 Chuck Yeager is best known as the first pilot to fly faster than sound in level flight. He passed away this past week. The aviation community felt the loss of this giant, though at 97 no one could say he didn't live life to the fullest. In researching for my latest book, Fighting for Space, I teased out the new-to-me friendship between Jackie Cochran and Chuck Yeager, and in the process uncovered a lot of less familiar pictures of both of these aviation legends. So in honor of Chuck's life, I thought it would be fun to share this facet with you guys. Hello everyone, welcome to The Vintage Space. I'm Amy and this is my little corner of the internet, where we talk about all things mid-century tech and space and aviation that quite frankly interest me, like the so-called golden age of aviation, which is definitely in my wheelhouse, a period that includes both Chuck Yeager and Jackie Cochran. By way of a lightning-fast introduction, Jackie Cochran learned to fly as an adult in 1932, and by the end of the decade was one of the standout pilots in the world, not female pilots or American pilots, pilots, full stop. She led the Women's Air Force Service Pilots in the Second World War, was the first woman to fly faster than sound, was friends with multiple presidents, saved LBJ's life, and earned more accolades and records than any pilot of the 20th century when she died in 1980. She is, in short, the most epic of badasses, and I absolutely love her. Jackie and Coch first met in 1947. They hit it off immediately, sparking a friendship that would last until her death. When Jackie paid a visit to Stewart-Simington soon after in the fall of 1947, she found he wasn't alone in his office. Chuck Yeager was there, too, the handsome 24-year-old pilot with a shock of dark hair whom Jackie knew by reputation. Chuck's flight hadn't been publicly announced yet, but aviation insiders had heard that weeks earlier, on October 14, 1947, Chuck had flown the rocket-powered Bell X-1 Experimental Aircraft faster than sound in level flight. He was the first person in history to break the so-called sound barrier. Jackie wasted no time introducing herself. I'm Jackie Cochran, she said, pumping his hand vigorously. Great job, Captain Yeager. We're all proud of you. Keen to hear more about his flight, she immediately took him to lunch. Chuck was struck by Jackie. He hadn't expected the restaurant owner to bow to her as they walked in, nor had he anticipated that she'd send back every course of their meal before finally going into the kitchen herself to give the chef hell. She peppered Chuck with questions about his X-1 flight, but somehow still managed to work into the conversation the awards she'd won, the committees she'd served on. She bragged that Hap Arnold loved her scrambled eggs and that Tuey Spatz was a drinking buddy, but didn't hide the chip on her shoulder. If I were a man, she told him as they ate, I would have been a war ace like you. I'm a damn good pilot. All these generals would be pounding on my door instead of the other way around. Being a woman, I need all the clout I can get. Chuck doubted that between her career and Floyd's connections, she was lacking in clout. He could hardly even imagine she faced prejudice on account of her sex. Talking to Jackie was like talking to any other pilot, and it was clear she not only knew her planes, she was as crazy about flying as he was. As they parted ways that afternoon, Jackie urged Chuck to keep in touch. She liked him off the bat, and suspected he was both a professional and personal friend worth maintaining. Their friendship did indeed bloom, and it wasn't long before they took on a flying goal together. In 1951, Jackie learned that French aviatorics Jacqueline Arryol had secured a new speed record of 509.245 miles per hour on a 100 kilometer closed course. It was a record Jackie herself had previously held at 469.549 miles per hour. She knew Jacqueline hadn't stolen it on account of her superior flying ability, but because the French woman had been flying a jet. His friendly rivalry gave Jackie a new goal, fly a jet, and take back the record. Getting a jet was easier said than done. In the end, Jackie had to leverage her husband Floyd Odlem's business contacts to secure her the right to fly a Canadian-built F-86 Sabre at Edwards Air Force Base, an arrangement that further allowed Floyd to hire Chuck as her teacher. On the morning of May 12th, Jackie donned a pressure suit. Her tubing woven through the garment pressed on her legs and abdomen, ready to expand an altitude to stop the blood rushing from her head and causing a loss of consciousness. Her blonde hair was tucked neatly inside a white-knit brimmed hat with a red pom-pom on top. The Sabre, fitted with an Aranda engine, sat waiting for her on the tarmac. She checked out the plane, then exchanged her knit cap for a helmet with Jacqueline curving over the straight and bold Cochrane on the front. At long last, she climbed into the cockpit of the Sabre. She rolled down the runway and took off through clear skies with Chuck flying close behind her. Jackie immediately felt that the Aranda engine was more powerful than anything she'd ever flown. She also felt that the cockpit was uncomfortably hot. This cockpit is burning me alive, she called to Chuck over the radio. Closing the distance between them, Chuck could see that someone had inadvertently turned on her defroster. It was heating the cabin in an attempt to dispel non-existent ice. The smell of gasoline soon flooded Jackie's cabin. Mixing with the sweaty