Charles Elwood Yeager Net Worth, Income, Salary, Earnings, Biography

Chuck Yeager (/jer/; born February 13, 1923) is a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force who is also a record-setting test pilot. In 1947, he was proven to be the first pilot to have flown faster than the speed of sound. As a soldier in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, Yeager started his professional aviation career. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, he entered enlisted pilot training in September 1942 and was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II USAAF equivalent to warrant officer) upon graduation. 

He went on to become a North American P-51 Mustang fighter pilot, flying the North American P-51 Mustang. Following World War II, Yeager went on to become a test pilot for a variety of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered planes. On October 14, 1947, he became the first person to break the sound barrier when he flew at Mach 1 at a height of 45,000 feet in the experimental Bell X-1 aircraft (13,700 m). Despite the fact that Scott Crossfield was the first to fly faster than Mach 2 in 1953, Yeager established a new world speed record of Mach 2.44 only a few months later. 

Yeager went on to command fighter squadrons and wings in Germany and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and he was promoted to brigadier general as a result of the excellent performance ratings of the units under his command. Chesley Yeager’s flying career has spanned more than 60 years and brought him to every corner of the world, including the Soviet Union at the Cold War’s height. In the 1980s, he was a major character in Tom Wolfe’s novel The Right Stuff, as well as in its 1983 film version, in which he appears as bartender Fred, which he also directed.

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