In a day and age when we are now supposed to believe that those athletes who come out of the closet are heroes we go to a place in time when heroism was measured by much different standards!

It was once said by Ian Fleming, former World War II Royal Army intelligence officer and author of the James Bond series of famous espionage novels adapted into some of the most successful Hollywood movies of all time, “only under extreme duress does the true character of a man become apparent.”  Apparently so is this statement true of the aviators of the US military. Men who climb into aerial war machines and under the assured proposition of life and death, ascend to the skies at incredible altitude and speed and duel with the enemy thousands of feet from above. Some of them bravely test X-planes where the unsure application of new technology might guarantee a fiery grave in the upper thin atmosphere where the twilight of space casts a shadowy prelude above the face of the earth.

Qualified to know

In his book, “Yeager an Autobiography,” We get a very truthful assessment of the world of the pilots of his time from 1941 to 1975. In a book written in his own words the pages of history are told by a man who bravely created some of its chapters. His rise to prominence in aviation history came about just before the Pearl Harbor attack and the beginning of World War II and led to 30 years of flying in combat, testing the latest generation of experimental, enemy, and modern fighter aircraft for the US Air Force and his country. You can count on just how this man evaluated the character and conduct of others he flew and fought with and how they died as well. It takes one to know one, and Brigadier General, Chuck Yeager, saw the best of our flyers and sadly how their personalities sometimes contributed to their own demise.

One fatal flaw

According to Chuck, the one distinguishing characteristic that separated the ace fighter pilot from others was at times the very thing that caused his own death, and whether in the cockpit of a P-38 Lightning, a P-51 Mustang, or an F-104 Starfighter the odds were that either through a long number of missions and combat hours or test flying in yet unproven advanced aircraft, the law of averages couldn't be ignored and we often lost many a brave pilot this way. Yet, Chuck Yeager tells us that not only character, tenacity, and training made great pilots, but inter rivalry among fighter jocks for the purpose of public relations often led to the untimely death of such brave men.

Deadly contest

In the case of Major Richard Bong, top American World War II ace with 40 victories and Thomas McGuire, the second all-time US combat pilot ace with 38 kills, both men had a common denominator-arrogance and death! The Army Air Corps unintentionally contributed to the likelihood of such a terrible scenario by pitting each flyer against the other in a competition to see who would could achieve the most shoot downs for morale purposes, but it was this kind of mindset that led to their untimely fate as well. Both pilots flew in the Pacific theater against Japanese air warriors. The skies over the vast waters of the ocean and island groups were the scene of some of the most savage fighting in the war.

No place to be

Without mission orders or authority to go hunting for air to air kills, Thomas McGuire went on safari in the skies over the Pacific trying to catch and surpass his comrade and rival, Richard Bong. McGuire along with 3 buddies flying the P-38 Lightning, one of the most formidable fighters in the war, found what they were looking for too! Some Japanese air bases were just below their position! He and his wing man now had the opportunity McGuire was seeking as they dove on the enemy and proceeded to attempt a fighter sweep! Over confident, desperate to beat Bong’s record, and skilled as an aerial killer Thomas McGuire got in the way of a Japanese Oscar as it dived on his comrades from above! Attempting to bait the Japanese flight instructor with 3200 hours under his belt when his wing man was about to get shot down Major McGuire caught the enemy’s attention after slowing his P-38 down at low altitude and weighed down with gas tanks he had not jettisoned! When accelerating and attempting a sharp turn strongly advised against at 300 feet only disaster could strike!

Last seconds

Pulling a hard turn to try and elude the Oscar, McGuire’s Mighty P-38 snapped in midair, as the Major had exceeded the aircraft’s envelope. His fighter spun out of control and plunged into the jungle floor below bursting into flames as it exploded upon impact! Observers claimed he had almost regained control of his fighter but the weight of his drop tanks doomed his plane! Too eager to beat Major Bong’s record and heroically trying to save one of his own comrades Thomas McGuire perished with the wrong priority in mind. War is not a hunting ground or a competition it’s already a deadly enough proposition!

Deadly mistake

According to Chuck Yeager, Richard Ira Bong, a Major himself, who had scored 40 confirmed kills managed to survive the war only to die while flying as a test pilot. Chuck described Bong as a self-assured man that no one could tell what to do. A simple mistake cost him his life. Major Bong died while standing upright in the cockpit with a parachute draped over him in a P-80 Shooting Star he had not yet checked out in because he did not read the manual over the proper operation of the jet engine oil pump. The ill-fated fighter plane plunged onto the airfield just seconds after climbing into the air off the edge of the runway when the engine stalled. Major Bong, who refused to thoroughly read the operation manual that Chuck Yeager had urged him to review died in the burning wreckage of his Lockheed P-80!

