Hillbilly Aviator Pt.1

You might not expect the state of West Virginia to produce one of the most daring aviators of all time.  This is part 1 of Chuck Yeager's story from the hollers of West Virginia, to the skies of WWII, to hiding out in the French countryside, to the premiere airbase for aircraft testing.  

Transcript

Paula 0:00

For the Best Aerospace Era this is the mansplaining podcast. Here is your host Anthony L. Sealey

0:10

Welcome aerospace enthusiasts. If you are familiar with the Mansplaneing podcast, you know we like to talk about aerospace legends who got lost in the fray of history. I often come across a person and ask myself, "Why have I not heard of this person before?" I love profiling these obscure figures. However, this episode is about someone you have heard of. You know this name because of one flight unlike any other. One very fast flight beyond Mach One. Yes, let's talk about Chuck Yeager. Although we are not gonna talk about that famous flight, at least not yet. Yeager's story before that renowned flight is fascinating and at times hilarious, and I want to tell you about it. You could say Chuck Yeager was a hillbilly. Although you would regret calling him that to his face in the wrong tone. He was born on February 13th, 1923, in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, in the very small town of Myra on the Mud River. Yeager was the second of five children, and as you might have already guessed, his parents were not wealthy. The family eventually settled in Hamlin, West Virginia. Yeager spent his youth following his older brother Roy around the woods barefoot. He learned to hunt and shoot a .22 rifle at the age of six. His namesake actually means hunter in German. Being poor and isolated in the hills of West Virginia, Yeager had no real understanding of the ominous times of the Great Depression. His family lived in a modest house with a small garden, along with enough land for a few chickens and pigs. When he wasn't in the woods, Yeager stayed busy helping out with chores at home, plus working at his grandfather's farm. You could say Yeager was a rabble-rouser. Now, despite the fact that West Virginia was a dry county, most either knew how to make their own alcohol or knew someone who could. Yeager and his older brother Roy once spotted a mean local moonshiner hiding a stash of moonshine jugs in a hollow log. What did they do? In Yeager's words, "Of course we had to drink some, and it nearly killed us." They stole the rest and sold it without getting caught. When Yeager was 13, he helped himself to his neighbor's 1933 Dodge truck and took it for a spin, and then crashed it. He made a fast getaway on foot. Honestly though, spending your youth in the beautiful scenery of West Virginia, hunting, fishing, and causing problems as a kid sounds like an awesome childhood. By the way, as I talk about West Virginia here, does anyone else have that song stuck in their head? You know the one by John Denver released in 1971, Country roads? No, I'm not gonna sing it, but it's definitely in my head. Now, in high school, Yeager was excellent in math and geometry and demonstrated some real intelligence, despite his hillbilly stereotype. As a teenager, Yeager was highly competitive in skiing, bobsledding, basketball, and football. Yeager was also really good at ping pong and was a self-proclaimed pool hustler and often played at the local recreation center. This is also when Yeager said, in his words, "I discovered girls." Yes, the active and cocky teenager was a ladies' man and spent many nights out chasing girls. He never went steady and was always playing the field. His mother did not approve of this behavior. Yeager said, Mom began raising hell when I came home at two in the morning. She locked me out of the house, so I began climbing a tree and crawling in the upstairs bedroom window." I love that story. Now, Yeager credits his time growing up in West Virginia in preparing him for a legendary aviation career. Think about the hand-eye coordination he learned from skiing and bobsledding, along with his hunting skills. Kids growing up doing these things can make for a good fighter pilot. Although unlike most other aerospace legends I profile here on Mansplaneing, Yeager was not mesmerized by flying, not even after seeing an airplane up close for the first time at age 15. He said in his biography, I never dreamt of being an aviator. I was a pool hustler from the West Virginia hollers. I saw my first airplane close up when a Beechcraft belled into a cornfield on the Mud River. I went to go look at it to see what all the excitement was about." After graduating in the summer of 1941 from Hamlin High School, we all know what happened later that year. An Army Air Corps recruiter came through town. Yeager said, "I enlisted for a two-year hitch. I thought I might enjoy it and see some of the world." He