YEAGER

This fantastic book, well - illustrated with photographs, is an autobiography by a famous American fighter Ace and test pilot : Charles Elwood " Chuck " Yeager.

Aviation book
’ The secret to my success
is that I always managed to live
to fly another day. ’
General ’ Chuck ’ Yeager, the greatest test pilot of them all… the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound… the Second World War fighting Ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop driven P - 51 Mustang... the hero who defined a certain quality that all the hot - shot flyboys of the post - war era aimed to achieve... ’ Chuck ’ Yeager is the right stuff.
( ... ) The story is all here, in Yeager's own words, and in wonderful reminiscences from his wife, Glennis, and those friends and colleagues who have known him best. Glennis's contributions to the book, as indeed to Yeager's life, are especially important for what they tel us about the day - to - day strain of living with a man who daily braved death in the skies... about the special kind of heroism it takes for a young woman to raise a family of four in the bleak Mojave desert in primitive makeshift lodgings.

Charles Elwood ’ Chuck ’ Yeager ( February 13th, 1923 ) was born to farming parents Susie Mae ( Sizemore ) and Albert Hal Yeager in Myra ( West Virginia, United States ). He graduated from high school in Hamlin ( West Virginia ) in June 1941. His first experience with the military was as a teen at the Citizens Military Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis ( Indiana ), during the Summers of 1939 and 1940.
’ Chuck ’ Yeager enlisted as a private in the United States Army Air Forces ( U.S.A.A.F. ) on September 12th, 1941, and became an Aircraft Mechanic at George Air Force Base, Victorville ( California ). At enlistment, he was not eligible for flight training because of his age and educational background, but the entry of the United States into the Second World War less than three months later prompted the U.S.A.A.F. to alter its recruiting standards. Having unusually sharp vision ( a visual acuity rated 20 / 10 ), which once enabled him to shoot a deer at 600 yards ( 550 metres ), ’ Chuck ’ Yeager displayed natural talent as a pilot and was accepted for flight training.
He received his wings and a promotion to Flight Officer at Luke Field ( Arizona ) where he graduated from Class 43C on March 10th, 1943. Assigned to the 357th Fighter Group at Tonopah ( Nevada ), he initially trained as a fighter pilot, flying Bell P - 39 Airacobras, and shipped overseas with the Group on November 23rd, 1943. Stationed in the United Kingdom at R.A.F. Leiston ( Suffolk, England ), ’ Chuck ’ Yeager flew P - 51 Mustangs in combat with the 363rd Fighter Squadron.
He had gained one victory before he was shot down over France in his first aircraft on March 5th, 1944, during his eighth mission. He escaped to Spain on March 30th with the help of the Maquis ( French Resistance ) and returned to United Kingdom on May 15th, 1944. Despite a regulation prohibiting ’ evaders ’ from flying over enemy territory again, ’ Chuck ’ Yeager was reinstated to flying combat.
On October 12th, 1944, he became the first pilot in his group to make ’ Ace in a day ’, downing five enemy aircraft in a single mission. He finished the war with 11 confirmed kills ( including a Messerschmitt Me 262 ), 1 shared and 3 damaged. ’ Chuck ’ Yeager, promoted to Captain, flew his 61st and final mission on January 15th, 1945, and returned to the United States in early February. He remained in the Air Force after the war, becoming a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field ( now Edwards Air Force Base, California ).
After Bell Aircraft test pilot Chalmers ’ Slick ’ Goodlin ( 1923 - 2005 ) demanded 150,000 ( 1.6 million in 2015 ) dollars to break the sound barrier, the U.S.A.A.F. selected ’ Chuck ’ Yeager to fly the rocket - powered Bell XS - 1 in a NACA program to research high - speed flight. He broke the sound barrier on October 14th, 1947, flying the X - 1 ’ Glamorous Glennis ’ at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of 45,000 ft ( 13,700 m ) over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. The success of the mission was not announced to the public until June 1948. ’ Chuck ’ Yeager was awarded the Mackay Trophy and the Collier Trophy in 1948 for his mach - transcending flight, and the Harmon International Trophy in 1954. The X - 1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
’ Chuck ’ Yeager went on to break many other speed and altitude records. He then assumed various military commands and rose to the rank of Brigadier General.
On March 1st, 1975, following assignments in Germany and Pakistan, ’ Chuck ’ Yeager retired from the Air Force at Norton Air Force Base ( California ) after serving over 33 years on active duty, although he continued to occasionally fly for the U.S.A.F. and N.A.S.A. as a consulting test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base.
He made a cameo appearance in the movie The Right Stuff ( 1983 ). His own role in the movie was played by Sam Shepard ( 1943 - 2017 ).
’ Chuck ’ Yeager is fully retired from military test flying, after having maintained that status for three decades after his official retirement from the Air Force.
( sources : Wikipedia, Ciel de Gloire )
Leo Herbert Janos ( February 3rd, 1933 - January 4th, 2008 ) grew up in the Bronx, New York City ( New York, United States ). He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Park College in Parkville ( Missouri ), where he met his wife. They married in 1955.
He served two years in the Army and later joined the Peace Corps as a public affairs officer.
Leo H. Janos ( pronounced Janice ) caught President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attention ( 1908 - 1973 ) soon after he went to work for the U.S. Information Agency in 1965 as an editor for Ameryka magazine, a cultural exchange publication aimed at readers in the Soviet bloc. Leo H. Janos proposed an interview with the President and wrote a mock exchange with questions and suggested answers and submitted it to Billy Don ’ Bill ’ Moyers ( 1934 ), then Johnson’s press secretary :

Moyers liked it so much he told Janos to run it, but he didn’t alert Johnson, Leo H. Janos told an interviewer in 2004. Johnson just woke up one day in the center of glowing praise about his reaching out directly to Soviet citizens with warmth and understanding, Leo H. Janos told his college alumni magazine.

It made the front page of the New York Times and won him a glowing editorial, rare in those troubled days. It was 1966, when Lyndon B. Johnson was facing criticism for his handling of the Vietnam War as well as his domestic policies. When the President found out Leo H. Janos had written the piece, he hired him as a speechwriter, a post he held until 1968.
For the next 10 years Leo H. Janos was a correspondent for Time magazine, first in the Washington bureau and then in Houston, where he covered N.A.S.A. and the Apollo space missions. He moved to Los Angeles ( California ) in 1973 and covered entertainment for Time. He left Time in the late 1970's and wrote profiles and other nonfiction pieces for magazines that included Atlantic Monthly, Cosmopolitan, Smithsonian and People.
He published his first book in 1983, recounting the true story of a drug - addled young man’s murder of his mother and grandmother in Crime of Passion. Before the Yeager book was published, it was serialized in Playboy magazine, which led to Leo H. Janos’ next contract, a seven - figure deal with Bantam to help Hugh Hefner write his autobiography. He spent three years interviewing the Playboy founder and sifting through his diaries and files, but the publisher finally gave up on the collaboration after many deadlines passed :

I just ran out of gas, Leo H. Janos told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. It really wasn’t that his life wasn’t fascinating. God knows it was. But I just couldn’t afford to stay on the project... When you lose your enthusiasm, you’re just typewriting.

Leo H. Janos came back in 1994 with Skunk Works : A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed, written with Benjamin Robert ’ Ben ’ Rich ( 1925 - 1995 ), the former chief of the top - secret aviation design group based first in Burbank and then Palmdale ( both in California ).
Leo H. Janos died of cancer at his home in Brentwood ( California ), aged 74.
( sources : Los Angeles Times, Wikipedia )