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@johnedwards2051 Says:
He was a family friend rip chuck
@imcubanb2870 Says:
Dwight was scoring 26/26 in all tests. Same tests as the white pilots. Would you lets someone who failed medical school do heart surgery on you?
@hfar_in_the_sky Says:
You know, it’s always nice to hear a biography about a person who was:
A) relatively uncontroversial during and after their lifetime.
B) Got to enjoy their fame during their lifetime.
and
C) Lived a long and happy life.
Chuck at least seems to anyway had all three in spades.
@delasoul7772 Says:
Did you know while America and uk was helping form Pakistan during 1970s. One of the indian pilots in a canbbera Arun prakash shot and destroyed chucks private jet. Crying like a bitch he rang jimmy and wanted to have war with india. 😂😂. But backed off because mighty Russia cornered both uk and usa. Both ran back like little girls.😂
@USNveteran Says:
I had the good fortune to have met General Yeager many years ago. He was a great guy and we only had a brief conversation he seemed to be pretty down to earth to me. I thought it was really interesting that he passed away on Pearl Harbor day. FLY NAVY!!!
@Shanemvm Says:
Chuck and my grandfather were great friends later in life. He enjoyed coming to Cimarron, NM where my grandparents lived and I had the pleasure of meeting him back in '16. He was a stoic guy but boy did he have just the best stories about his military life.
@iHYP9 Says:
I know Eren Yeager
@jefferywoods1051 Says:
I actually learned to drive on chuck Yeager road, lol.
@aaronyeager7404 Says:
Thank you for covering my uncles life.. I wish everyone knew him as I did. The good and bad..
@rcrawford42 Says:
Yeager shot down an Me-262 -- a jet -- in his propeller-powered plane.
@briandoss9232 Says:
Never learned about him in school either. Wish I had.
@Vietnam_Vet_67 Says:
I being from the Great State of West Virginia makes me proud because of men like Chuck Yeager. But we also have other famous people from there. Like Don Knotts, Steve Harvey, and others. Great Bio thanks.
@JamesOberg Says:
Re the Ed Dwight controversy -- I've read Dwight's autobiography. His standing in USAF test pilot school [NOT ever at NASA] was 'run-of-the-mill' partly because unlike all the other students he spent his weekends flying around the country giving speeches. He endeared himself to his fellow students [who had all been flying in racially integrated units all their careers] by making it clear he was a White House shoo-in with a promised ticket. The most recent NASA team selection for new pilot astronauts was in mid-1963, while he was still in the test pilot school [only two men in that pilot class had been picked by NASA that year]. The next selection wasn't until three years later -- he resigned before even applying. His claim that a White House order to ground him showed up the Monday after the Friday of the JFK assassination is unworthy of credence, the Pentagon doesn't work that fast and he wasn't ever grounded, he finished test pilot school and like ALL the other classmates, was returned to regular AF flight duties.
Most of the Dwight story as generally portrayed is false. AF commanders bent over backwards to let him slip past a series of requirements including height [an inch shorter than the cutoff, a crucial safety issue because of the life-and-death ability to push foot pedals to full extension in emergencies]. I've FOIAed his training records, he was never 'picked by the White House' [an official there called the Edwards school to see if there ANY black pilots on the application list, and when informed there was one, ordered Curtis LeMay to order the school to admit him], he blames the school for his mediocre grades and flying performance by allowing him to take his requested weekends off to deliver speeches around the country [during which travel he alleges the AF hired male and female prostitutes to try to entrap him at hotel bars], while the other pilots studied and flew, was never kicked out of test pilot school [NOT 'astronaut training], he was on the candidate list the AF sent to NASA for the 1963 pilot class, and like 80% of the other pilots on that list, wasn't selected], never set foot on the NASA Houston base, never was a NASA astronaut [so couldn't have encountered racist harassment from NASA]. and more.
The key accusation Dwight made against Chuck Yeager goes like this: Dwight tells interviewers that HE was told by a fellow student that the student had been told by an instructor that Yeager had told them to create hostile atmosphere and drive Dwight out. Fourth-hand gossip at best, no first or second hand witnesses have ever been found. And Dwight finished the school as scheduled.
He also tells the story he quit the AF when he dodged a murder attempt by unknown people who had sabotaged an aircraft he was supposed to fly, by refusing an order to get in the plane and take off, which order he was punished for disobeying.
In his autobiography he admits to a tempestuous love life that would have been a red flag for NASA. When he applied to test pilot school, he remembers being concerned they would find out he was receiving base family housing in violation of established criteria [his wife had left him and he withheld that info from the AF]. He later remarried, and at least once, the base Air Police had to come to his home to break up a screaming match with wife #2 in the front yard of his house. The USAF took good family relations very seriously since any personal crisis threatened the ability to concentrate on flying and pilots were routinely grounded briefly after family crises.
Aside from the curse due to White House speaking demands, there was the issue of him being a few inches too short to fly the Lunar Module [and his delusion that the Apollo vehicles were all remote controlled from Houston so pilot skill really wasn’t important]. By the time the TFNG's came up in 1978, there was a much wider array of black candidates, many of them THERE because of the publicity around Dwight. He earned plenty of honor. But in 1963 he was an expendable tool of the JFK White House reelection campaign.
@johnjacobs9187 Says:
If y’all ain’t from WV you’ll never understand the heart that comes with it’s people. Hard times have always been there, so the people had to be harder.
