Talk:Chuck Yeager

An event mentioned in this article is an October 14 selected anniversary.

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this biog references a final flight by yeager which had jimmy doolittle following in another plane in 1997, but jimmys biog references him dying in 1993. Can we clarify the dates, as the date given is probably obsene or illegal

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you know the most amazing thing about yeagers autobiography is the personal side of it.

he talks about how they were on missions to kill civilians in the war and him and his buddies would sya 'if we are going to do this type of thing we better make sure we win' ... they were more afraid of disobeying orders than of committing war crimes.

you can see the 'obedience' type of thinking instilled by the military here. the 'right stuff' talks about test pilots, test pilots who generally were accustom to sudden death, but made up all kinds of fantastic arguments about why it wouldnt happen to them and how the dead guy was to blame.

yeager goes into details about the emotions of someone in these circumstances, and they are amazing... for example, there is not pity or sympathy, there is anger. anger at the dead man.

and dont forget his 'autobigoraphy' is 1/4-1/2 written by other people commenting on the situation, his wife, his commander, and others. this is an amazing detail and account of life at the times and the impact of these situations on people. you might feel bad that life served them up this plate of horror and death and wonder what it would have been like otherwise.

there is also a lot of drinking and carelessness. a distant observer can see the emotional effect of the military and war on the men yeager talks about, as they careen through the desert and crash, as they have wild orgies, as they do stupid stunts that nearly kill many of them. and as they blame the people who do die and write them off. though it 'eats you up inside'.

and his attitude towards the war? he didnt care. he didnt even understand what hitler was all about, he just did his job, which was to fly airplanes and shoot people. for his team.

to say he 'escaped to spain' after being shot down is a bit like saying the bible is the story of some guy getting executed. he goes through all sorts of hell, he meets up with the french resistance, he has to sled down a snowy mountain and his partner nearly dies in the process, where they accidentally find a german occupied shack in the middle of the woods.

he flies all over the world with jacqueline corcoran, after that, many memorable incidents, including his encounters with the soviet pilots, they are about to talk friendly and drink alot, but some diplomat screws it up with one careless insult meant as a joke. it is odd how pilots share more in common with each other than civilians of countries at war. . . and odd thing indeed.

dont forget the time he is involved with the nuke squadron and they end up a couple of minutes from being in the middle of a nuclear World War III.

i dont know how to edit the main page but i just have to say that there is alot of stuff to talk about in regards to yeager, stuff that is bigger than any one person, it encompasses all of america, what it means to be american. or part of any elite group, or anyone attached to those people. to be a soldier and to be a man.

You make some interesting points here, and I must admit I too was struck by this reading his biography and also The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's book. The thing is, this is how all military personnel think. If they didn't, armies, air forces and so on probably wouldn't exist. Many wars wouldn't either. ("Suppose war was declared and nobody turned up" sort of thing). Most nation's armed forces require their men to do their duty - "my country, right or wrong". You can't have freethinkers in the forces. Most of the training, apart from boosting your physical and mental fitness to the task, is for eliminating the freethinking element. That's what the spirit-breaking drills are all about. Those who can't hack it don't make it. Those who might privately harbour such thoughts, yet supress them in order to reach other goals - to fly, say - may think they've "bucked the system", but in fact they haven't, since a thought that cannot be expressed is the same as no thought at all. That all said, I don't think any of this belongs in the article about Yeager. All the encyclopeadia can discuss are the facts of the man's life as they are known. Speculation about his state of mind, or his morality, or lack of it, is opinion pure and simple, and has no place here. If the man himself had made much of it, it could be said in the article "Yeager himself feels that..." and so forth. If you do feel like adding such points, take care to ensure that they only the reported facts as stated in verifiable documents, and do not stray into speculation or moralising. Graham 03:51, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

ok man you have a good point there. im sure this fits somewhere in an encyclopedia im just not sure where

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Can anyone explain the 12.5 confirmed kills? Seems odd to have a fractional number there and some explanation in the article would be good. --/Mat 02:40, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This isn't uncommon. It's when more than one person claims a kill, or the actual person who delivered the fatal shot can't be positively identified. In which case the kill is credited to as many pilots as claimed it, but since obviously only one plane got shot down, it's recorded as half a kill each. Graham 10:44, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Air Combat" game

Would it be too much of a stretch to mention "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat", an old computer combat flight sim from the early `90's? I think it's notable enough to deserve a small section here (and, consequently, a MobyGames or GameFAQs link to information about it).

• Why not simply create an article for it, and put a brief mention in this article. PPGMD

Rocket lava??

Is "rocket lava" some sort of technical term or slang or simply just odd vandalism? From the article:

"He did, however, receive 3rd-degree burns on his head and hands from the rocket lava of the ejector seat."

Dismas 10:51, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe "rocket lava" refers to the burning molten remains of a rocket once it has fired. I think the phrase is legitimate, although it should be re-worded for clarity. -- FP ^{<talk><edits>} 11:13, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

11.50, not 12.50

According to the USAF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB, Gen. Yeager has 11.50 victories, not 12.50. I think the mistake comes from the offcial claim of Louis Yeager who has one victory to his credit. Below is part of the total list of Aerial combat credits from the USAFHRA website. I copied the previous entry before those listed for Gen. Yeager, and also the one for Louis E. Yeager of the 53rd Fighter Group.

Aerial Victory Credits

Name and rank	Unit and date	War	Victories
YATES WILLIAM J Captain	66FTR 1942-11-07	WW2	0.50
YEAGER CHARLES E Flight Officer	363FTR 1944-03-04	WW2	1.00
YEAGER CHARLES E 1st Lieutenant	363FTR 1944-09-13	WW2	0.50
YEAGER CHARLES E 1st Lieutenant	363FTR 1944-10-12	WW2	5.00
YEAGER CHARLES E Captain	363FTR 1944-11-06	WW2	1.00
YEAGER CHARLES E Captain	363FTR 1944-11-27	WW2	4.00
YEAGER LOUIS E 2nd Lieutenant	53FTR 1945-04-17	WW2	1.00

Anyway, this is what I found. Al Lowe 04:06, 14 October 2005 (UTC) --82.41.36.238 23:40, 12 November 2005 (UTC)