Warbird Information Exchange

I saw him several times while I was stationed at Edwards AB in the early 90's. Each time I saw him he was being (IMHO) an A-Hole (Prima donna?)to Enlisted guys just trying to do their job. I might respect what he has accomplished, but I don't respect him. I also doubt very much if he has much of a problem with groupies anywhere other than at airshows or aviation related events. To the average person on the street, what Yeager has accomplished in no way enters their sterile non-warbird world.

Also, it bothers me to hear people say that because of what he's done, he "deserves to be, or has earned the right" to be arrogant or obnoxious. It doesn't matter who you are, what you've done, or how much money you have, there is no excuse for treating people badly.

I was fortunate to be invited to a reunion of VF-1 in 1998. I had no connection with anyone in their squadron, hell I wasn't even in the "proper" branch of the service, I was just a guy who was interested in WWII Naval Aviation. My wife (who's Japanese) & I were welcomed with open arms by everyone in the squadron including their CO, Retired Admiral "Smoke" Strean. With all that these men accomplished during the war & afterwards, none of them felt compelled to show me anything but kindness.

Rant over,

Mac

The producers of the Gathering of Mustangs & Legends
has announced that they misspoke when they said retired
Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager would be attending the event in Columbus,
Ohio Sept. 27-30.

This legend won't be there after all, they said, and offered to refund
the money of anyone who bought a ticket just to see Yeager.

_________________
Bill


Website

Thank you very much. I've been waiting for that reply for the duration of this thread.

T J

_________________
Make my day, punk!

When people say he suppose to have ego and be arrogant he's a fighter ace/test pilot. I say . Does that make mean, rude and spiteful OK
I know and have known many successful fighter pilots/aces. All were friendly, courtious, helpful and exceptionally decent people. It's a h*ll of a list Harley Brown, Gen Jim Hill, Cy Gladen, John Tilley, Frank O'Connor, Max Lamb, Blake Moranville, Hub Zemke, Bill Harris, Charlie Stimpson, Oscar Coen, Jim Howard the list is long and distinguished.
BTW George Welch broke the sound barrier first in the XP-86 Sabre!

_________________
Don't touch my junk!!

Back in the early Eightys at a Airsho in the Valley I had the honor of getting to meet him and got him to Sign a Silk Escape Scarf on the spot of where he got shot down !( It Will not be on Ebay or any other areas of sell), But on the Wall next to my sign Auto and wishes from George Gay , Paul Tibbets Tenn Ernie Ford and David Tex Hill . All that I meet in person . I will always Cherish and pass on to my son. The only on Person that I ever meet that really turn out to be sour was Gregory Boyington After getting him to sign a 35 $ Book of his that I had just bought from him ask if he would sign a Time Life Cover of him. told that would cost another 35 $ Guess what ? dont have his book any more .

_________________
Always Keep Em Flying !

Glen

Lookie Capt Jim! Wham! Wham! ...............................Termights

Here is my 2 pennies.

If your a dick and you just go up to someone JUST for an autograph then yeah, I think you should be treated different.

If you are like me and others, who are really interested in the person and what they did, talk to them for a while, ( what time they can give you ) and then maybe ask for an autograph at the end of the conversation, most would be greatful for asking.

You just cannot approach someone and just demand an autograph. How do you think that he should react? Your not interested in him, just his autograph, which your probably going to try to sell, etc. etc.

Now, my experience is this, I am a huge fan of the General. I approached him at Oshkosh and asked him, if he had a few minuted to talk, because I was a huge fan and that I thought of him as my hero, that I always wanted to meet and he was a main reason I joined the Air Force.

I asked him what it was like breaking the sound barrier, because I wanted to hear it from his own words, even thought I read books and seen movies etc. etc.

Then I asked things like, what he was involved with now, and just tried to talk to the man, and give him respect. I was so nervous and excited and he could tell, that I forgot to ask him for his autograph, and he asked me, would you like me to sign something for you. I was so thrilled, I was like yes sir, I would be honored if you signed this for me ( his book I had in my hand ) and that it would be proudly displayed in my office at home, with all my other WWII pictures and such.

