Yeager Does Right Stuff at Air Show : Aviation: Legendary pilot wows and amuses an adoring crowd at Edwards’ annual open house.

Dapper in a blue Air Force cap and green flight jacket, the first man to break the sound barrier 47 years ago stood shyly in front of a gaggle of onlookers on a crowded runway here Saturday, talking about what it’s like to pilot an aircraft so fast you make the sky go boom.

His listeners at the base’s annual open house and air show stood with mouths agape. This was, after all, Chuck Yeager, a guy with all the right stuff, the biggest top gun of them all, whose post-World War II exploits in the topsy-turvy world of supersonic air travel helped pave the way for space exploration.

On Saturday, “forty-seven years, one week and one day after I made the first sonic boom here,” Yeager returned to the Mojave Desert to repeat the feat in a T-38 fighter jet, kicking off the air show before a visiting entourage of Russian aviators and tens of thousands of appreciative, neck-craning fans.

“So, what did you have for breakfast this morning?” asked one man with a video camera. Referring to the typical bouts of air sickness and migraines among fighter jocks at such G-force speeds, the 71-year-old retired Air Force Brigadier General responded with a smile: “I had a fighter pilot’s breakfast--two aspirin, a cup of coffee and a puke.”

The group howled. But the guy with the camera didn’t have it running and asked Yeager to repeat the quip. The gray-haired veteran of the skies gave him a nothing-doing shake of the head.

“Just like in one of my planes, I’ve learned never to make more than one pass,” he said. “You get shot at that way.”

For many, seeing Chuck Yeager--who made his historic supersonic flight Oct. 14, 1947--was the highlight of this year’s show, in which the Air Force gives taxpayers, aviation workers, curious motor heads and technological eggheads a bird’s-eye look at some of the military’s most sophisticated wartime hardware--F-14 Tomcats, SR-71 Blackbirds, cargo and surveillance aircraft, even the mysterious B-2 stealth bomber. The day was punctuated by the thundering booms of numerous fly-by displays.

With his son perched on his shoulders, Gary Sundberg of Bakersfield showed off his autographed hat. “Chuck Yeager is an inspiration, a national hero,” he whispered. “If you read his books, you’d be amazed, too.”

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Indeed, this was the domain of people fascinated with the sky and the man-made objects that swoosh through it. They began arriving on base shortly after dawn. By midmorning, on a concrete area outside several huge hangars, hundreds of lawn chairs faced out toward an expansive lake bed so flat it looked as if a divine hand had smoothed it with an industrial leveler.

Gawking families walked hand in hand, oohing and aahing, pointing to the huge aircraft the Air Force referred to as “static displays.” Just as they might at some state fair or collector’s show, they bought T-shirts and caps, trading cards, bumper stickers, posters and commemorative pins--all bearing the likeness of some plane, helicopter or fighter jet.

And if you weren’t able to fly a jet like Chuck Yeager to experience a bit of air sickness, well, there was a way to do it right there on the ground: A group of teen-agers lined up for a ride called Space Ball, in which harnessed riders were turned upside down and every which way.

Meanwhile, back and forth the families walked, men in baseball caps and severe crew cuts drinking 16-ounce beers at $2 a pop. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders, covering their ears each time a huge piece of hardware lumbered past overhead.

“Where’s our seats, Daddy?” asked one small boy.

“We don’t need seats, son,” his father responded. “All you have to do is look up into the air and you’ll see all there is to see.”

And look they did. One joke was pointing into the sky in mock search of Chuck Yeager.

“There he is! There’s Chuck!” said one teen-ager, neck craned to the heavens.

“No, he isn’t,” his friend replied. “He’s over there!”

Holding her 10-year-old son, Justin, by the hand, Sue Cowles of Simi Valley said her family rarely misses the annual event. “Edwards is the best!” she said. “You get to meet the pilots. My husband works for a defense contractor, so this is our life. It’s exciting stuff.”

Asked what he looked forward to seeing the most, Justin Cowles looked at the sky and gave an answer that was all-boy: “I don’t know, the bombs maybe,” he said.

But it was the general whom most air show fans had come to see. Yeager, a World War II pilot, remains a consultant test pilot for the Air Force’s Flight Test Center at Edwards, where he flies the F-15, F-16 and stealth aircraft.

One by one, giddy autograph hunters danced away with the name Yeager scrawled on hats, programs, even their right arms. As the pilot walked down a line of fans, a blind man reached out to touch his arm like some messiah of the skies.

Liz Teeters of Newhall came away with one of the grand prizes of the day.

“I got Chuck Yeager’s autograph,” she said. “I mean, the man is an icon. He’s bigger than any rock star. He’s got the right stuff.”

But the most fevered reaction came from a man who didn’t even manage to get Yeager’s autograph. The handshake, though, suited him just fine.

“I shook his hand! I shook his hand!” he called out to his wife, bursting through the crowd. “Did you see me get in there? It was so wild! Right after he shook my hand, he looked around and said, ‘OK. I have to go now.’ And so I was the last one!”

The man stopped and called after his wife, who moved away in the crowd.

“Honey? You don’t think I should wash this hand for a few days, do you?”