The Right Stuff Indeed: America Lost One Of Its True Greats With The Passing Of Chuck Yeager

 The New York Post Editorial Board notes the passing of Chuck Yeager.

America just lost one of its greats: On Monday, Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, one of the fiercest test pilots to have ever graced the skies, died at 97.

His wife, Victoria, announced his death via Twitter, saying that “an incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.”

Indeed, he had (as Tom Wolfe told the world in his classic book “The Right Stuff”).

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

USA lost one of its true greats with passing of Chuck Yeager (nypost.com)

You can also visit Chuck Yeager’s website via the below link:

Yeager: Greatest military pilot of all time | CHUCKYEAGER.ORG

Note: The above photo is of Chuck Yeager with actor Sam Shepard, who portrayed Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff.  The film was based on Tom Wolfe's great book.

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books: No 7 - 'The Right Stuff' By Tom Wolfe (1979)

Robert McCrum at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a series on the 100 best nonfiction books and selected Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff as number seven.

It was the right choice.

Newspapers and magazines often provide an indispensable patronage for writers. The Right Stuff is one of several great books in this list that derive from the interaction of high journalism and a higher literary ambition. In 1972, Rolling Stone commissioned its star reporter to cover the launch of Nasa’s final Apollo moonshot, one of many moments that marked the end of the 60s.

Tom Wolfe responded with what he later described as just “some ordinary curiosity”. What was it, he wondered, that would make a man “willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?”

Wolfe decided, he says rather disingenuously, “on the simplest approach possible. I would ask a few astronauts and find out. So I asked a few in December of 1972 when they gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch the last mission to the moon, Apollo 17.”

The upshot was a four-part piece entitled “Post-Orbital Remorse”, which appeared in Rolling Stone during 1973. There was, however, an afterlife to Wolfe’s “ordinary curiosity”. He had stumbled on a “psychological mystery” – the motivation of the men involved, and his fascination with his own response. “I discovered quickly enough,” he wrote later, “that none of them, no matter how talkative otherwise, was about to answer the question, or even linger for more than a few seconds on the subject at the heart of it, which is to say, courage.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/14/100-best-nonfiction-no-7-right-stuff-tom-wolfe

Chuck Yeager Breaks Sound Barrier Again, 65 years After Historic Flight

The New York Daily News offers an interesting piece on Chuck Yeager, a genuine American hero, who once again broke the sound barrier.

Sixty-five years after becoming the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager is still making noise.

The 89-year-old Yeager, who was featured in the movie "The Right Stuff," flew in the back seat Sunday of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California's Mojave Desert — the same area where he first achieved the feat in 1947 while flying an experimental rocket plane.

The F-15 carrying Yeager took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas and broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. Sunday, exactly 65 years to the minute the then-Air Force test pilot made history.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chuck-yeager-breaks-sound-barrier-article-1.1183654

Below is a Defense Department photo of General Yeager and Air Force Capt David Vincent's aircraft as it taxis in under water jets after landing on Nellis Air Force Base.

And below is an older photo of General Yeager:

Retired General Chuck Yeager Still Gruff, Colorful And Quotable At 88

Bill Glauber at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel wrote an interesting piece about retired Air Force General Chuck Yeager.

At 88, Chuck Yeager still has the right stuff.

He flies.

He hunts.

He goes fishing.

And he spins tales of an extraordinary aviation career.

"I tell it the way I remember it - that's not necessarily the way it happened," Yeager said Wednesday, speaking to an overflow audience settled into a museum hangar at the EAA AirVenture event.

The greatest test pilot of his era, perhaps the greatest of all time, was the first man to fly through the sound barrier. His exploits were long-ago celebrated in the acclaimed Tom Wolfe book "The Right Stuff," later brought to the screen.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/126285828.html