Risky role model

Chuck Yeager would be the first to admit that he himself had been a daring, testosterone driven aviator willing to take any challenge by either defeating the enemy or taming an X-plane in order to help mankind succeed in his understanding of sound barrier breaking speeds! In World War II he had shot down 5 German fighters in one dogfight, one after another, yet he admitted that the opportunity had simply presented itself in rapid fire succession. Yeager was shot down over France by in his words, “by the one who will get you every time that the one you don’t see.” Rescued and kept by the French underground until he was led to the Spanish side of the Pyrenees and to safety where he soon rejoined American forces, Yeager said that even Spanish bounty hunters were capturing American servicemen and handing them back over to the Nazis!

Tragedy averted

The night before his fateful rendezvous in 1947 with his historic first supersonic flight by a manned aircraft Chuck had been out on an evening horse ride with wife, Glennis, when as they played a game of cat and mouse, Yeager rode right into a low lying tree branch and was knocked off his horse! That night he realized he had fractured some ribs in his fall, but refused to report his injury to the flight surgeon. Yeager wasn’t going to miss this historic fight for anything! With his broken ribs Chuck knew he would never be able to close and seal the heavy hatch that locked him into his pressurized cockpit so he secretly sawed himself a handle off of a broom stick so that he could get enough leverage to pull the hatch shut. The rest is history as he achieved Mach .08 in level flight

Another fatality from the sky

 Just a couple of weeks earlier Jeffrey De Havilland had been killed attempting the same supersonic goal in his swept wing aircraft he had named the “Swallow”. His British rival, the younger son of the aircraft company owner had been too self-confident and pushed through flight testing too quickly before realizing too late that his plane suffered a fatal flaw. Once again the self-assuredness of a young dashing test pilot had been his undoing.

Denied chances

Due to the pretension that existed in the US Air force over using only college educated graduates as pilots used for prestigious flight programs Chuck Yeager, who was passed over for promotions he should have gotten was not selected for the X-15 and Mercury Programs. The federal government only wanted college graduates even though they were all fighter pilots with secondary scientific education. From Gus Grissom to John Glenn, from Gordon Cooper to Alan Sheppard, all astronauts were former fighter pilots! This, NASA began to rethink as future space exploration would hinge more on computer navigated flight than the excellent piloting skills of a fighter jock willing to take risks with expensive spacecraft hardware. However, even though he possessed mercurial flight skills, Chuck Yeager emphasized that obsession to detail over aircraft operation manuals outweighed college degrees if the pilots who arrogantly ignored the finer details got themselves killed along with their aircraft!

Legacy of the UFO

It is interesting to note that several well-known astronauts of the early space programs such as the X-15, Mercury Space Capsules, and Gemini II Manned Missions all reported UFO’s at some time in their career. Chuck Yeager said in his book any pilot that reported a UFO usually didn’t see much career promotion after filling out the paper work. Though he saw and pursued them himself, Brigadier General Yeager never made official reports only friends and family got to hear such tales. Joe Walker, former fighter jock and friend of Chuck’s had also reported unidentified flying objects around his X-15 rocket plane and made a public statement about it too.

Too confident for his own good

As Chuck Yeager said of Joe Walker, he was a proud aviator who didn’t take advice from anyone. A hotshot pilot who had survived World War II Walker as too arrogant for his own good. In his own words, you couldn’t tell Joe anything. June 8, 1966 during a 5 aircraft tight formation publicity photo shoot by General Electric tragedy struck! Walker’s F-104 was flying too close to the wing tip of the gigantic XB-70 Mach 3 super penetration bomber! Unable to see where the wing was as Walker probably gauged his position by the fuselage his tiny Starfighter smashed into the giant XB-70! Immediately Walker’s F-104 went into an inverted roll over the top of the bomber breaking two of its stabilizers and sending the ultra-fast nuclear capable bomber into an uncontrollable spin! Walker’s F-104 burst into burning shards of metal killing him instantly. The XB-70 crashed killing one pilot while the other managed to eject!

Best witness

The publicity shot had not been properly authorized by the US Air Force and this resulted in the termination of several officer’s careers involved in the promotion! Joe Walker paid for this ill-advised exercise with his life! Such is the fate of some men too brave for their own good, too confident to acknowledge the risks, and too self-assured to consider the consequences. What better a judge of character than one of those high flying fighter jocks himself, but Brigadier general Chuck Yeager who was still flying attack missions as a squadron leader out of Thailand when he retired in 1975? Let us make no mistake about these men. They served their country with courage and distinction that we see less and less of in this day and age as political correctness tarnishes the truth and our definition of heroism!