became an aircraft mechanic because he learned to work on drilling equipment and was able to take apart and put back together car engines. Yeager learned these things from his father. However, with his hand-eye coordination, marksmanship, and his exceptional eyesight, Yeager ended up in the cockpit. Let's get into that. Yeager learned to fly at an air base near Tonopah, Nevada, flying the P-39. He described his first month of flying as hog heaven. Here he backed up his own cockiness and outdid other pilots in mock dogfights. Now I have to tell you this story. While on leave from training, Yeager and the others would go to cat houses, as he calls them, in nearby towns. They once raised so much hell at one in the town of Mina that the local sheriff ran them out of town. The next day, though, Mina had a water problem because somehow their tall water tower became ridden with bullet holes. I wonder how that happened It was not all fun though. During his six months of training there, thirteen pilots were lost or bought the farm, if you will. Training to be a fighter pilot is a dangerous endeavor. Now, as I said before, Yeager signed up to see the world. Well, he was about to see Europe at just about the worst time in history. Yeager shipped out along with the 357th Fighter Group in November of 1943. Awaiting them was one of the most pivotal operations in the entire Second World War. Gain air superiority over mainland Europe. The plan for the largest amphibious invasion in history was taking shape, and winning the war in the air was crucial. D-Day was just months away. Yeager arrived in England and assigned to the Eighth Air Force, in the 357th Fighter Group Their jobs included escorting bombers like the B-24 Liberator, strafing enemy targets, and generally was to take the fight to the Luftwaffe and gain air superiority. Interestingly though, Yeager's family had ancestry ties to Germany. So we have one of the most daring pilots ever in Yeager in the cockpit of one of the most iconic airplanes ever, the P-51 Mustang. Now let's get into it. In early 1944, Yeager began to see action. On his seventh mission, Yeager scored his first kill. He said, I spotted a Messerschmitt ME 109 below me. I dove on him and blew him to pieces." Yeager loved his P-51 Mustang, and admitted he valued it more than the lives of some of his squadron mates. Now, you may have seen that famous picture of Yeager standing with a Bell X-1, which had the name Glamorous Glennis written along the side of the fuselage. This name also appears on Yeager's P-51 Mustang. But who was Glamorous Glennis? Glennis Dickson was a striking brunette Yeager met before shipping out. Glennis, who was not just pretty, but also independent and ambitious. She made a strong impression on the hillbilly playboy, who always played the field. The attraction was mutual, but they agreed not to be exclusive because the odds of a fighter pilot coming back home after facing the formidable German Luftwaffe were not favorable. They often wrote letters to each other during the war, and Yeager intended to marry her if he made it back alive. Glennis became worried, though, when Yeager's letters suddenly stopped coming. Yeager's eighth mission was to escort B-24 Liberators on a bombing run. A mission like this is known as a ramrod mission. He was the fourth fighter of the trailing flight. This is what's known as a tail-end Charlie. This is also the fighter Germans attack first. It happened. Yeager said, I saw three Focke-Wulf fighters diving at me, and I radioed a warning to O'Brien, "Cement Green Leader, three bogeys at five o'clock. Break right." We turned sharply to meet the bastards head on. I turned. The first Focke-Wulf hammered me." He said the world exploded. I ducked to protect my face. When I looked a second later, my engine was on fire, and there was a gaping hole in my right wingtip. The airplane began to spin. He never had a chance. Yeager ejected as his damaged P-51 rolled over. Yeager was shot down over France on March 4th, 1944. After parachuting down, the 21-year-old was in unknown French territory, occupied by Nazi forces who would be coming his way at any moment to hunt him down. Yeager was wounded in a land where people didn't speak his language, and he was on the run. He had no intention of being caught by the Nazis and becoming a POW or worse. His only chance of escaping the Nazi forces was to make contact with the French Resistance He had no idea who to trust and hid out in a barn. A local helped him join up with a band of the resistance Yeager even helped the resistance out with some of their sabotaging operations. Despite the obvious language barrier, Yeager got along with most of them except for one. While hiding out in the woods sitting together, Yeager shared intel with the band in how Allied forces were winning the war in the air. One member of the band mumbled something