MonitoRadio Conversations; #24; [1985-08-01]

Tonight in the background, we have Box Prelude in C. I'm Lisa Taylor, producer of Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. This is show number 24 for August 1st, 1985. Segment times. Segment number 1, 57 seconds. Segment number 2, 6 minutes and 36 seconds. Segment number 3, 8 minutes and 48 seconds. Segment number 4, 3 minutes and 3 seconds. Segment number 5, 2 minutes and 36 seconds. The running times are as follows. Commercial break number 1, 57 seconds. Commercial break number 2, 9 minutes and 33 seconds. Commercial break number 4, 20 minutes and 21 seconds. Commercial break number 5, 25 minutes, 24 seconds. The show will start in about 1 minute. Enjoy the show and have a good night. The show will start in about 1 minute. The show will start in about 1 minute. The show will start in about 1 minute. The show will start in about 1 minute. The show will start in about 1 minute. The

show will start in about 1 minute. You're host Bob Mcdonald. Hi, thanks for tuning in. I was excited when I first heard that Chuck Yeager was writing an autobiography. I'd read Tom Wolf's book, The Right Stuff and I later saw the movie, but both left me wanting to know more about the man who broke the sound barrier. As many of you know, Chuck Yeager's book is now out and it's full of the colorful stories one would expect from the West Virginia Country Boy who went on to become known as America's greatest pilot. Actor Jimmy Stewart says of the book, Chuck Yeager's devotion to aviation as a combat fighter pilot, test pilot, and commanding officer, his devotion to his family, his country, and to life itself, makes his book fascinating and inspiring. The autobiography is titled Simply Yeager, and tonight my guest will be General Chuck Yeager. Please stay with us. We'll be back right after this message.

This is Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor and joining me now is General Chuck Yeager and we'll be talking about his career and his new autobiography. Chuck, I wanted to start off with your achievements. Your achievements have been so well documented and your autobiographies are only going to make them further known around the country. And whether you've chosen to be or not, you're more or less a modern -day American hero for us all. And you're so visible today. Do you ever feel that you have a sense of responsibility that goes along with this role? I always have felt I have a lot of responsibility to the public for putting me where I am. And the first off, I look to the Air Force as what I am, I owe to the Air Force because I came into it as an 18 -year -old kid, fresh out of high school, and whatever I needed to know, the Air Force taught me. And that's where the whole thing has been.

Since you have that feeling or that debt of gratitude to the Air Force, how is that fit into your life today now that you're retired and you're doing other things? Very good, but I may have retired from active duty back in 1975, but the Air Force still uses me as a consultant test pilot. And I still do a lot of work for the Air Force. People look up to you and they are using you as an example. What do you think about that? How's that affect what you do? Well, you know, yes, people look at me as a role model or they point after their kids. Now there's somebody you should be like, but you know, you don't be like a person just because somebody says there's somebody you should be like, there's a lot of things involved like the right place, the right time, and luck, and all of those things. And that's the thing that I see today. I'm not a role modeler. I'm not a success because I wanted to be. I'm a success because I just happen to be at the right place, the right

time. Yeah, but you're doing awfully good work at the same time because I know Emmett Hatch and some of the other pilots that flew for you when they come up in the book. It's very touching to hear them talk about just you're being there and setting an example inspired them to be better pilots. Well, the thing was, see, I had years and years of experience before them and a lot of it, you know, the best experience in the world is like combat. That's why you're trained. And there's no better pilot than a guy who survives combat because that's the ultimate in flying. And that's the reason I say in my book, there's no such thing as a natural born pilot. The better a pilot is, the more experience he has. And that's the one thing that I was able to demonstrate to the guys in the squadron when I was a first squadron commander, the first squadron that I ever commanded, like Hatch and the rest of the guys is that I could show them things with an airplane that they would had never experienced before because, you know, they were young guys. I was an old head by the time I could show them and that's the way their learning process

goes. I'm talking to General Chuck Yeager. But even though it's a lot, it's experience in that's in there. I'm sure that there's some other things that made you such a remarkably good pilot. Major General Fred Scanney in the book has this quote where he says that you're the only pilot he's ever flown with who gives the impression that you're part of the cockpit hardware so in tune with the machine that you could be on autopilot. There's got to be something more than just experience it's made just such a remarkable pilot. Yes, that goes way back and you get to add all of the things up together that, you know, a kid experiences. Number one, I was very mechanically inclined as a kid. I spent many hours at night in vocational school because it was fun to me to tear down engines and rebuild them, so I understood them. And the same way with the, I had an excellent eyesight, obviously had good coordination and good stamina. And when you start adding all those things up and developing and lastly, the most final thing is live so that you, you know, enjoy those things. Obviously,

