YouSaid · the spoken record

Chuck Yeager

lines on the record: 48
first: 2021-01-11
most recent: 2021-01-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm definitely not a rocking chair type. I can't just sit around, watch television, drink beer, get fat, and fade out. And there's so much more I want to do. I've never lost my curiosity about things that interest me. Fortunately, I'm very good at the activities I most enjoy, and that part has made my life that much sweeter. I haven't yet done everything, but by the time I'm finished, I won't have missed much. If I auger in tomorrow, it won't be with a frown on my face. I've had a ball.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item of their daily agenda. For me that was always high priority in whatever I was doing. As long as I can put one foot in front of the other, I'll be out there ten years from now. I don't still fly high speed jets out of some nostalgia for the past. I do it because I love it. If it wasn't fun, I'd drop it in a minute.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life is as unpredictable as flying in combat. If the day comes when a flight surgeon tells me I can't fly anymore in high-performance jets, I can always sneak out back and fly smaller planes. You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up, but you don't give up. I know too many people who have erected barriers real brick walls just because they have gray hair and prematurely cut themselves off from lifelong enjoyments by thinking I'm too old to do this or that's for younger people. Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself. The trick is to enjoy the years remaining, and unlike flying, learning how to take pleasure from living can't be taught”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This great quote from Jimmy IV, and I always think about it. He talks about most people that fear stop them. It pushes them, or excuse me, it stops them from doing that. He's like, you should use fear as a way to push you from behind. Use it as a tool instead of as an adversary, right? And so this is Chuck expressing a very similar idea to Jimmy IVE's idea. I was always afraid of dying. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in a cockpit. He used the fear as a tool. And this is the last lesson that we'll learn from Chuck, and I think probably the most important”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best, most skilled pilot had the most experience. The more experienced, the better he is, or for the matter, she is. I'm thinking of Jackie Cochrane, who was really outstanding, much better than many, many male pilots I've flown with, but only for one reason she had more flying time, reps, reps, reps. It's that simple. If I had a choice between dogfighting a less experienced pilot and a better airplane than mine, or a more experienced guy and an airplane that wasn't as good, I know how I'd choose.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opportunities that could only exist now. And on the next page, we're going to see another example of the same expression of Arnold Schwarzenegger's idea of reps, reps, reps, right? I have flown in just about everything with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world. British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese. And there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Modern era. Being in my early 20s right after the war was the key to everything that happened in my life, placing me smack in the golden age of aviation research and development, allowing me to participate in the historical leap from prop engines to jets, and from jets to rockets and outer space. To make his mark on history, Christopher Columbus had to be born at a time when the world was believed to be flat. To make mine, people had to still think that the sound barrier was a brick wall in the sky. To have reached my twenty first birthday in the age of the Concorde would have done me no good at all. So summarize that section. He was born at the right time in history. And so the question is, okay, we're not in 1923. We're not in 1963. What is today's equivalent? And if you haven't yet locked on to what you feel is the greatest opportunity in your life, maybe look for...”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a natural born pilot. Whatever my aptitudes or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work. Really a lifetime's learning experience. For the best pilots flying is an obsession, the one thing in life they must do continually. The best pilots fly more than others. That's why they're the best. Experience is everything. The eagerness to learn how and why every piece of equipment works is everything, and luck is everything too. I don't deny that it was damn good. Is there such thing as the best? I was at least one of the title contenders. What really strikes me looking back over all those years is how lucky I was, how lucky, for example, to have been born in nineteen twenty three and not nineteen sixty three, so that I came of age just as aviation itself was entering the model.