to the effect of, Then why have I seen so many US pilots like you getting shot down?" Yeager got up and put his .45 up to that guy's head. I said before, watch what you say to Yeager. One day, some members of the resistance took Yeager along with them on what he thought was another sabotage operation on the German forces. However, Yeager was taken and put in the back of a truck with some other US personnel that were also behind enemy lines. They were driven away for some time without knowing where. Yeager and the others wondered if they had been betrayed. They did not know who they would see on the other end of that door once it opened. Could it be an SS officer in a Nazi firing squad? Fortunately, it wasn't that. They were driven to the Pyrenees mountain range on the French and Spanish border. A way out, although a daunting one. The Pyrenees Mountains were a different sort of range than the mountains he grew up in back in West Virginia. The summits were high and cold. Yeager carried one of the other men from the truck for a time who was injured. He couldn't bring himself to leave him behind. Yeager had to push himself to his physical limit in the cold to make it across to Spain. Now, Yeager's time with the French underground and how he was smuggled to Spain is something like out of a movie. After making contact back with Allied forces, Yeager was supposed to return back to the US according to rules and regulations. He was not having that. Yeager wanted to rejoin his squadron and get back in the fight, and he had to meet with someone high up who could make that happen, the supreme Allied commander himself, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The night before this meeting was supposed to took place, while staying at a hotel in London, Yeager survived an attack from one of Germany's secret weapons, the V1 flying bombs, also known as buzz bombs. He said, "the damn thing nosed over from fifteen hundred feet and began to fall. I hit the deck. There was a jarring explosion only a few blocks away." Now I have mentioned the revolutionary V1 flying bomb, along with the V2 rocket that were used in combat in World War II. I will be bringing those up again in future episodes, so stand by for that. He and another pilot who was shot down and was able to make it back, named Fred Glover pleaded their case to the smiling general. Yeager said, 'I don't want to leave my buddies after only eight missions. It just isn't right. I have a lot of fighting left to do.' Eisenhower pulled some strings and got them reinstated. You could say Eisenhower saved his career here. Had he not, we might not ever heard the name Yeager. Also, I wonder if the V1 attack that night had any influence on Eisenhower's decision. Allied Forces needed good pilots to help end this war before any more of the secret German weapons entered the battlefield. Now, back to action on October 12th, 1944, Yeager was assigned as a group leader and led three squadrons for a bombing raid deep into German territory. He was chosen over aces and other pilots with more experience, in part because of his proven exceptional ability to spot enemy fighters from far away. Which he did on this mission. Twenty-two ME-109s And they did not see our P-51s coming. Yeager came up behind their tail-end Charlie when the German pilot panicked and made a desperate, ill-fated turn left right into his wingman. Yeager got two kills here without even firing a shot. But the dogfight was on. In the maelstrom of P-51s and ME 109s diving and banking, one German pilot maneuvered behind Yeager, ready to strike He said, "I pulled back on my throttle so damn hard I nearly stalled. I rolled up and over, came in behind and under him. Less than fifty feet I opened up on that 109 as if it were a can of spam." Yeager scored five kills on just this one mission. On another mission about a month later, he scored four more kills. Believe me when I say this, he was not just a bold pilot, but he was that good. You can credit this to his awesome eyesight and his exceptional hand-eye coordination. Now, I have said before, war is not fun and exciting as movies portray. War is horrific for those fighting Here is how Yeager endured the horrors of warfare. He said in his biography, "Anger was my defense mechanism. You either became callous or you crack." Yeager also distracted himself with alcohol and women during R&R. R&R stands for rest and recreation. This has also been called I&I for intoxication and intercourse. Yeager shared in his biography a hilarious pickup line that he and his squadron mates used on British babes, but I'm not going to share that here Now as World War II went on, more new strange German weapons of war entered the battlefield. Now if you are an aerospace enthusiast, then you probably have spent some nights staying up until 0200 looking up obscure German fighters used during World War II. I