I can fly an airplane because of all of the experience that I'd had and all of the talents that I had. You know, I don't think anybody is going to read this book and not realize how crazy you are about flying and how much you love it. And what particularly about flying, what are the things that really make it so special to you? Well, I don't know because number one, I never saw an airplane before I got an Air Force, so I knew nothing about them. And the first time I flew in an airplane, I heave my cookies all over it. And so you say, well, what was the guy want to fly if he gets sick? Yeah, I got sick my first one or two, two or three rides. But then when I began to fly, I began to enjoy it. Now, after I look back at all of the many hundreds of airplanes types that I have flown, and today I fly the F -20, which is the ultimate in technology, you really appreciate what an airplane does and how well it

does it. And also, like I say in my book, if you do something well, you obviously enjoy it. And in most cases, most people do. Yeah, I guess what I was driving at is what is it about flying? What is it that really, well, you can't say it's the fun of sitting in a cockpit of an airplane. Today it's actually all of these things added together. You crawl in an airplane that will go vertical and accelerate. It's a thrill to do something like that, or an airplane that has beautiful weapons management systems in it, or a smooth engine, or a well -fitting ejection seat and cockpit and everything falling together. It's fun. And it's a very expensive piece of equipment. You say in the book that combat is the ultimate flying experience for you. Why is that? That's because that's why they pay you. If you're in the military service in regardless of what country you work for, Germany, Canada, the United States, if you were uniform, you're there for one purpose, and that's to fight to defend your country, and if the need be. And

combat, obviously, is the ultimate of flying, because that's either kill or get killed. And that's sort of the end. And the obvious objective is to not get killed. Let's pause right here for a moment. We'll be back with more with General Chuck Yeager right after this. You're listening to conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. My guest is General Chuck Yeager. Chuck, your close friend, Bud Anderson, says in your book that he thinks your combat experiences and accomplishments in World War II might mean more to you than breaking the sound barrier. Is he right there? Yes, they meant more to me, meaning that I was fighting for my country and also combat as the ultimate. Probably the most useful thing that I ever did in my life was the X -1,

because that accomplished and opened up an entirely new era. You know, your work as a test pilot for the Air Force and breaking the sound barrier is what you're best known for. You talk about a very important turning point during World War II, where you made a very unusual request that had to get approved by General Eisenhower that kind of steered you in this direction. What's the story there? Actually, when we started flying combat in the fall of 43 and I got shot down on my eighth mission on March 5, 1945 and in occupied France and the Germans were around every place and I got on the ground and gathered at my shoot and I'd been head a few holds shot. I mean, and went off and hid in the woods and was able to evade the German troops who were looking for me and then finally a couple of days later contacted the woodcutter and he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French so he went and got a guy who could and brought him back and he wanted what I wanted to do and I said I want to get the Spain and they took me to a

house and kept me a couple of days and then finally took me down and turned me over to the Mackie, the free Frenchman and boy those guys were vicious fighters. They were wonderful people and but I was interesting to me. I spent about a month with them. The British would drop them canisters of plastic explosives, steam guns, 38 llama automatics and meat ration points and counterfeit money and all this stuff and they were living pretty good. I mean, they were effective and when I saw all of the explosives we were getting. My dad used to shoot gas wells with plastic explosives and I'd work with that stuff as a kid and also I knew fuses and I knew guns and so I started showing them how to set the timers on their fuses and how to shape the plastic explosive to cut rails and things like this and they had a good time fooling around with them and but they eventually helped you get back to England. They helped me get across the Pyrenees in Spain and when I had the British brought me back to England after the Spanish released me to the British at Gibraltar then the object was to send a guy home like me because

if I flew combat again he got shot down then the Germans would bleed out of me you know the underground system and there would be a lot of innocent people. So at that point you were on your way home. I was coming home and I decided hey they know where I'm going home because I've only flown eight missions and some of my buddies were still up or fighting so I went all the way up through the channel to General Eisenhower and fortunately the invasion occurred at about this time and the mackies were surfaced and it made it easy for him to get the decision to make a decision to send me back to my outfit to go back up on. Now how did going back into the outfit then lead to you becoming a test pilot then after the war? Well it really it really worked out but when I finished my tour in February 45 came home was assigned as a basic instructor in Texas. The Air Force came out of the policy all those who had been prisoners of war or evadees meaning got shot down could select any bastion in the United States and I looked at closest based on my hometown of Hamilton and West

