"gatt" wrote in message
...

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
news:Yw63g.8603

Yeager implied he was a hot dog who would always push it and that his
death by small plane wasn't surprising.

Yeager has never liked the civilian test pilots very much and has said so
on many occasions.

He ranted about that at length in his biography.

I had a strange experience doing a documentary ("Flying the P-38
Lightning") with a bunch of WWII fighter vets one time. There was the
straw-hat faction (Hoover fans, bless 'em), and a couple of guys who sort
of snubbed the others. One guy mentioned what squadron he was in--
"YEAGER's squadron!"--and then suddenly right in front of all of us, two
or the old guys looked at each other and turned their backs on him. One
of the guys' WIFE said "I wouldn't brag about that."

I don't know what Yeager did to **** them off, but there were about half a
dozen of us there including Jeff Ethell. We all just sort of shifted and
looked at each other. I asked one of them, with whom I'd chatted quite a
bit, and he said something to the effect that Yeager was a pompous ass and
anybody that served with him and bragged about it probably was too.

I took a mental snapshot of that moment.

Might have been that Yeager's squadrons won every competition that came
down. That tends to **** off the highly touted fair-haired boys that don't
cut it when the chips are down.