I am sure the General can tell right away what a person is into the moment that he started to talk to you. Be a fan, dont be a seller of autpgraphs and expect him to treat you like you even care.

My Uncle Joe goes fishing with the General in Alaska all the time, and he even tells me how down to earth the man is. I think everyone is, you just have to be human and treat others how you want to be treat.

He is my hero, I was honored to meet and talk to him even for a few minutes. It made my life, I know that. I tell my kids all the time when I see him on the T.V. Hey, there is the General I met. The kids ask me who he was and I get to tell a story about his accomplishments and how thrilled I was to be able to stand next to such a great man.

I've had the opportunity to work closely with another ace and most of the time he was a very nice personable guy. Let something come up that went against what he expected and things went downhill fast.

I respect him for his service and his accomplishments but there are days when I wasn't very impressed with the "man".

I have never met him, but I would think that Paul is right on. That goes for anyone "famous". Treat them as a person. They still put pants on the same way as anyone else.

I respect what Yeager did, he was a great stick and super cool under duress, just like Hoover, Levier and many others. What gets me is how all these other guys are such gentlemen 99% of the time and Yeager isn't.
I understand the autograph situation, but when he runs a kid off, that's uncalled for. He treats Vlado bad too? A fellow '51 driver? I saw a you tube video interview of him where he was completely rude to the reporter, and ripped Gabreski while he was at it.
If you want to see how he elevated himself above others, read NF-104
chief pilot Robert Smith's accounts of how Yeager refused to listen to instructions about the NF-104's rocket controls at high altitude. Said he didn't need to learn that stuff because of all his experience. He never once hit the flight profile because he couldn't handle it. Wound up trashing the airplane and about burned himself up, then got his high powered buddies to place blame elsewhere. He also taxied a B-57 into a NASA trailer and tore the roof off. Got that blamed on others too.

Check out this series of articles, its good stuff:

http://www.nf104.com/stories/stories_13.html

Me, I'd rather spend time with a Hoover or Levier than Yeager anyday.

Steve G

I had the good fortune (and sense!) to go to the first Mustangs and Legends event in Kissimmee, and met Gen. Yeager along with many of the other legendary pilots there. Of all the ones I met, only Yeager seemed to treat the event like a chore... he wasn't outright rude to me, but he was certainly brusque. Bud Anderson, Bruce Goebel, the Patillo brothers, Lee Archer, Alex Jefferson, Ken Dahlberg, "Pete" Peterson, Gen. Olds, Gen. Blessee, all the other ones I met were nothing like that. In fact, I'd say that the graciousness of Bud Anderson and the incomparable Bob Goebel more than made up for any shortcomings in Yeager's personality. Sure, he served the country well, and I certainly appreciate it, but it doesn't give him (or anyone else) the right to be an a55hole.

Lynn

Just to clarify my earlier posts, I wholeheartedly agree that just because of his accomplishments, it doesn't make it ok for anyone, including Yeager, to be arrogant and so forth. But the reason I look up to Yeager is because of what he's done in the past, arrogant or not.

If I found someone arrogant and rude when I met them, including Yeager, I probably would not care to be around them or purchase any of their merchandise in the future. I'm just an aviation fan and am impressed with the past accomplishments of Yeager, Hoover, Crossfield, Levier, Grabeski, and many others.

I agree with Jim MacDonald, wls3, Vlado, and TJ about Yeager. My opinion is posted in the other thread, no need to move it over here. Since he's NOT coming to GML, it seems there must be a reason, I will not speculate, but I can imagine what it is.

I think that it would not have been too difficult to sign 2 autographs for the home town crowd. One was for an old man who grew up with the Yeager family. The other was VERY respectfully asked for by a kid who's mom got close to $300k for a memorial to him. Interestingly enough, there was a crowd of about 300 for the dedication and ONLY 2 asked him to sign anything, maybe they knew what to expect. I knew what to expect, but my son wanted to meet him. I'd found out in the past that sometimes its better not to meet your heroes, lest you find out what they are really like.

A person's life an fame are often defined by a few seconds in a life. Maybe saving people from the WTC, maybe some other heroic act.