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I definitely, after hearing that, you can understand why I was so interested to see who she was. Just a few more things. This applies to more than just flying. The best way to fly safe was to know what in the hell you were doing. This is Chuck's simple formula for work. I use my own simple formula. Either the Air Force was still fun for me, or it wasn't much fun anymore. If it wasn't fun, why would I hang around? And this towards the end of the book this is something we've talked over and over again being the right place, the right time with the right set of skills. He's just born at the right time in history. And I'm going to read this to you, and then I'm going to ask you a question. The person I am is the sum total of the life I've lived. So I have very deep emotions about the Air Force uniform that I wore most of my adult life. The Air Force molded and trained me, and who I am and whatever I've accomplished, I owe to them. They taught me everything I needed to know how to do my job. There is no such thing.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jackie and Floyd's closest friends. It was a friendship that lasted more than twenty five years until their deaths. I was the executor of Floyd's estate. They treated me like an adopted son. I flew around the world with Jackie, and she was right. She was a damn good pilot, one of the best. And I'm sure the reason she latched on to me was because for Jackie, nothing but the best would do, and she thought I was the best pilot in the Air Force. Hell, she'd tell that to everybody or to anybody any time. Jackie played a big role in my life and I and hers. I met two sitting presidents in her living room. Wherever she traveled overseas, she was treated like a visiting head of state. I never met anyone like her. Man or woman. She came on like a human steamroller. Now why is this so important? Think about where she started. Jackie Cochrane didn't own a pair of shoes until she was eight years old.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I would learn more than once over the next couple of decades, when Jackie Cochrane sent her mind to do something, she was a damn Sherman tank at full steam. She was as nuts about flying as I was. If I were a man, she said, I would have been a war ace like you. I'm a damn good pilot. All those generals would be pounding on my door instead of the other way around. Being a woman, I need all the cloud I can get. But cloud was no problem for Jackie. Her husband was Floyd Odlum, who owned general dynamics, the Atlas Corporation, RKO, and a bunch of other companies. We liked each other right off the bat. I could talk flying with her just as if she were a regular at punches. She knew airplanes and said flat out that flying was the most important thing in her life. She was tough and bossy, and used to getting her own way. But I figured that's how rich people behaved. When we parted that day, she said, let's stay in touch. We sure did. Glennis and I became”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so this is another example of books or links. This is Jackie Cochrane, who's a crazy character. I just ordered her autobiography. I spent a lot of money on it, too. It was very expensive, so I hope it's worth it. I'm confident it will be worth it because of just how crazy she is. I'm Jackie Cochrane, she said, pumping my hand. Good job, Captain Yeager. We're all proud of you. She invited me to lunch, acting as if I should know exactly who she was, and caused an uproar just entering the posh Washington restaurant. The owner began bowing and scraping, and the waiters went flying. In between pumping me for all the details of my flights, I learned a little about who she was. She was a honcho on several important aviation boards and committees, and was a famous aviatrix before the war, winner of the Bendix Air races. She had been a close friend of Amelia Earhart's. During the war, she was a colonel in charge of the Was, which is the woman's Air Force service pilots, who ferried B seventeen bombers to England”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or it could take over a tactical flighter squadron of jets in Germany. He was almost apologetic explaining that the Pentagon brass decided to get me out of research flying before the law of averages caught up with me. I just chuckled and told him Colonel, you've given me the easiest decision of my life”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's impossible. I'm going to keep surviving. This keeps up. This is how his test pilot career ends and where he's transferred to Europe. He actually teaches people dogfighting, which is he'd rather do that anyways. But I thought it was very interesting because this happens right after, very soon after the accident or the near accident I opened the podcast with. So he's talking to General Boyd. He asked me if running a fighter squadron was something that I'd enjoy after my test flying days were over. General, I said, my bags are packed. You're ready to move on to other things? If it means getting a squadron, you bet. Remember, he's just very simple. What do I love most in the world? Dog fighting. I'd rather dogfight and teach people how to dogfight than test planes, right? I think you ought to get what you want. General Boyd had a lot of clout, and I've got to believe he was a big reason why a colonel from the Pentagon called me a couple of weeks after I got back and told me I could see.