Chuck Yeager Quotes

Two of Chuck Yeager’s favorite quotes are “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,” and “You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done” (“Chuck Yeager Quotes” Web). Chuck Yeager is arguably one of the most, if not the most, honorable, most decorated, and most distinguished Air Force pilot in U.S. history. He left a huge footprint in history.

Chuck Yeager was born on February 13 1923, in Myra, West Virginia. Chuck had always been a curious kid. Hunting and fishing interested him far more than most of his studies, and yet he was also interested in mechanical engineering.

After a short stint as a flight instructor, he was assigned as an assistant maintenance officer in the Fighter Section of the Flight Test Division at Wright Field, OH. Wright Field was the center of Army Air Forces R and D. Since his job was to check out all aircraft coming out of maintenance, he got to fly nearly every fighter on the flight line. He demonstrated such remarkable skill that he was selected to fly in air shows. During one of the air shows in September 1945, he made his first trip to Muroc Army Air Field, which is now known as Edwards AFB. There he flew astonishing service trials on the new P-80A Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter. Col Albert Boyd, who was considered to be the father of modern Air Force flight test, was chief of the Flight Test Division. He was tough and absolutely unyielding in his standards. He was trying to construct a cadre of test pilots that would possibly set industry-wide principles for that line of work. Under his examination, only the very best pilots were carefully chosen to enter the new test pilot school at Wright Field. After closely observing and flying with Yeager, Boyd handpicked him to join the school in January 1946. He was challenged with the advanced academics because he only had a high school diploma but managed to