With Yeager, you need to consider his court martial as an enlisted man, maybe think about his lawsuit against the producers of the Right Stuff, or the cases between him and his children. The way I read it, they don't think he'd very competent.

However being Chuck Yeager does open a lot of doors.

Yeager in my opinion didn't have the "right stuff". He was only in the right place at the right time on several occasions. You need to understand that there was NOTHING to go back to in southern WV after WWII, no job, no development, nothing but digging holes in the ground, so staying in the Army was not such a bad idea. Yeager was lucky as heck, he survived a P-39 coming apart, getting shot down in a P-51, and the NF-104. Just think for a second the COUNTLESS number of pilots in WWII that didn't survive those things (NF-104 excluded). Yeager was in the right place at the right time when they looked for someone to break the sound barrier. If it wasn't him it would have been someone else there that day, the sound barrier would have fallen. I'm sure without Wolfe's book the RIGHT STUFF, that the Yeager legend would have been a bit smaller. Ever wonder why he wasn't an astronaut, I think that not going to college had a lot to do with it. While Yeager did serve his country, other than the sound barrier, I doubt his post test pilot career was really any more distingushed than that of other similar USAF Officers. Yeager did take advantage of the govt program to allow the USAF to pay the cost of producing him memoirs and then he had them sealed so nobody else could use them to write a book about himself (pretty smart).

While I believe that Yeager did do good, what he has done was over shadowed by his current attitude. Of course 100 years from now, nobody will remember his personal shortcomings and will only remember a few minutes on October 14, 1947.

Jack Cook named a bunch of really great people who fought for our country in WWII and there were a lot more. I remember talking to Tommy Hayes one time, super nice guy; I've been to Bob Powell's house, he was just something else. Bud Anderson is a real gentleman. Of course Bob Hoover is in a true class by himself. I've talked to him several times. The first time was in the 1970's at Latrobe PA. He was standing all by himself during the airshow and I asked him to autograph a magazine (which is still at mom's house somewhere) with an article about him in it. He wrote a nice paragraph about some of the things in the article. Just a real nice guy.

RT Smith annotated a book for me written by a imitation Tiger (China Through the eyes of a Tiger), Really nice of him to do it. I think he wore out a BIC pen writing 4 letter words in it. Heck of a good guy.

Because someone sells your autograph on ebay, you need to alienate everyone, so what? I mean you gave it away anyhow, the glut of autographs simply means that they are not going to sell for as much. If Yeager wanted to stop it, its easy. He can sell his own autographs on EBAY for $5 each or give them away for postage. That should stop the autograph sellers. Simple economics, supply and demand.

You can be famous and still be a good person.

Mark H

Mark H said:

"Ever wonder why he wasn't an astronaut, I think that not going to college had a lot to do with it. While Yeager did serve his country, other than the sound barrier, I doubt his post test pilot career was really any more distingushed than that of other similar USAF Officers. Yeager did take advantage of the govt program to allow the USAF to pay the cost of producing him memoirs and then he had them sealed so nobody else could use them to write a book about himself (pretty smart). "

Robert Smith's articles tell how Yeager failed the analytical side of Test Pilot School. He couldn't figure it out. He thought his experience and reflex's would get him his last great record in the NF-104. Its the only record attempt he failed. Might not of failed if he would have listened, but he wouldn't.

Steve G

I had the honor of meeting Scott Crossfield in a one on one setting. Just him and me walking around the War Eagles Museum in Santa Teresa, NM. He shared his experiences about flying the NACA P-51 as well as other examples in the museum. We came to the A-26 and crawled into the cockpit. He had never flown in one and listened patiently while I described the attributes of the Invader. He asked me questions about the A-26 which I tried to answer in anm intelligent manner based on my experience with the type.

You couldn't have asked to spend the morning with a nicer guy.

Having been to many American Fighter Aces Assoc. reunions I have spent time with many "Aces" including General Yeager and I have nothing but great memories of all my interaction with these great men. The General signed items for 2+ hours at one reunion. At Kissimmee he signed for an extended period. He even signed some art sent through the mail for me. Like earlier posters have stated that when you express a sincere interest in the man and his role in aviation history he has been approachable.
Gary