1.
Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, had always known how to fly. At the age of twenty, two years after enlisting for Army Air Force, he shot down two German fighter aircrafts. Shot down over enemy territory on his ninth mission, he travelled from France through Spain back into England, and was sitting inside a P51 Mustang during the allied invasion of France. P51s had piston engines, which were nothing more than relics, to the jet engines which the Germans had started putting inside the Messerschmitt 262s.
Imagine sitting inside your Tiago parked by the side of a road watching a Ferrari run by you at 200 km/hr. That’s what it felt like to watch a Messerschmitt 262 fly by you at top speed when you were in a P51 Mustang going at top speed. Yeah, P51s should have been at the mercy of Messerschmitt 262s.
And yet Chuck Yeager shot down a Messerschmitt 262, while flying a P51. He was twenty two.
2.
In the Mojave desert, where the Americans had been trying to break the sound barrier, a deep pessimism had entered the minds of the engineers. “The sound barrier” was just a scientific name for this pessimism. I mean, who could blame them. Pilots had lost lives in the planes they built trying to reach Mach 1.
The first time Yeager was behind the controls of X1, the aircraft which would later break the sound barrier, he stood it on its tail and launched it up vertically at 0.85 Mach. This had not been authorized.
3.
Sunday, two days before the Mach 1 test, Yeager drank a lot, as was the traditional evening past time in that desert, and decided to horse-ride deep into the desert. While returning, he missed the gate, slammed into it at full speed, flew, and landed on his right side.
There is a price to pay for flying.
That little adventure cost Yeager two broken ribs. They were broken on Sunday and were still broken on Tuesday when he climbed into the X1 without informing the command.
In the plane, Yeager complained about the Machmeter going screwy and on the ground they heard the sonic boom.
4.
Yeager was never well known outside the fraternity. The proof is that the name conjures up images of anime genocide and not aerial dogfighting. But there is nothing like flying, and a thing that can fly will always fly.
Ranju Mamachan got his Masters in Thermal Science from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India. He is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Department of Manipal Institute of Technology. He sometimes resurrects dead writers in his class to the amusement of his students. Previously published in 1. Rigorous mag: https://rigorous-mag.com/v4i4/ranju-mamachan.html 2. Cabinet of Heed: https://cabinetofheed.com/2021/11/07/our-finest-moment-ranju-mamachan/ 3. Story titled Killing superman published in Chaicopy: https://issuu.com/chaicopy/docs/ripples
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