Virginia it was right feel. I asked for right feel it sent me there and made me the assistant maintenance officer because I had a maintenance background and it was always a maintenance officer in my fighter squadron and that puts me right in the heart of the flight test unit not as a test pilot but as a maintenance officer but the one thing the old man noticed my boss Colonel the boy and Colonel Scanney both was my ability to fly and secondly how well I understood the systems and you got to stay on the ass me did I want to go to test ball school and I said yes so I went. I'm talking with General Chuck Yeager one thing that really stands out in the book besides flying is that you love hunting and fishing and there's no doubt about it from the time you were a little kid in West Virginia all the way up until today. Well you were we were raised that way and we you know he shoots squirrels rabbits deer augment the table supply you know it was it's a challenge hunting is and even today I do a lot of hunting probably more for the exercise than for the sport. Well speaking about today you know you've been retired now for a few years and from the sounds of it at the end of the book you're

as active today as you've ever been what excites you today what are you getting into today now that you're not in the Air Force for a while. Well I still do a lot of work for the Air Force as a civil service employee as a consultant test pilot I also get to fly the F -20 as a consultant test pilot to Northrop because there's no military money in it so I don't get into a conflict of interest and so I do work on that I fly the Piper Cheyenne 400 LS because Lear Ziggler owned Piper company and I work for Lear Ziggler before they bought it. In fact on this tour you're flying yourself around the country. Yes we have a Piper Cheyenne 400 to hit the city it's really fun because it was setting records setting records between every city because the 400 is so fast it breaks any turbo proc. So even today as you're going around promoting your new records with a piece of cake really and it just matter you know going from point A to point B anyway I do still do a lot of fishing and hunting in fact I just got back about 10 days ago

from three weeks up in a hushy air backpack and then we were living off gold and trout the same old good fish we got. Old and trout that's a real interesting little story in the book. It seems that you used you use some of the resources when you were in the Air Force to a few escapades every hour. A lot of you know regulations are to be used as guidelines we stress them a little bit but one thing general branch here the commander Edwards had friends in New Mexico and they wanted some golden trout. Well California passed the law back in the late 1800s that prohibited the removing of golden trout eggs or fry. Now fry is anything under one inch a minute very small minute. Well it doesn't say anything about golden trout themselves. So what we did in course 1890 they didn't have the capability of moving a trout from California to New Mexico without a die and a rotting for us concerned but what we had to keep a wealthy then of moving into the hushy airs with helicopters catching these six inch golden trout a pure strand

and then putting them in trash cans with ice and oxygen and flying them to Edwards and then flying them to New Mexico and then taking them up to northern New Mexico above nine thousand feet where golden trout live and putting them in a fish hatchery. We did that it worked out real good and a lot of people were very surprised we'd do things like that but but it was you know we sort of bent our eggs and used a few air planes to do it but that's where it is. You're a real prankster at heart and that comes out too because you know from from all the whole time you're in the air force it seems you're always trying to think up what's the next good prank I can pull. What's one of your favorites? Well like the guys you set around by stoves when we were in cash per training to go overseas you had cold stoves that print in in the late fall and and you know you'd always go out and get a bucket of coal and put in a stove when it didn't think it's hot enough and I used to sneak in the you know a dozen fifty caliber machine gun shells and with the coal and dump it in and fast walk out of there because you knew

the the crud was going to hit the fan pretty soon and pretty soon these things would go off and blow the lid off and fill the room with suit and I remember that one day I was walking too fast and the guy suspected something was up and they got out before the stove blues but that's the way we used to I bet that made you a real popular guy in the squad you know they watched you more carefully after that you know yet another thing that really stands out in the book is that you have had a lot of fun in your life and you in fact you end up the book by saying that you've really had a ball up in this point it looks like you're going to continue and what are your suggestions to people about how to enjoy life well you know don't get too serious about it obviously I think a person who enjoys this job does it very well normally the law bearing together hates it and and it gives you better attitude it probably make you live longer too we'll be back with more of Chuck Yeager right after this this is Bob McDonald

