own. He went on to shooting down 7 more during the war, and was promoted to Captain.After the war, he started working at a test pilot base in California. After a while Major Boyd asked if he wanted to become a test pilot being that he was such a good combat pilot. He skipped right over the pilot school and got handed the greatest project one could ask for. He got picked to fly the jet propelled X-1 to break the sound barrier. After 3 months it was done, and Chuck’s name was in the record book. However, the interesting thing about it was that just days earlier he had broken ribs in a horseback riding accident. You can imagine the jealousy going around the test pilots. Here is Chuck Yeager a “hick” from West Virginia getting the best assignment. Well, someone was jealous and sent a letter saying the Chuck had not passed test pilot school. He was forced to go back and take the course, in which he almost failed to written course because he felt the instructors were out to get him. After that, he tested more planes, like a captured Russian plane, and the X-1A which from 2.5 Mach. With the X-1A he almost “bought the farm”(and expression used instead of crashing). At 80,000 feet and going 1650 mph, the X-1A took a nosedive, in a downward spiral. Chuck was thrown all over the place; his head even cracking the canopy. However, by some miracle, he took started to take control of the plane at 25,000 feet. He dropped 51,000 feet in 51 seconds! Also another scare, while he was flying and experimental plane at Mach 2 was that he had to jump out of a plane wearing a compression suit. The suit caught on fire and tangled in his parachute. He survived the fall bad needed skin grafts for his burns.From there the book went downhill. He commanded a squadron an opened a school to train astronauts in 1956 even though he was passed up by NASA because of his lack of education. However after ten years, the schoo...