heat, she started to feel nauseated. Chuck calmly instructed her on how to shut down the heater and guided her to a landing so technicians could make sure there was nothing else wrong with the Sabre. The checkout revealed nothing. The plane was in perfect order, though it now smelled horrific. Able to stomach the sweaty odor, Jackie sprayed the cockpit liberally with her perfume and climbed right back inside. Chuck shook his head and laughed. He would have preferred the smell of gasoline to perfume, so overpowering that the cockpit smelled like a French whorehouse. Jackie only had one other incident during her familiarization flights with the Sabre. On a high speed run, she and Chuck flew low over a nearby farm. The sound of their jets spooked the chickens, making them all run to one side of the paddock, where more than 130 were smothered to death. The farmers filed a complaint with Edwards Air Force Base and asked that the flight path be changed so no more chickens had to die. Jackie just wondered why dead chickens seemed to keep popping up in her career. On the morning of May 18th, one week after Jackie's 47th birthday, it was finally time to take on the secondary goal. Though Jackie was flying a jet to secure the closed 100 kilometer course, she figured she might as well try to become the first woman to break the sound barrier while she was at it. She took off in the Sabre with Chuck on her wing, ready to go supersonic right alongside her. Out of the corner of her eye, Jackie noticed that the blue sky had turned nearly black. Tearing her eyes from her instruments, Jackie looked out the canopy window to marvel at the sight. It was barely noon, but she could see the stars. For a brief moment, she felt how small she was in her little jet plane and felt as though she were teetering precariously on the horizon close to the gates of heaven. For a moment, she was entranced, but soon realized she wasn't there to stargaze, forcing her focus back into the cockpit. Jackie put the Sabre into an S dive. In an instant, she was losing altitude so fast the needle on her altimeter was a blur, but it was the Mach meter she was focused on. She called the numbers to check over the radio. Mach 0.96, 0.97, 0.98. She was in the turbulent transonic zone. The air passing over her wings was traveling faster than sound, and the air underneath them was not. Air molecules couldn't get out of the way of her plane fast enough as she slammed into them. Her right wing dipped as it dug into this compressed air, then the plane lurched, and the other wing dipped as she fought to keep it level. Then she felt the nose try to tuck under as though the plane wanted to loop over itself, but she held it steady with all the strength in her hands. Mach 0.99, even with a helmet and radio in her ear, she could tell the plane was rattling. Tell me what you're feeling, Chuck called as he dived alongside her. Jackie vaguely registered that she could see the shockwaves rolling over the canopy. She told Chuck it looked almost like a delicate film of water trailing off the window. Then, without warning, the turbulence stopped. The shockwaves disappeared. The rattling was replaced by an unearthly silence. She was through the sound barrier. The turbulent air and shockwaves were behind her, and the noise couldn't catch her. For a fleeting moment, Jackie felt a spiritual connection with something greater than herself. She didn't feel scared, just confident and keenly aware of the plane's every movement. A split second later, the stillness was replaced with the sound of a rattling metal and rushing air as Jackie pulled the saber out of its dive at 18,000 feet and slowed to below the speed of sound. Of course, Jackie also took on the 100-kilometer closed course record while she had the saber at Edwards. While sitting in her plane in the desert, Chuck doffed his shirt. This is Chuck sighting Jackie during that run in the desert. And here is a wonderful shot from Jackie's own collection, a signed photo celebrating the 100-kilometer speed record from Jack Ridley, the man who launched Chuck and the X-1 on his supersonic runs in 1947, another test pilot named Fred Ascani, and Chuck. That year, 1953, Jackie won the Female Harman Trophy and Chuck won the Male Trophy. After that 1953 ceremony, this is Chuck in the foreground while Jackie kisses her husband Floyd behind him. Over the course of their friendship, Chuck instructed Jackie in a number of different planes, including the T-38, which led to two of my all-time favorite pictures of the two of them. Jackie was a woman who refused to compromise her femininity, especially as a woman in a male-dominant field. She regularly made people wait after an air race or a speed run on the tarmac while she touched up her lipstick. She also owned her own luxury cosmetics line, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, so used the pictures of her dismounting a plane after a run for publicity. These two pictures of her and Chuck so perfectly represent both their friendship and Jackie's commitment to her personal style. Here's Jackie touching up her lipstick in a cockpit while Chuck offers some pre-flight information. Or maybe they're talking about something totally different. We'll never know. And I absolutely love this one. Here is Jackie touching up her lipstick in the foreground while Chuck waits on the ladder next to a T-38. His pose and physicality just say so much. Their flying collaborations continued. Here is Chuck and Jackie with the small group having a pre-flight breakfast at Edwards Air Force