@stevenmartinek815 Says:
Simon Whistler broke the sound barrier in a remote section of the earth long before Chuck Yeager. He kept this a secret. He got a running start for 40 yards, leaped into the air and reached a height just above the stratosphere. At this point he was going Mach 5. Mr. Whistler then extended his arms and slowed to 500 miles an hour. He then decended to ground level where he continued to run 5000 miles, all without breaking a sweat.
@PuffleFuzz Says:
I’ve always loved planes, rockets, and other space related things. I never realized that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier 50 years to the day I was born until I first watched The Right Stuff in 2015. (October 14. 1997)
@westbygod_304 Says:
I grew up in Lincoln county WV chucks from right down the hill from me
@NoNameNo.5 Says:
Hero of the Republic
@ibrahimmantala5054 Says:
Great job Simon, but are you ever going to do a video on Colonel John "40 second" Boyd by any chance. Thanks.
@FrankLafone Says:
One group you left out of your list at the end (and the final words of the piece should tell you that groups name).... West Virginians :) He never left the state's consciousness.
@notation254 Says:
Raising a glass to this man. Chuck, you are an inspiration!
@MrZenToad Says:
CHUCK GODDAMN HERO YEAGER
@thebx-substack-com Says:
Why should a college education matter? Idiots. Same thing with Dwight. What a guy. He sounds a lot like Casey Stoner. Eddie Lawson and Mick Doohan have the same grit, albeit in motorcycle racing. Grounded excellence is immortal, regardless of where it comes from.
@btetschner Says:
Great video, Biographics is the best.
Thank you for the video.
@btetschner Says:
Very interesting.
He died on my birthday, I did not know anything about him before that.
Coincidentally (maybe?), the book The Right Stuff was released the year I was born.
That same year there was a company called Supersonic electronics was launched, which also sells shirts of his supersonic flight.
@CptCupcakeUk Says:
First time i've heard of him, interesting character and story. So much owed to his testing.
@JohnAdams-vd5dc Says:
*Gandhi. Not Ghandi. Simon, you did a Biographics video on her and it was well made.
@mikef2813 Says:
Hero. Plain and simple.
@justjust555 Says:
If you ever get a chance to watch The Right Stuff it’s a phenomenal movie about the Mercury program and Chuck Yeager is a prominent character in it.
@sachadavid8410 Says:
Why was it forbidden to fly over enemy territory after been shot down and helped out by the resistance ?
@krombopulousmicheal4268 Says:
Chuck Yeager was an asshole to his crew chiefs but a hell of a pilot. Dangerous game.
@GYRUSS Says:
Is the beard growth every going to end?
@korratheaustralianshepherd5804 Says:
Would love to see one on David Attenborough!
@fauz6239 Says:
My grand father was a mechanic for Yeager and the sr-71 black bird we have a written letter from Yeager telling my grandfather that leaving him in control of mechanic duties was alway a relief cause of how squared away my grand father was. Very cool thing to hold in your hands
@anthonyhayes3991 Says:
He ended the war with 11.5 victories. Where does the 0.5 come in
@Aegian47 Says:
You should cover the British equivalent of Yeager, a chap called Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown.
@historyman590 Says:
Here are some more people you could cover:
1. Robin Olds was another legendary fighter pilot who severed in Europe during World War II. Later he would serve as a commander of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing and was the architect of Operation Bolo in which the North Vietnamese lost 7 MiG fighters in one day. Aside from this, Olds was known for his rebellious nature and his colorful private life.
2. Ranald S. Mackenzie was a career soldier who fought through most of the Civil War. At the Battle of Petersburg he had two fingers shot off. Later, Indians would give him the nickname "Bad Hand." Finishing the war as a Corps commander in the Army of the Potomac,. Ulysses Grant and William Sherman considered Mackenzie one of the most promising officers to come out of the war. Mackenzie was appointed colonel and given command of the 41st U.S Infantry, one of the legendary "Buffalo Soldiers" units and sent to Texas to fight the Comanche Indians. Mackenzie would fight the tribe in several battles, finally defeating them at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon in1874. He would go on to fight in one more major battle against the Cheyenne in 1876, but he would begin to show signs of mental illness. While he continued to be promoted, by 1883 his erratic behavior could not be ignored. He was found insane and discharged from the Army in 1884 and died in obscurity just five years later.
@loretta_3843 Says:
The words "Test Pilot" aren't exactly glamorous 😕
@ckitsker1 Says:
Will you please do a video on james Baldwin
@markhough1027 Says:
Not sure if you did this but Philippe Pétain would be a good one from hero to villian
@nigelfuller1840 Says:
Shave.
@deadlockraven1849 Says:
You did a video on Neil Degrasse Tyson that was awesome, so how about Bill Nye? It has to happen!
@biographies13etg12 Says:
Tu
@Yakboy999 Says:
Just watched the Nimitz video. I highly recommend doing a video on Hyman Rickover and the U.S. Nuclear Navy. Certainly an eccentric visionary.
@noneofurbusiness5223 Says:
Sad, most people under 50 don't even know who he is.
@Hamzakhan-dt3gv Says:
Interesting video
@SkipPebbles Says:
Can you do a Bio on Vladimir Komarov. He was crashed into the earth in a known faulty Ussr space craft, his back up pilot and best friend was Yuri Gagarian.
@benjamindada638 Says:
c an u do one on my favourite actor of all time sidney poitier pls
he died at the start of this year
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