Yeager: An Autobiography by Chuck Yeager
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Book Reviews of Yeager: An Autobiography
Book Review: Yeager - Great Autobiography!
Summary: 4 Stars
Yeager is an amazing autobiography about Chuck Yeager, one of the best fighter pilots and test pilots the world has ever known. The book covers his life from his childhood up until his life today. Incredibly, he is still alive to tell the tales of his bravery and courage in flying. I chose to read this autobiography because I have always been interested in the speed of sound and had heard about the incredible contributions of General Chuck Yeager. Usually I am not interested in autobiographies, but this one proved me wrong. General Chuck Yeager had really stunning events happen in his life, and I felt like I was right there with him! Specifically, Yeager's time in World War Two and when he broke the sound barrier were two of those stunning events.
One of the most significant events of his life was when Yeager was involved in World War Two. During this time of his life, he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps. His job was to fly and protect bombers during their missions. If German fighter pilots came too close, he would go after them. This happened numerous times and proved that Yeager was an outstanding fighter pilot. Yeager was great at "dog fighting" and soon became an "Ace" which meant he had five kills. By the end of the war he had made Ace several times over. He was considered one of the best pilots and was assigned lots of missions. During one mission in World War Two, he was shot down over Germany and had to crash-land his plane. "It is slightly past noon on Sunday, March 5, 1944, I am a wounded, twenty-one year old American fighter pilot, shot down and on the run (page 33)." He had to hide from the Germans and try to escape. It took him a while to get free and away from Germany, but thanks to the help of some Germans who did not agree with the war (and many other people along the journey), he did survive.
This event was important to him because he was in a very harsh situation and could be killed immediately if he was spotted. He had a family to go back to and didn't want to get caught. He knew it was critical to find a way to escape and he did, even though the process ended up taking months!
Another key event in his life was when Yeager was asked to fly a ship called the X-1 and try to break the sound barrier. No one had ever done it before and most pilots ended up crashing and dying. The U.S. Air Corps didn't know if it could be done safely or not. They thought the barrier could be a "wall" and he could explode. Yeager still wanted to attempt to break the barrier. In order to do this, his X-1 jet would be dropped from a bomber (and start his engine while in the air) and he would fly from there so he could conserve as much fuel as possible. "The moment of truth: if you're going to be blown up, this is likely to be when. You light the first chamber (page 152)." Just before reaching supersonic speed (approximately .93 Mach), the airplane would get really bumpy and almost go out of control. This is when Yeager would go back down to the hanger and get data from the flight and find out why this was happening. Every day he would go a little faster. One day when Yeager was flying the plane at about .97 Mach, the plane began shaking heavily with shock waves bouncing off the wings. All of a sudden, it got smooth. Yeager looked at his air speed indicator and it had reached "one". Yeager had broken the sound barrier!
This event was important to Yeager (and the rest of the scientific community) because he was the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. He had set the record for flying speed-an incredible achievement that took guts and determination. This was a major breakthrough for developing jets in the future.
Chuck Yeager had a lot of experiences in his life that taught him much about himself. He learned he was one of the best pilots in the world and his determination helped him become one of the best test pilots. As it turned out, Yeager had a great reputation for flying airplanes and was asked to test many prototype planes for other countries. He was the one to decide if the plane was air worthy or not. He also learned that because of his courage, the world would now make faster aircrafts for other people to fly. Chuck Yeager made a lot of aeronautic breakthroughs for the world, which helped contribute to our lives today.
Book Review: Fasten your seat belts....
Summary: 4 Stars
Supposedly, Chuck Yeager has amassed a bad rap, but from his autobiography, it's hard to see why. The retired USAF General, who went from shooting down German jets in WWII to flying faster than sound before anybody else thought it possible, tells it like it is. While that won't engender warm feelings, Yeager was obviously a man even his rivals could trust. The General writes of his humble Virginian origins. Enlisting in the Army as a mechanic, Yeager moved to the pilot's seat through a program intended to put more non-com's into flight-duty. Yeager displays a true pilot's nostalgia of the days when he writes lovingly of the obsolete P-39's he flew from Oroville (half the P-39's built went to the Red AF under lend/lease). Getting to England by 1943, Yeager upgraded to the legendary P-51...only to get shot down by a German FW-190. Smuggled into neutral Spain and then repatriated, Yeager returned to his unit and then began shooting down German planes, including the Me-262, the first operational jet fighter. Describing the crude though effective jet, Yeager shows how his mechanic's training and senses made the crucial difference: the early jets, built for high-speed, were vulnerable when approaching their runays for landing. Because existing jet engines responded slowly and unpredictably - with one engine spooling up much faster than the other - Luftwaffe pilots who tried to speed away from threats a low speeds often got sucked into mysterious and uncontrollable rolls. It was thus in that vulnerable state that Yeager hunted the vaunted jets.