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the culprit. He was an older man on the assembly line who ignored instructions about how to insert that bolt because by God he knew that bolts were supposed to be placed head up, not head down. Nobody told him how many pilots he had killed. Complex airplanes were unforgiving of mistakes. Complexity and arrogance kills. So he understood. He's like, listen, I take a lot of risks. I've survived way past most of the people I started with.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this section is really interesting. He's testing a plane. They're having issues. People are dying and trucks trying to figure out what's wrong with airplane. And really, you could summarize this section by saying complexity and arrogance kills. I climbed to 15,000 feet where it was safer to try it again. And each time I performed the rolling maneuver, the aileron locked. I think that's the back tail part of the plane, if I'm not mistaken. I figured that somehow the wings were bending under stress and locking the aileron. I called General Boyd as soon as I landed and told him I thought I knew how those crashes occurred, but not why. The old man sent inspectors to take apart my sabre's wings. They found that a bolt on the Aileron cylinder was installed upside down. Remember, people died because of this. While an inspection team went to the North American plant and found”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Scott Crossfield worked for NACA and was the first pilot to fly at Mach 2. He was a proficient pilot, but also among the most arrogant I've met. Scotty just knew it all, which is why he ran a super sabre through a hangar. That stupid accident would have never happened to an Air Force pilot because he would have accepted a few pointers about what in the hell was going on with a new airplane. But Scotty wouldn't. His attitude was typical of the Naka bunch. There was nothing worthwhile that a military pilot could tell them. I had been testing the super sabre. I handed him all the paperwork and the handbook on the airplane and told him Scotty, it will take you about a week to run an acceptance inspection on this airplane. There's a lot to learn, but when you're ready to fly it, give me a call and I'll come over and go through the various systems with you. His reply was it has a pilot's handbook, doesn't it? That's all I need. Well, you look at that guy and say see you.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to me, I was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride. But then I was as naive as I could be, living a cloister life out at Murock. When flying was fun and the living was easy. It was a tight little circle. My life was flying in pilots. I didn't this is a great perspective. I didn't spend a whole hell of a lot of time doing or thinking about anywhere anything else. We were an obsessed bunch probably because we were so isolated. So he gets into some of the arrogance he didn't like about the Naka N-A-C-A pilots compared to people he was with in the Air Force. And this section is don't be like Scott.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's two things I think I'll just tell you going into this. One, it's a great perspective that he has. And two, this is another example of an obsessive personality, finding something he loves to do and just doing that. And that gives life to meaning it gave Chuck meaning to his life. She complained to me, you're getting a royal screwing. I told her, well, up theirs. My flight's in the history book. And that's the whole nine yards for me. All the other crap doesn't mean a thing. That's how I felt about it. Hell, I was being practical, not modest. Movie stars put up with all their mans that go with fame because it means bucks. As a blue suitor, meaning an enlisted pilot, he wasn't getting any money, right? As a blue suitor, I wasn't getting a dime out of the deal. And being famous with the public meant absolutely nothing to a guy living out in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The public wanted heroes.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have shared that time and space with those people and in that place in the middle of nowhere, I think how lucky I was to have shared that time and space with those people and in that place in the middle of nowhere. So he becomes world famous after he breaks the sound barrier and I don't think he likes it and we hear he's going to talk we hear in his own words his perspective at the time that this was occurring.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I couldn't teach him enough That's another example of A to Z, right? This is at this time Chuck is married. He's got kids. This is his family's living conditions, and see what's trying to break this down barrier. Remember, they're out in the middle of nowhere. He does not have a lot of money. He's doing this for the pure love of it.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“herself miserable Chuck didn't do that, he accomplished a lot, but he's like, I used fun as my North Star. I had a full life and enjoyed just about every damn minute of it because that's how I lived. That's fantastic. And talking about there's like, yeah, we may die, but I'm going to have fun while this happens. And everybody's going to die anyways. The biggest difference between them was Slick's lack of interest in learning about the airplane and the power system. So he's talking about the difference between Chuck and the guy that turned this down, right? Slick depended entirely on the fact that I was in the sky with him. This is the engineer on the plane, flying chase. And it never occurred to him that the radio might go out. In a pinch, he counted on me to tell him what to do. Here's the biggest difference summarized in two sentences between Yeager and Slick. Yeager will rely on himself.