{"id":26386,"date":"2020-12-09T16:37:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=26386"},"modified":"2020-12-09T16:37:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:37:21","slug":"i-am-in-mourning-chuck-yeager-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=26386","title":{"rendered":"I am in mourning. Chuck Yeager has died."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>American test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was the first man to break the sound barrier, has died aged 97. He was one of my heroes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeager\u00a0was a fighter ace in World War Two, flying Mustangs with the United States Army Air Force when he became a double ace with 11 &#8216;kills&#8217;. But my admiration for him relates to his bravery as a test pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> This is the man who first flew faster than the speed of sound in 1947. He managed the feat in the Bell X-1 which he named &#8220;Glamorous Glennis&#8221; (after his wife) and which I have seen many times hanging from the ceiling of the National Air &amp; Space Museum in Washington [for an account of the breaking of the sound barrier\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Mach.html\">click here<\/a>]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the conqueror of the X-1A after a fall of 51,000 feet. the burnt and battered survivor of a bale out from an F-104, and the veteran of 127 missions flown over Vietnam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of his story was told in Tom Wolfe\u2019s wonderful book \u201cThe Right Stuff\u201d and, in the film of the same name [for my review\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/afilms.html#Right\">click here<\/a>], Yeager was played by Sam Shepard. The full account can be found in the engaging biography which Yeager wrote with Leo Janos.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was the first man to break the sound barrier, has died aged 97. He was one of my heroes. Yeager\u00a0was a fighter ace in World War Two, flying Mustangs with the United States Army Air Force when he became a double ace with 11 &#8216;kills&#8217;. But my admiration for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26386"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26389,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26386\/revisions\/26389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}