Boyd began his Air Corps career in the thirties as a pilot instructor and had the highest student washout rate of that era. He was demanding, but he knew pilots and flying, and I'm convinced that Chuck was his first choice right from the start. We talked in depth about all the others, but we kept coming back to Yeager. At one point, Boyd asked me which of our men I would choose to fly with on a dangerous combat mission. I replied, "Yeager, sir. He'd be there when I needed him in a life-and-death situation. He's cool and doesn't panic. And he has integrity. He wouldn't let me down to save his own hide." He nodded in agreement.
Yeager was a choice that insisted on itself on the basis of demonstrated skill and ability, but it wasn't an easy choice to make. It was Boyd's decision entirely, but life is never that simple in a decision of this magnitude. His superiors could easily second-guess him if something went wrong, and wonder why he chose the most junior test pilot available for the most important test project. My own choice would've been the easiest for him to make: Maj. Ken Chilstrom, head of the fighter test section. I chose Ken only because I knew him better than any of the others. But Boyd had seen Yeager fly in air shows, had watched him carefully when Chuck was maintenance officer during a test flight session at Muroc, and was tremendously impressed. I think, too, that Boyd saw a lot of his younger self in Chuck. Like Yeager, he was a southern boy who had come up the hard way. I remember him saying of Chuck's background, "You can't throw a kid like that who's taken so many hard knocks long before he ever got here. That's what makes him a great fighter pilot."
Picking Chuck was the right decision, but it was also courageous because it was unorthodox. Boyd had me sit in when he sent for Yeager. There was an electric atmosphere in that office. Each of us knew that history was being made right then and there. Bob Hoover as backup pilot and Jack Ridley as flight engineer completed the team.
Al Boyd's biggest concern was whether the structural integrity of the X-1 could withstand the extreme stress loads likely to be encountered at Mach 1. He told Chuck, "This is highly dangerous work. If you decide you want to quit this program at any time, it will not be held against you in any way. If you feel that way, I expect you to call me and say so. We can afford that kind of failure, but we can't afford to hurt anybody." There were two long meetings with Chuck, and throughout, Boyd forced him to stand at attention and called him "Yeager." But at the very end, he stood up and warmly shook hands and said, "Chuck, God speed and good luck. I have every confidence in you. But, Chuck, if you let me down and do something stupid out there, I'll nail you to the cross." And Chuck flashed that grin and said, "Colonel Boyd, I'd rather face the sound barrier any day than one of your chewings." And off he went to the Mojave, leaving behind a few shocked and jealous senior test pilots, who would wait impatiently for Yeager to fall on his ass.
PILOTING THE X-1: 1947
The airplane was officially called the X-S-I. The "S" was dropped about three years later. "X" meant research; ' S" meant supersonic, and number one meant that it was the first Air Corps contract for a research airplane-this one to investigate high speed at high altitude. I would be flying higher (around 45,000 feet) and faster than any military pilot had yet flown and the Air Corps medical labs decided that Hoover and I would be perfect specimens for experiments to learn about the limits of human endurance under maximum G loads and extreme high altitude. Hoover and I were now the first Air Corps research pilots, so we were fair game for all the torture that the astronauts would later suffer. The X-1 was back at the Bell plant in upstate New York being outfitted with a new tail. That spring of 1947, I was being strapped onto centrifuges or locked into altitude test chambers, testing different kinds of pressure suits.
That was really stepping into the unknown. Just terrifying. Hoover and I wore primitive pressure suits looking like damned deep-sea divers, and got locked into sealed chambers where they'd rupture the diaphragm on the door, and in two-tenths of a second you would be at 70,000 feet. Papers flew around and the window fogged. The first time that happened, they forgot to hook up Hoover's oxygen supply inside his pressure suit, and he couldn't exhale or inhale or communicate, and turned dark purple inside his helmet.
They took us up to 105,000 feet, which is the most air they could pump out of those chambers then nearly did kill us on the centrifuges. As experienced fighter pilots we could routinely withstand the pull of four Gs without any "G" suits, but they put tremendous loads on us, while strapped standing up and lying down. God, it was miserable, and we got sick as dogs. Bob said, "You know, pard, these tests are more traumatic for me than sitting in that damned X-1 cockpit and running the rocket even though the whole thing might have blown us sky-high." I agreed.
David Clark, a corset manufacturer in Worcester, Massachusetts, received an Air Corps contract for the first high-altitude pressure suits, so Bob and I flew there in a B-25 bomber to be outfitted. We would be the first pilots to wear them; these first models were so cumbersome that we looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy. There was no way we could eject from an airplane wearing them. The company was in the bra and pantyhose business, and I returned home with boxloads for Glennis. We came within an eyelash of going down on the return flight to Ohio, and investigators would have searched our wreckage to find two fighter jocks and a ton of bras and panties. Colonel Boyd ordered us not to fly in bad weather, but we hit an unexpected electrical storm. We were bouncing all over that sky. Hoover was flying when we were struck by lightning, a first for both of us. I mean a severe strike that blasted out the Plexiglas nose of the airplane. There was a rush of air and a terrible burning smell. We were both blinded by the flash. When our vision returned, we glanced at one another. Bob said, "I'm surprised you're still with me, pard." I told him, "I was just waiting for you to move to the exit and I'd be right behind you. ' Man, that was the truth.
We left for the Mojave in early July. I was officially TDY from Wright Field. That was military jargon for "temporary duty" at Muroc Air Base in California. Because I was TDY, I was not entitled to any on-base housing for my family; nor could Glennis use any base facilities, including its hospital or emergency room. Unless I was being permanently relocated, I would have to pay to move my family out to Muroc, and there would be no housing allowance if I did. I was disgusted. Glennis was back in West Virginia, having just given birth to Mickey, our second son, and we had yet to really live together. I wasn't around for Mickey's delivery, either. All this time, I was coming home on weekends, and now they were sending me to the West Coast to risk my neck and giving me nothing in return. It was a rough deal, and we were both sick of living apart. I told Glennis that we'd find a place at Muroc even if it meant putting up a tent on the desert. And it almost came to that.
Meanwhile, I'd leave California late Friday afternoon and fly all night to West Virginia in a T-6 which was a single-engine prop trainer. Many times I fell asleep in that damned cockpit, only to wake up not knowing where I was and find the airplane circling. It's a wonder I lived so long. Bud Anderson arrived in Dayton as I was preparing to leave for California. He was TDY, too, and Wily was with her folks near Sacramento. We flew out a few times together in a C-45 cargo plane. We'd take off at the end of a long day of work and put that thing on autopilot. Andy slept in the aisle in the back and I slept in the cockpit seat. Once I woke up just in time to find us flying up a box canyon in the Sierras. Another time, we both fell asleep and ran a fuel tank dry. Two big red lights were flashing on the panel, with both of us scrambling around. So, he was either flying all night for me, or I was doing it for him. It was a stinking way to live, but that is the life we chose. We once drove from Wright out to see Wily in Andy's 1946 Ford when we couldn't take off in bad weather. We drove out nonstop, taking turns sleeping in the backseat. And all this breakneck traveling gave us one full day at home with our families.