Dave,

It's quite interesting to spend time with test pilots who had worked
with Yeager. The real test pilots from the days of the early jets and
rocket planes are extremely quiet, not cocky at all; as if they know
just how very lucky they were just to survive. Then comes Yeager who
put a multi-million dollar test program at risk because he decided to
fly with broken ribs due to his own ego getting in the way of the
program. Then, to the astonishment of the test pilot community, he's
portrayed as larger than life for his absence of judgment. As you
listen to them talk, you hear about how Yeager would sometimes be truly
one of the guys, twisting wrenches with the enlisted men and then
would, strangely, refuse to read the technical material on a test,
again placing it at risk, until it bit him with the F-104 test where
what was described as his failure to understand the installed systems
lead to loss of the airplane and him having to eject, destroying the
airplane and ending the program. Of course Tom Wolfe portrayed it as
an heroic ejection and escape from nearly certain death. sigh

Funny how the truly great test pilots don't get well known, for
example, Ivan Kinchloe, the guy that the Society of Experimental Test
Pilots thought was so very good that it named the award it gives to the
best test pilot each year, is largely unknown outside of the community.
He was killed trying to eject from an F-104 that had difficulties
right after takeoff. Al White, who hand flew the XB-70 at Mach 3 at
over 70,000 feet, where the margin for error on handling tolerances was
tiny, and did it for hours at a time, now lives quietly in Arizona and
even his neighbors don't know what he did - yet if you go to the Air
Force Museum in Dayton and look at the XB-70 on display, it's his name
under the window as the pilot.

Slick Goodlin, who did all the initial testing on the X-1, before it
was in condition to be handed over to the military, got shafted by an
author, and despite all he did with humanitarian airlifts, is recalled
by the public as a greedy person. It doesn't matter what kind of
person one really is, I guess, it only matters how one is portrayed by
the popular media.

All the best,
Rick