the life of Chuck Yeager, an America hero whose courage changed the world of flight forever."--Back cover.
Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, ran her own luxury cosmetics company, and counted multiple presidents among her personal friends. She was more qualified than any woman in the world to make the leap from atmosphere to orbit. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, twenty-five years Jackie's junior and a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality—an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress. This dual biography of audacious trailblazers Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb presents these fascinating and fearless women in all their glory and grit, using their stories as guides through the shifting social, political, and technical landscape of the time.