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eager to attempt to break the sound barrier, and because he broke the sound barrier, it opened up all these other opportunities later on in his life. But before we get there, Chuck has some good advice for us. If you love the hell out of what you're doing, you're usually pretty good at it, and you wind up making your own breaks. I wasn't a deep, sophisticated person, so he says this over and over again, you know, I'm uneducated, I'm not that smart, but he's really brilliant in the sense he's got practical knowledge and he develops, he has simple rules that he lives by. Again, we talk about this idea. We have to compress all this information that comes at us into things, into smaller digestible portions that we can take with us that we can remember, right? It's the distillation, it's the compression that is so valuable. And Chuck did this instinctively. I wasn't a deep sophisticated person, but I lived by a basic principle. I did only what I enjoyed. I wouldn't let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things I wasn't interested in.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most people yawn to have an eager curiosity about airplane systems, but it was a terrific advantage for me when something went wrong at 20,000 feet. Knowing machinery like I did, and having a knowledgeable feel for it, I knew how to cope with practically any problem, see how these ideas relate? He got an advantage because he's doing something no other people won't, and he knows more than other people. He knows everything about a plane, including how to fix it, how to fly it, everything. And he winds up saving his life. I knew what was serious or manageable. All pilots take chances from time to time, but knowing, not guessing about what you can risk is often the critical difference between getting away with it or drilling a 50-foot hole in Mother Earth. And it also set me on a path that would change my life. It was my feel for equipment that first brought me to the attention of Colonel Albert G. Boyd, head of the flight test division. Now, why does he say that changes his life? Because Boyd is the one that chooses.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that dog fighting was what I was born to do. It's almost impossible to explain the feeling. And that's another important aspect to understand Chuck. He found the single thing that he loved more in his life, and that was dogfighting. No matter what he does, he becomes world famous because he breaks the sound barrier, but that was just part of his career when he was testing jets and everything else. He was like, I want to be a dog fighter. This is what I want to do. This is what I love more than else. And so this is him describing dogfighting, right? And what it takes and everything else. It's just a simple paragraph, but really, as I read this to you, this probably applies to any difficult endeavor, right? Dog finding demanded the sum total of all your strength and exposed any of your weaknesses. Some good pilots lack the eyes, others became too excited and lost concentration, or lost their nerve and courage. A few panicked in tight spots”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I was just being so damn stubborn about refusing to quit. That's a lesson any of us can apply to whatever it is that we're doing. There wasn't a rule ever invented that could be bent, so my marching group headquarters and began my fight without realizing I was about to take charge of my life and push in a direction where everything that happened in later years was a logical outcome for a career fighter pilot who had compiled an outstanding combat record. If I had submitted to being sent home, I doubt whether the Army Air Corps would have been interested in retaining my services when the war ended. I would have probably mustered out and my flying career abruptly ended. But I wasn't consciously thinking about my future. I was just being stubborn about the present. I knew the odds were stacked against me, but in the end events and luck came together for me and one man, the only one who could, decided my fate General Dwight D. Eisenhower. So they just keep kicking him up the chain of command. They're like, go home, he says no. I'm sending you to another person. They say go home. He says no. He could go. He does this.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I wanted to do is taken away from me. I'm never going to get this opportunity again. So this kind of compounds, just I'm trying to tell you all this background if you put yourself in his position. Just imagine not only the physical anguish, but the mental anguish that he's having to endure at this moment. So far, none of the guys shot down in my squadron had been able to make it back. Now remember this for later though. He winds up making it back. And it's part of that where his wife was just describing his insane levels of determination and persistence and just he's stubborn as a mule. He says, I peek out to see, so he's hiding in the bushes. This part reminds me of the fantastic book I just read, Andy Groves Autobiography Swimming Across. So I peek out and see a woodcutter