Yeager Shouldn’t Get All the Credit

With all due respect to Col. Chuck Yeager and his many accomplishments, and I’m sure he has many besides breaking the sound barrier (“An American Ace,” Oct. 8), there is not nearly enough credit given to the designers and builders of the X-1 rocket-powered plane. One man was lucky enough to be at the stick that day over the Mojave, but many hundreds more were responsible for the team effort that put his butt in that seat. In particular, it was liquid-fueled rocket technology that made the flight possible in 1947, a time when turbojet technology was still in its infancy.

It is interesting to note that Nazi Germany had the propulsion technology to break the sound barrier several years before (about 1945) with the development of its bi-propellant rocket engine for the record-setting Me-163B interceptor-fighter. The Germans were losing the war, and breaking the sound barrier was not on their agenda; the Me-163B was faster than anything flying as it was, and no better airframe was developed for what was to become Yeager’s main claim to fame.

For someone who “didn’t do it for personal benefit,” Yeager has been a tireless self-promoter (good or bad), advertising everything from gun safes to home heat pumps. The taxpayer-paid joy ride is great press for the Air Force and adds to Yeager’s profile immensely.

DAVE ARMBRUSTER, Oceanside

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Patrick Mott’s excellent article, “An American Ace,” is truly about an All-American hero, but more inspiring is the fact that flying the chase plane, as he did during the original flight, was Bob Hoover. Bob, one of the world’s best precision acrobatic pilots, was grounded in an FAA bureaucratic fiasco. It’s good to see him flying again.

SANDY FRIEDFELD, Rancho Palos Verdes