Chuck Yeager Breaking the Sound Barrier

Chuck Yeager remained in the Air Force after the war, becoming a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base). After Bell Aircraft test pilot “Slick“ Goodlin demanded $150,000 ($1.6 million in 2015 dollars) to break the sound “barrier,“ the USAAF selected Yeager to fly the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight. Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis (or some variation thereof), afte