shouldering a heavy axe. Remember, this is a French guy, okay? I decide to rush him from behind and get the axe, killing him if necessary. He's not going to kill the guy. Don't worry. I jump him and he drops the axe, almost dead with fright. With eyes the size of quarters, he”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Woods. There's blood on my pant leg, blood on my torn leather gloves, and blood dripping down the front of my flying jacket from my head. The woods are dark and still, but even as I move deeper into them, I hear the distant rumble of army vehicles and the sounds of voices shouting in German. They pick you up fast in occupied territory before the locals can hide you. The bastard saw me coming down. It is slightly past noon on Sunday march fifth, nineteen forty four, and I'm a wounded twenty one year old American fighter pilot, shot down and on the run. So let's go into what he does next. I study a map of Europe that is sewn into our flight suits. Man, I can't believe how fast luck changes in war. Now you've got to remember this part for later. But whatever happens for me, the war is over. If I make it home, no more combat.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The parachute blossoms breaking my fall, and am rocking gently in the winter sky. Below me the hills and fields are crawling with Germans. I see the black smoke from my airplane wreckage, and sweat the slow ride down. I'm an easy target practice from the ground. I hear a dog fight raging far above me, the chattering machine guns and roaring engines of dozens of fighter planes spinning across the sky. I'm dropping down over southern France on a deceptively peaceful countryside. Trees rush up at me. I reach out and grab onto the top of a twenty foot pine. I bounce up a couple times, I bounce a couple of times on that limber, leaning it over to the ground, and just as I did as a kid in West Virginia when we ride pines for miles through the woods. In only seconds, I'm six inches from the ground. I step down, gather in my parachute to use later a shelter, and limp off into the water.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spinning from 16,000 feet, velocity doubling each second. Hold off, get below the clouds where the Krauts, that's what he calls the Germans, can't see the shoot. Yank that cord now and you're dead. German strafe guys floating down. Clouds whisk past. French countryside filling horizon. Even so, wait, goddammit. Ground rushing up occupied territory two fingers grip the shoot ring, corner of my eye, ground closing in, smell forest and field below Now I yanked the ripcord ring.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, yeah, you might have kicked me out of town, but I'm coming back the next day, and I'm coming back with my fighter planes. It's just insane. So I started the podcast with the most herring experience that he ever had. But he almost died multiple times. I'm going to share another example of him almost dying that took place maybe a decade before the accident at the beginning of the podcast. So it says, before then, I almost bought the farm. That's another euphemism for dying, right? Our fighter group stage a mock attack, and I was indicating about 400 miles per hour when there was a roaring explosion in the back of the aircraft. Fire came out from under my seat and the airplane flew apart in different directions. I jumped for it. When the chute opened, I was knocked unconscious. A sheepherder found me in the hills and tossed me across his donkey face down. My back was fractured.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess is a more common term. It's in this little town in Mina, and they were causing so much trouble that they had, they called the cops on them. But we went to Mina anyways, wrecked the place, and the sheriff ran us out of town. Cops saying, get out of here. What does this guy do? The next morning, a P-39, that's the plane that he's flying, strafed Mina's water tower. So he goes back and they call it strafing, sometimes they call it buzzing, but it's getting the aircraft so low that people on the ground feel the vibrations and the sound is just extremely loud. It's unpleasant.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When he publishes his book, but even if he ended at 62, he lived many, many multiple lifetimes compared to the average person. And he says those six months of my squadron training were the happiest I've ever been. Now that I was a fighter pilot, I couldn't imagine being anything else. Again, another sign that you have a great job, whether you have the right job rather. We were hell raising fighter jocks with plenty of swagger. So let me actually stop there because I shouldn't be so flippant. Let's spend some more time on that comment. Now that I was a fighter pilot, I couldn't imagine being anything else.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even a D history student knew that it was always better to be the hammer than the nail. So now it talks about just the kind of people that would be attracted to becoming fighter pilots. They are wild and being wild makes them happy. And this is an example of that. Those six months of squadron training were the happiest that I've ever been. That is a hell of a statement. He lived an amazing life.