After the war, and on the strength of his having been shot down, Yeager became a test pilot at the famed high-desert testing ground of Edwards AFB. Though a fighter pilot, it was again Yeager's mechanic's training that made the difference in his selection to pilot the supersonic X-1. Originally intended for flight by civilian pilots with high-pricetags, the X-1 was grabbed in 1947 by the newly formed US Air Force as a high-profile project whose success would set that service apart from the Army from which it had just been separated. Successfully taking the X-1 past the sonic barrier, and avoiding numerous would-be disasters, Yeager excelled as a fighter-pilot. Though rivals with test pilots in other services, it was with civilian pilots that Yeager reveals a true enmity, and for the period NASA pilots in particular. Paid for their work, these pilots were not likely to satisfy the minimal requirements of flight test - exploring and establish the outer boundaries of an airplane's performance. (Nor were they very good pilots, the General maintains, "proven" by the fatal mid-air collision between the B-70 and a NASA flown F-104 in 1965). Even the best civilian fliers are flawed pilots, exceling simply because of their readiness to test their flawed assumtpions, as "Wheaties" Welsh did at the controls of an F-100 prototype with a misdesigned vertical stabilizer.
Leaving flight-test, Yeager eventually rose to command of a squadron of F-100, a plane revolutionary in that - for its pilots - it inaugurated both missiles and mid-air refueling, and was guaranteed to weed out "weak sisters". Yeager's adventures include stints commanding units in Europe during the early cold-war days, Vietnam and Pakistan during the 1970's, as well as more flight test. He flew with Jaqueline Cochrane, the rich aviatrix who left the scent of perfume in any plane she flew, chatted with Andrei Tupolev and MiG pilots, and flew MiG-15's flown to the west by defectors. Thruough it all, he rarely rises to being judgemental, though he lets history do it for him - like the way the public largely ignored him and other test-pilots while lavishing attention on Merury pilots whose scientific contributions to flight test were not as great. At the same time, his ire towards the political forces that inevitably stretched their tentacles out at flight test becomes too great to ignore - such as when one lackluster African American pilot becomes the Kennedy Administration's designated astronaut.
"Yeager" is full of insights into the aviation's golden age as well as the Cold War, yet it remains one man's story, and like the Bell X-1, it's a story your strapped into until the end.
Book Review: An american life
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book, here in Brazil.I'm an agronomist and I like to read books.This book is an auto-biography.
This book has very good parts.About World War II, Chuck Yeager tells us that, he had an order to kill massive numbers of defenseless german civilians in last months of World War II, using .50 machine guns.Not a single american pilot refuge to follow that order.Chuck Yeager himself tells us about this reality.
This book is in many times has emotion and good advices.
If you read all my other reviews about auto-biographies, you will see that with just one exception(" The World of Yesterday " by Stephan Zweig), any auto-biography got five stars from me.
This auto-biography is sometimes, with no sincerity.
Chuck Yeager tells that, he was born and grew up in Virginia.
At these times racism/eugenics was law in Virginia and he never tells us nothing about or against racism/eugenics in these times.Well, if he was a racist, he doesn't tells nothing.Well, I think that in these times, he was a racist, but he doesn't tells nothing about this subject.
Book Review: The barrier is broken
Summary: 4 Stars
Chuck Yeager's biography is also a surrogate USAF history. From the well timed "Sound Barrier" attempts, to his off-duty exploits, this true American hero accurately describes the hazardous nature of military aviation, and the talented, ornery characters imbued with the "Right Stuff" to develop the military's cutting-edge fighters. General Yeager holds no punches in his recollections of mistreatment by the envious, unctuous newcomers bent on having his career derailed, due to his lack of educational credentials. America would do well to remember the many sterling accomplishments of General Yeager, and that someone with the physical acumen, coordination, superb vision, and a general "can-do" attitude does not need a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering to fly well.Book Review: Ball's Out
Summary: 4 Stars
"Balls Out" that is the way Chuk Yeager described his flying, and also the way he lived his life.By his own admission he was one of the luckiest People on the face of the Earth; he had survived many difficult and risky assignments and had been given great opportunities whilst flying for the USAF.
At the end of his career Chuck had flown over 180 different aircraft, (most of which were experimental) and had logged over 10,000hrs flying.
This is the story of his life and is quiet simply a fascinating story about an exceptional pilot who lived in extraordinary times.