General Yeager: I never lost a pilot while flying chase, but there were many close calls.
From Carl Bellinger:
Flying chase was an art that not many test pilots bothered to perfect. There’s no glory flying chase – no goal assist, no brownie points. But a skilled and dedicated chase pilot often meant the difference between making it back or not in a dire emergency. Chuck Yeager was the best one to have flying your wing in a tight spot. Everyone wanted him to fly as chase because he had logged more rocket flying time than anyone else and knew those complex systems intimately. He was also the most skilled and experienced test pilot there, who had taken off and landed thousands of times on those lake beds in all kinds of situations.
And he had the best damned eyes of any of us and could spot trouble before a warning light flashed on the instrument panel.
Chasing was unselfish flying, and there were some pilots who just didn’t stay alert. Chuck was a noticeable exception. He flew as balls-out flying chase as he did flying the X-1. As a chase pilot, he was a ten; by comparison, most of the others were sixes or sevens. The difference was critical. I know.
Yeager saved my life.
I was testing Republic’s prototype, the X-F-91, a rocket-propelled experimental fighter, in the summer of 1951. Chuck flew chase on my first flight. We took off at the first light of dawn. I was rolling down the lakebed runway, getting ready to lift off, when he came by in a Sabre and began to fly in formation with me before I was even airborne – superb piloting right from the start. He did a half-roll right above my canopy to check me before I had my wheels up.
I had just lifted off the deck and retracted my gear when Chuck radioed: “Man, you won’t believe what’s coming out of your engine.”
A moment later, I got a fire warning light.
“Christ,” I said, “I think I’m on fire.”
He replied, “Old buddy, I hate to tell you, but a piece of molten engine just shot out your exhaust and you’d better do something quick.”
He meant I should immediately punch all my wing tanks and turn right back onto the runway.
We were about 500 feet over the lakebed heading out.
He cautioned: “Don’t you hit my house with those tanks, either.”
Normally, I would’ve laughed but we both knew I was in one helluva bind, too low to eject and my cockpit filling with dense black smoke. The fire in back was tremendous, and I radioed to him, “Chuck, I can’t see in here.”
“Do a two-seventy to the right and keep it tight,” he replied in that calm voice.
I followed his instructions, got me gear down, and in only a few crisp words, he had me lined up and landing. He stayed right on my wing as we touched down.
I had that canopy open and hit the ground the moment the ship stopped rolling. I jumped for it just as the tail melted off. Flames and smoke poured into the sky.
Chuck was right there and I climbed on his wing. His canopy was open and I just shook my head.
“Damn, that was close,” I shouted at him.
“It really was,” he laughed.
We taxied up the lake bed with me holding onto his fuselage and met the fire trucks racing towards us in a cloud of dust from seven miles away.
From the time Chuck saw my engine start burning until he talked me down took no more than ninety seconds. That’s about all the time we had.
The X-F-91 had burnt to ashes by the time the fire engine arrived at the scene.
c. GCYI