and you're listening to conversations with the Christian Science Monitor my guest is general Chuck Yeager how about another example of a prank another favorite of yours well I you know the guys are always doing things that we were sitting playing poker one day and sort of glimpsed the movement in the wind and looked over and there's a hand grenade with a string tied to the pen is bouncing the guys upstairs under second floor pulling trying to jerk the pen out I'm sure he wouldn't have pulled the pen out of it but it got our attention real well man we wheeled out there like shots Chuck why did you decide to put down your life in an autobiography what led to this well the right stuff left a lot of misconceptions in my opinion in a lot of people's minds the movie especially and I sort of wanted to document my whole life and and that's where the book is and what that's the way really it was the way I tell it in my book what do you hope that someone gets out of reading your book oh I don't know just the the understand how it was in the old days and how we felt in in World War II in

combat and Vietnam and and as test pilots you know one of the neat things about how you just how you decided to put the book together is that other people appear throughout the book and we get to hear what they thought about particular things that were going on and probably the main character beside you and the book's your wife Glennis yeah well I met her in 43 when I was flying P -39s and I obviously decided to marry because she was making more money than I was so I would send her my money from England by war bonds and she was really the greatest thing it ever happened because I was flying when we got married and she was behind me all through my research flying career and and everywhere else and the thing was she was tough enough to withstand all of the rigors of being the wife of a research pilot and a lot of wives couldn't take it because man we're getting having guys getting killed every day and the poor wife you know gets handed $4 ,000 or $5 ,000 insurance policy and and six months pay and then they goodbye that's it that's that's a tough way to end your your marriage career but a

lot of gals couldn't stand it Glennis could and she's stuck with me all these years she's been a great asset one last question besides Glennis you say that Colonel Boyd who you served who later was General Boyd who you served under at right and then later out in California Edward you said besides Glennis he was the most important influence on your life I was wondering what what he was the guy that selected me for the X1 program and and since the X1 program was successful in breaking the soundbearer that yeah I went into the history books not really influenced or changed my life a great deal obviously it's opened up opportunities that I wouldn't have had had I not broken the ship been the first guy to break the soundbearer General Yeager thank you very much for being with us on conversations thank you we'll be back with the close of our show right after this welcome back to conversations

and here are a couple of items to wrap things up first a note about book publishing that relates to our guest tonight bannum books the same company that's publishing Yeager recently printed the two millionth hardcover copy of lia coca's autobiography they did that just nine months after it hit the bookstores it's very rare for a book to sell a million hardcover copies let alone two million among the very select group of books to reach a two million mark Richard box Jonathan Livingston seagull Margaret Mitchell's gone with the wind and Norman Vincent peels the power of positive thinking bannum has high hopes for Yeager and is printed 225 ,000 hardcover copies already and now here's a note about cooking I used to think I was pretty fast at peeling hardboiled eggs until I read about the folks at Atlantic Foods in Hemingway South Carolina the company sells peeled hardboiled eggs to restaurants up and down the East Coast and according to the Wall Street Journal they do all the work the old -fashioned way by hand new employees there have to peel at least 20 eggs a minute one group of six employees holds the team record of peeling 10 ,000 eggs in one

eight -hour shift and the individual's speed record is held by a woman who can peel 48 hardboiled eggs a minute I guess I'm going to have to make some eggs salad tomorrow in practice before I close I'd like to invite you to write me if you have an idea for a topic you think we should cover on conversations a person you'd like to hear or if you'd just like to comment on our show if you're interested here's my address Bob Mcdonald then right after my name write p -929 that's my in -house mail stop then conversations with the Christian Science Monitor one Norway Street Boston Massachusetts 02115 that's Bob Mcdonald p -929 conversations with the Christian Science Monitor one Norway Street Boston Massachusetts 02115 that's it for tonight's program tomorrow night join me when my guest will be one of the great legends of country music he's recorded 26 straight number one country hits

he sold a million albums a year between 1964 and 1969 and the Beatles had a hit with one of his songs who am I talking about the one and only buckoens thank you for listening this is your host Bob Mcdonald have a good night this has been conversations with the Christian Science Monitor produced in Boston Massachusetts and is a copyrighted broadcast