Base. This is probably mid-ish 1960s. The Northrop emblem on Jackie's shoulder puts this around when she was flying some test flights for the manufacturer. The best part, though, is that look of pure love between Jackie and Chuck. On the morning of May 11th, 1964, Jackie sat in the cockpit of the F-104G Super Starfighter 35,000 feet in the air. The Lockheed-built, cutting-edge supersonic fighter plane had never been flown by a woman. So Jackie had gotten herself hired as a Lockheed test pilot so she could use it to break her own 15 to 25 kilometer straight speed course. She was determined to protect her status as the fastest woman on earth as long as she could. Chuck Yeager had reprised his role as her teacher, much to the chagrin of the young male pilots fresh from the military. At 58, they grumbled she was a little more than an old dame trying to do their jobs. But she'd won them over with picnics of home-cooked fried chicken. And once she got in the air, they were all forced to admit that she could outfly every one of them. From her perch high above the ground, Jackie stared down the barrel of an invisible rectangular tunnel 300 feet tall, a quarter of a mile wide, and 20 miles long, a bounding box set by radar and ground instruments monitoring her speed and position. Her goal was to fly through that box without touching a single invisible wall. If she did, her speed record would be invalidated. It was a kind of precision flying some of the young men couldn't do. Her decades of pushing the limits of speed in the air gave her the experience she needed to respond to things happening in fractions of seconds. Eyes glued to her instruments, she followed the precise direction of the space positioning officer watching from the ground, guiding her through the corridor. She flew straight, level, and fast through that tunnel on two subsequent passes. Below her on the ground, two sonic booms shook the earth. And speaking of Northrop, here's Chuck and Jackie with another legend, Jack Northrop, sometime in the late 1960s. Chuck ended up as something between a best friend and adopted son to Jackie and Floyd. Here's Floyd in the foreground with Chuck behind him in the pool at the Cochrane Odlem Ranch. When Jackie retired from the Air Force in the early 1970s, she'd been a reserve pilot since serving as head of the Wasps in World War II. Chuck was part of the celebrations. Unfortunately, these images are poor quality because I took them on my phone. They're not clean scans. Here is Chuck congratulating Jackie on her retirement. And here's another shot of the group at Jackie's Air Force Retirement Party. That's Chuck, second from the left, Floyd with the cane, and Jackie next to him in her uniform. When Floyd died in 1976, he'd named Jackie and Chuck Yeager co-executors of his estate. As he helped Jackie sort through all of Floyd's papers and financial records, Chuck found an envelope sealed with a quarter set in wax. It was the letter that Jackie had given Floyd before their marriage 40 years earlier, the one she'd told him contained the true story of her past life as Bessie Pittman. Do you want to open this? Chuck asked. No, Jackie replied. Is there any reason to keep this letter around? Jackie didn't say anything. So Chuck burned the still sealed letter. There's some evidence that Jackie and Chuck had a falling out after Floyd's death, but I haven't been able to confirm it. Chuck apparently thought he stood to inherit a fair amount of money after Floyd's death. Floyd had been one of the 10 richest men in the country at one point, but by the time he died, there wasn't much money left. Floyd himself had lost a fair bit of money in bad business deals, and his son, Bruce, from his first marriage, was draining his father's already dwindling resources with bad business deals of his own. Floyd and Jackie had had to sell their Manhattan apartment and move into their ranch in Indio full-time, but sold the ranch eventually as well. Jackie ended up moving into a small apartment by the end of her life, so there wasn't much left to distribute as an inheritance. Whether or not the two pilots fought at the end of Jackie's life, Chuck did include her in his memoirs, and last year tweeted about her as a good friend on the anniversary of one of her flight records. I did email asking about an interview for Fighting for Space, but never her back, and to be fair, he was 95 at the time, and I completely understand getting to a point where you just don't want to keep living in the past. I never got to meet Chuck Yeager, but a few years ago I did buy an odd graph from his website. It has a spot of honor in my home. So that's all. I wrote this little tribute to Chuck on my blog, but wanted to share it on YouTube as well, so thank you so much for stopping by to check it out. If you want more on Jackie, Fighting for Space is available, however you like to consume books, as is my first book, which also discusses Chuck Yeager and the quest to break the sound barrier, Breaking the Chains of Gravity. I have links for both of those books in the description below. A very special shout out to all of my Patreon backers and YouTube members. You guys truly make these videos possible, so thank you so much for your ongoing support. If you would like to help keep the vintage space up and running and also get access to my Space Center Discord, I've got the links you need in the description, and of course, links to connect across social media as well. Thank you guys so much for hanging out with me for a bit today, and I'll see you next time.