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brutal, I guess is the word I would use here. So he says, where he might not only bust his ass, but do something to bust two or three other asses in addition to his own. But I got mad at the dead, angry at them for dying so young and so senselessly”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And later in flight history, they start having to be refueled in mid-air by these giant bombers. So you have this giant plane. There might be 10 people on board, and you have a fighter pilot that has to get up underneath them. You might have seen this before, and they refuel. And he says, you know, if you make a mistake, if you're a stupid pilot at that point, not only, you know, you killed yourself, you damaged very expensive, you know, ruined a very expensive plane. But in some cases, he causes guy an idiot. He says one idiot took out an entire bomber and the 10 people on board. So not only did he make a mistake, he cost his life, but he lost two planes and 11 souls. So if you read what Chuck is saying here without context, it seems very dark and extreme and it definitely is. But when you put it into the context of it's not just this guy's life that's at stake, but it's everybody around him. It makes sense why he's so...”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He starts off not as a pilot. He says, I became an airplane mechanic. But after taking my first airplane ride, I'd rather have crawled across the country than go back up. So this is very interesting. He got so sick. He's like, I'm never going to, I know everyone would be in a plane again. I took off for a spin with a maintenance officer flight testing a ship that I had serviced. And I threw up all over the back seat. Staggering out of that damn thing as miserable as I'd ever been. But teenagers blot out the past when the present seems appealing. What a great sentence. I saw a notice announcing a flying sergeant program. I'd take my chances with flying to become a sergeant. Flying became fun. Being cocky and competitive, I began bouncing other students and saging mock dog dogfights. I could line up on air or ground targets before others in the class even saw them. My instructor knew who was the best in the group, and in the end, I was the one he recommended to become a fighter pilot. I was thrilled.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's most interesting about that is this is not something he had planned for his life at all. In fact, Chuck says over and over again in the book, he's like, I'm not ambitious. I just decided to take the most interesting thing that was right in front of me, but I didn't plan very far ahead. So this is about how it didn't really start that way. I had never dreamt of being an aviator. Me, I was a pool hustler from West Virginia. He's talking about his life right before joining the Army or the military rather. Before running chores, playing pool in the pool hall or poker under, or excuse me, between running chores, playing pool in the pool hall, pool haul, or poker under a covered bridge at the edge of town, and catting around with three or four different gals, there wasn't a hell of a lot going on in my life in the summer of 1941. When an Army Air Corps recruiter came to town, I enlisted for a two-year hitch.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit about the training. We live surrounded by the Nevada sand dunes in tar paper shacks, belching black smoke from the oil burning stoves that only warm themselves on cold desert nights. The wind never stopped blowing, and the chow was awful, but none of us complained. We flew from dawn to dusk, six flights a day, six days a week. Dog fighting, buzzing, and practicing gunnery. We crawled exhausted into the sack at ten o'clock at night and struggled or straggled to breakfast at four thirty in the morning. I logged one hundred hours of flying that first month hog heaven.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I'm gonna fast forward to where he starts learning how to fly. This is March 1943. And there's a couple things happening on this page. There's a description of his training, but it's also a description of how you know if you have the right job or not. So it says you're whipping through the desert canyon at 300 miles per hour, your belly just barely scraping the rocks, your hand on the throttle. It's a crystal clear morning on the desert of western Nevada, and the joy of flying, the sense of speed and exhilaration twenty feet above the deck makes you so damn happy that you want to shout for joy. A hill rises ahead, and you ease back, skim over the top of it, dropping down above cottonwoods, lining the bank of a stream. You feel so lucky, so blessed to be a fighter pilot.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Chuck will reference that over and over again. The fact that he saved his life multiple times because not only did he learn how to fly, but he learned how the plane worked. And he compares and contrasts his approach with other pilots that only learned how to fly, didn't care, outsource the idea that to the mechanics and cost them their lives. So since I flew more than anybody else and there wasn't a thing about an airplane that didn't fascinate me down to the smallest bolt back to his personality, I'm stubborn and strong-willed and opinionated as hell. Yeah, that's for sure if you read his Twitter feed. And this is another good idea here. As hard as dad worked, he enjoyed it. And that was an important lesson too. Tramping alone through the woods with a rifle or in a cockpit with a throttle in my hands. That's where I was the happiest, and that's how I wanted to live my life.