Know I have. One of the more famous ones is the first jet fighter ever used in combat, the Me 262. If you haven't seen one of those in person, then I recommend you find one. Yeager actually said they referred to Me-262s as blowjobs back then. Moving on. Yeager faced off against the first jets to see combat in war, and here is how his first encounter went with the Me-262. Yeager often flew as a flight leader because with his exceptional eyesight, he could spot enemy fighter before anyone else. That's what happened on one mission when he first saw three jets. He broke formation from his flight at eight thousand feet over Germany. He said, I saw three jets cruising three thousand feet below. I dove after them. I fired a few bursts before losing them in the cloud deck." His gun camera later showed that he hit two of them before they accelerated away He said "I was a fat man running after a trolley. I was doing 450, but they zoomed out of sight." Does anyone remember those scenes of the Tuskegee Airmen in P-51s facing off against the Me 262 jets in the movie Red Tails from 2012? I like that movie. Now, after losing them, Yeager then climbed back to rendezvous with his flight, but was unable to find them. So he headed north alone until he came across a large German airbase and saw another Me 262 approaching for landing. What did Yeager do? He decided to take on the German base and go after that jet all by himself. He said in his biography, I dropped on his ass at five hundred miles per hour. He never saw me, but the damn control tower did. Ground gunners began blasting at the lunatic American swooping right at them. My hits slapped into his wings and I pulled up 300 feet off the ground with flak crackling all around me." The jet crashed down short of the runway before Yeager made his escape. How did he make it out of here alive? Just how? Also, it's a wonder how Yeager was able to pull up and zip up his pants the next morning. Yeager flew his last mission on January 15th, 1945. During his tour, Yeager flew more than 60 missions And scored 12 and a half victories in the air. He was also promoted to captain. The European theater of World War II would be over about four months later. After the war, Yeager stayed in the Army Air Force, although a seismic shift was on the horizon with this department becoming its own military branch, the US Air Force. Yeager married Glennis on February 26th, 1945. Soon they had a baby on the way. As all new parents do, they agreed that it would be better if they lived near Hamlin, West Virginia, so Yeager's mom could help out. So Yeager put in a transfer to an air base relatively close to his childhood home, one about three hours away. He reported to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio in July of 1945. Yeager said "this was the right place at the right time. I stumbled into the most exciting place on earth for a fighter pilot. Wright's huge hangars were crammed with airplanes." He goes on to say, it would soon be the center of the greatest adventure in aviation since the Wright brothers, the conversion from propeller airplanes to supersonic jets and rocket-propelled aircraft." Bold words. He got to fly everything from the cutting edge of aerospace engineering from the time, from P-51 Mustangs like he was familiar with, to the newest jets like the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, along with some of the spoils of war aircraft, if you will, from Germany and the Japanese Empire Yeager challenged other test pilots on base who had engineering degrees in mock dogfights and waxed them all because he had combat experience. He was also bold enough and knew how to push an airplane to its absolute limit without getting killed. Yeager also buzzed the tower, if you will, over his and Glennis' home, along with houses in his hometown of Hamlin. Yeager shared a story of how he banked around his grandfather as he waved while working in his farm. Who wouldn't want to do this? This is awesome. Yeager would also go on to test aircraft over the Mojave Desert, and this is where on Tuesday, October 14th, 1947, he sat in the cockpit of the Bell X-1. We will have to get to that flight in part two of Hillbilly Aviator. From the hollers of West Virginia to the hostile skies of World War II to hiding out with the French Resistance to the premier airbase for airplane testing, Yeager's story is amazing so far, and we've made an entire episode of his life before we even touched on that one flight Yeager is most famous for. If you would like to know more, I highly recommend you read an autobiography of Chuck Yeager or check out chuckyeager.com or stand by for part two of Hillbilly Aviator here on the Mansplaneing Podcast Until then, thank you so much for listening, and remember, there's always a light at the end of the runway.

Paula 28:58

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