The Right Stuff Clip 3 Chuck Yeager Mach 2

Chuck Yeagers accident was strictly and fully pilot error, but the President of his Accident Board, Col. Guy Townsend, lacked the courage or integrity to call it that way and risk Chucks wrath and the potential for trouble from higher levels: Jackie Cochran and her husband acting through the A.F. Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay. Chucks Autobiography provides a lesson in how vindictive he was to those who refused to support him.

i wrote a book a couple years ago and in it i talk about yeagers BS and i also reprint some of the correspondence i had with slick goodlin. a very nice man, ex military fighter pilot who was flying fighters in ww2 before yeager and also flew combat missions as part of the isreali air force. Slick loved the spitfire, he said that was a real fighter plane. Yeager and this stupid movie made slick look like a jackass, which was not the case at all. Slick was a real pro, a quiet professional.

breaking mach 2! i would love to do that!

the real hero of the X1 program is slick goodlin. He did all the early risky work in it doing a lot of flights before the air force demanded that they have control over the program. Slick got a raw deal in this fantasy movie that while well made, is not accurate at all. Its hollywood bullshit.

Actually, Goodlin wanted $500,000 to break the sound barrier and hazard pay for every second he spend above Mach 0.85. Yeager said he'd do it for his Air Force salary with no bonuses. When Yeager asked Goodlin to show him some tricks about flying the X-1, Goodlin said he'd be happy to if the Air Force would pay him.

how do you know this? Because yeager lied and said it was so? NO the truth and yeager have little in common. Slick never asked for a bonus or hazrd pay. He had an agreement as a test pilot with Bell, Slick did the dangerous dirty work making many flights in the X1, then the air force took over and Bell refused to pay slick. Yeagers story has lots of myth, mostly cause he lied about and bad mouthed everyone from goodlin, crossfield to armstrong. I talked to slick about this before he passed

There was no way to eject from the X1-A. It was not much more than a giant fuel can. Plus, Yeager had no insurance if anything went wrong.

Great movie!

wow, now where to from here ?

I'll second that.