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“interested me. That was a big reason for my success as a pilot. I flew more than anybody else and there wasn't a thing about an airplane that didn't fascinate me down to the smallest bolt. So that's just one sentence. So those are two ideas that we've seen before. One, I flew more than anybody else and there was.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When there wasn't something to do. And here's some more short sentences that tell entire stories. I was a competitive kid. I always try to do my best. I never thought of myself as being poor or deprived in any way. We managed to scrape by. Kids learned self sufficiency. Mom and dad taught us by example. They never complained. I had certain standards that I lived by. Whatever I did, I was determined to do the best I could at it. And I think those sentences give you an idea of his early childhood. Now we're going to get to the point where he's graduating high school. He's going to join the military. And on this page, there's several ideas that we have seen before. And, well, you know what? Let me read them to you and then I'll tell you how they relate to other founders that we've said in the past. I never thought of going to college, but I was always eager to acquire practical knowledge about things that”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And battered, I wondered if I could still fly, and I worried if the airplane could still carry me. I sobbed. I barely remember the next moments, but then my head cleared and I was at five thousand feet, lining up with the lake bed. I was gliding in from the other side of the Mojave, doing two hundred seventy miles per hour, and I started to believe I was going to make it. The lake bed filled my windshield, and I put her down a little hard, with a thump and a cloud of dust, but no landing in my life was as sweet as that one. The flight data would later reveal that I had spun down fifty one thousand feet in fifty one seconds. I survived on sheer instinct and pure luck.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To some sixth sense I remembered that the stabilizer was set at leading edge full down, and I could find the switch in the dark. Still fogged over, I reached for it and retrimmed it, still groping, I found the RioSat and the heat flicked on, my faceplate cleared and I saw more than I wanted to. I was spinning into the Sierras. Without even thinking, I set the controls with the spin. The ship flipped into a normal spin at thirty thousand feet. I knew how to get out of that. I had spun every airplane imaginable, including the X one at twenty five thousand feet, I popped out of the spin. My voice was so breathless and desperate that I doubted he could understand me. I don't know whether or not I can get back. I can't say much more. I've got to save myself. I didn't know what was going on. I was so dazed.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right through the glass. My pressure suits suddenly inflated with a loud hiss, I was gasping, and my faceplate fogged, blinded, being pounded to death, I wondered where in the Sierra Mountains I was about to drill a hole. We were spinning down through the sky like a frisbee. Desperate to see I groped to the right of the instrument panel trying to find the switch to turn up the heat in my faceplate. But then the ship snapped violently back on itself, slamming me against the control stick and somehow hooking my helmet onto it. I had glimpses of light and dark, light and dark through the fog visor sun and ground, sun ground, spinning down. I had less than a minute left.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My outside wing began to rise. I put in full aileron against it, but nothing happened. The thought smacked me, too high, too fast, Yeager. I might have added too late Christ. We began going haywire. The wing kept coming up and I was powerless to keep from rolling over, and then we started going in four different directions at once, careening all over the sky, snapping and rolling and spinning in what pilots called going divergent on all three axes. I called it hell. I was crashing around in that cockpit, slamming violently from side to side, front to back, battered to the point where I was too stunned to think, terrifying. The thought flashed. I lost my tail. I've had it. G forces yank me upwards with such force that my helmet cracked the canopy. Without my seat straps, I probably would have blasted.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I reached the top of the arc and began to level off. I could have shaken hands with Lord Jesus. eighty thousand feet a nighttime sky with flickering stars at ten in the morning. Up there, with only a wisp of an atmosphere, steering an airplane was like driving on slick ice. I dropped my nose slightly to pick up more speed and watch the meter register Mach two point two than Mach two point three. I was accelerating at thirty one miles per hour per second, approaching sixteen hundred fifty miles per hour, the fastest any pilot had yet flown and the fastest at any straight winged airplane would ever fly.”
2021-01-11 · Founders · #162 Chuck Yeager · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source