At 13,000 feet, I headed for the bomb bay of the B-50, where the X-1A was nestled directly below metal scaffolding. I stepped down into the open cockpit strapped myself into the seat, and hooked my suit into the pressurization kit and the oxygen system. I gave a thumbs-up sign, and the crew lowered the heavy domed canopy over my head and sealed the bolts. For the next ten minutes, I checked out all my systems and started my prime to get all the gaseous oxygen out of my fuel line. It worked perfectly. Meanwhile, Jack Russell was supervising the disconnect of the liquid oxygen hose. He'd plug the fuel tank only when we reached altitude; otherwise, the pressure would build so quickly that the tank might explode. At 30,000 feet, Jack sealed the tank; a few moments later the big bomber lowered its nose and began a shallow dive to achieve 240 knots, my drop speed.
…four, three, two, one.
That familiar cracking sound as the shackles released the X-1A. I was lifted out of my seat by the sudden drop. Much faster than the X-1, because we're much heavier. We're right on the money-240 knots, nose-up angle. I reached for the ignition switches and lit three engines simultaneously. The impact knocked me back. They popped on clean and we whistled upstairs. With a domed canopy I clearly saw what Skip Ziegler wished he hadn't seen shock waves rippling like spider webs across the surface of my wings. Streaking up at .8 Mach to 40,000 feet, I fired the last chamber and was rewarded with that familiar kick in the butt. At .95 Mach we began bumping like a light airplane flying in turbulence; the buffeting meant I was about to cross threshold from subsonic to supersonic. We were flying the perfect flight.
Except for the blinding sun. It was bursting straight into my face. I could barely see my gauges, and when I took a quick look at my wing, I saw I was climbing too steeply because the sun glaring off my helmet visor made it impossible to see my flight attitude indicator. Instead of a forty-five-degree climbing angle, I was going up at fifty-five degrees. By the time I leveled off, I'd be a lot higher than the planned 70,000-foot ceiling on this flight. I lowered my nose going through 60,000 at 1.1 Mach, and by the time I reached the top of the arc and began to level off, I could've shaken hands with Lord Jesus. Eighty thousand feet. A nighttime sky with flickering stars at ten in the morning. Up there, with only a wisp of an atmosphere, steering an airplane was like driving on slick ice.
My Mach meter could register up to Mach 3. Nearing engine flameout, I hit Mr. Crossfield's mark of Mach 2. I dropped my nose slightly to pick up more speed and watched the meter register 2.2 and then, 2.3. I was accelerating at 31 mph per second, approaching 1,650 mph, the fastest any pilot had vet flown, and the fastest that any straight-winged airplane would ever fly. In my headset I heard Ridley ask Kit Murray whether he yet had me in sight. Kit said, "No-too small."
The Mach meter showed 2.4 when the nose began to yaw left. I fed in right rudder, but it had no effect. My outside wing began to rise. I put in full aileron against it, but nothing happened. The thought smacked me: Too high, too fast, Yeager. I might have added, too late. Christ, we began going haywire. The wing kept coming up and I was powerless to keep from rolling over. And then we started going in four different directions at once, careening all over the sky, snapping and rolling and spinning, in what pilots call going divergent on all three axes. I called it hell.
I was crashing around in that cockpit, slamming violently from side to side, front to back, battered to the point where I was too stunned to think. Terrifying.
The thought flashed: I lost my tail. I've had it. G forces yanked me upwards with such force that my helmet cracked the canopy. Without my seat straps, I probably would've been blasted right through the glass. My pressure suit suddenly inflated with a loud hiss. I was gasping and my face plate fogged. Blinded, being pounded to death, I wondered where in the Sierras I was about to drill a hole.
We were spinning down through the sky like a frisbee. Desperate to see, I groped to the right of the instrument panel trying to find the rheostat switch to turn up the heat in my face plate. But then the ship snapped violently back on itself, slamming me against the control stick and somehow hooking my helmet onto it. As I struggled to get free I had glimpses of light and dark, light and dark, through the fogged visor. Sun, ground, sun, ground. Spinning down. I had less than a minute left.
Through some sixth sense, I remembered that the stabilizer was set at "leading edge full down," and I could find that switch in the dark. Still fogged over, I reached for it and retrimmed it. Still groping, I found the rheostat and the heat flicked on. My face plate cleared and I saw more than I wanted to. I was spinning into the Sierras. Without even thinking, I set the controls with the spin. The ship flipped into a normal spin at 30,000 feet. I knew how to get out of that! I had spun every airplane imaginable, including the X-1. At 25,000 feet, I popped out of the spin. I radioed to Ridley. My voice was so breathless and desperate that I doubted he could understand me. "Down to 25,000 feet over the Tahachapis. I don't know whether or not I can get back."
Jack replied, "That's twenty-five, Chuck?"
"I can't say much more. I gotta save myself."
I heard a voice from the control van say, "I don't know what's going on, but he's down from altitude." God, I didn't know what was going on, either. I was so dazed and battered, I wondered if I could still fly. And I worried if the airplane could still carry me.
"I don't know if I've torn up this thing or not, but Christ…" Ridley couldn't understand, and when I repeated it, I sobbed.
I barely remember the next moments. But then my head cleared and I was at 5,000 feet, lining up with the lakebed. I was gliding in from the other side of the Mojave, doing 270 mph, and I started to believe I was going to make it. I got on the horn with Ridley. "I think I can get back to the base okay Jack. Boy, I'm not gonna do that again. Those [Bell] guys were so right [warning against going faster than 2.3 Mach]. You won't have to run a structural demonstration on this damned thing. If I hadda [ejection] seat you wouldn't still see me sitting in here."
The lakebed filled my windshield, and I put her down a little hard, with a thump and a cloud of dust, but no landing in my life was as sweet as that one. The flight data would later reveal that I had spun down fifty-one thousand feet in fifty-one seconds. I survived on sheer instinct and pure luck.
I had no idea that Chuck had set a new speed record because when he walked in the door that afternoon my first thought was that he had been in a traffic accident. He was pale and very shaky. The way he carried himself, I could tell he was hurting, and I wondered whether or not he had again broken his ribs. But then I saw his eyes: they were bloodshot, and I knew from past experience that happened from pulling heavy Gs. So, whatever went wrong happened in the X1A.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "They ran me by the hospital and nothing's broken. Just beat up some." He complained that his neck was stiff and sore. "I almost bought it today, hon," he told me. I had never seen him so shaken.
I was already dressed in an evening gown because we were going to a formal banquet at the Army-Navy Club in Los Angeles, where Chuck was to give a talk. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to go, but I told him I thought we should cancel out. "No, no, hell, no," he said. He got home around four; by five he was dressed and we took off in our car for an hour and a half drive into L.A. He drove, of course. It was a posh dinner, although a little long and tedious, but he gave a nice talk. That man had been up since four to go off duck hunting. We didn't get home until two in the morning. Chuck was asleep before he hit the pillow.