We lined up both airplanes for that first takeoff. I climbed up onto her wing and watched her start up, then ran over to my airplane and started up. We both closed our canopies, and I checked and saw that she had her flaps set for takeoff. I spoke to her on the radio. She was a little scared. "Don't get too close," she said. "Forget about me," I told her. "I'm used to this. This way I can watch you and see if you do anything you shouldn't." I remembered setting her air conditioner selector switch down to the cool position because the sun was up and blazing against her canopy. So, we took off together and about the time she broke ground, she flipped the gear handle and the gear came up. She radioed, "I've never been so hot in my life. This cockpit is burning me alive." I moved in real close to where our wings were overlapping and I could see the corners of her flying suit rippling from blowing air. The Sabre was equipped with a powerful canopy defroster that bled air right off the engine compressor and it was really hot at low altitude and full power. I could also see her hand on the throttle. I said, "Take your hand off the throttle, move it back six or eight inches. Okay. Now, raise it up a little higher and move it outboard." I was watching her hand and I could see the lever for the defroster control. Somebody had accidentally hit it when she got in the cockpit and turned it on. I told her to move back the lever. She did. Her flying suit stopped rippling and she cooled down. We flew for a while. She was always excellent at landing airplanes; nothing bothered her. After she landed, I debriefed her. She bitched and moaned about that hot cockpit.
I said, "You've got to get used to things like that. That happens in flying."
We had maybe a half-dozen of these orientation flights. Finally, General Doolittle called me and asked me to fly down to Jackie's ranch and meet with him privately. She was staying in my place at Edwards. General Doolittle was a close friend of hers, and he really put me on the spot by asking me point blank whether I thought Jackie could keep from busting her ass in a Sabre and fly proficiently to set records. "The Chief of Staff is concerned about this," he said. "The last thing we want is a catastrophe involving Jackie Cochran. If you think she can go through with this, we'll back her. If you think she can't, just say the word and we'll back off. But know this, Chuck. If you say she can, the monkey is on your back to keep her from getting hurt." I told him, "General, she's a good pilot with a tremendous background of experience in flying. She can fly practically anything, and I really think she can do this program."
So we went for it. She had a lot of confidence in me, but occasionally other pilots like Pete Everest and Tom Curtis flew chase for her, and she would be upset because I knew better than they what her capability was. Jackie hated the smell of sweat and kerosene inside the cockpit and on her parachute, so every time she flew, she carried a perfume spray. Everv airplane she flew in smelled like a French whorehouse. For a year after Jackie went through there, pilots could still smell her perfume aboard those Sabres she flew.
After six or so flights in the Sabre, I figured she knew it well enough, so I took her up to 45,000 feet and told her to push her nose straight down. We dove together, wing to wing, kept it wide open and made a tremendous sonic boom above Edwards. She became the first woman to fly faster than sound, and forever after, she loved to brag that she and I were the first and probably the last man and woman team to break Mach 1 together. Then we began practicing for the three-kilometer run. To get the maximum true speed out of the Sabre we had to fly when it was as hot as possible because the hotter the air, the higher the true speed, which is many miles an hour faster than on a cool day. But hot air means turbulence. One boiling afternoon we were about a hundred feet off the deck going at .92 Mach and the air was shaking our airplanes like a cocktail mixer. Suddenly I saw fuel gushing out of her wing and the side of her fuselage. I told her "Hey, you've got a little problem. Shut off your throttle-stop cock it. Turn off your engine. Get your nose up." She obeyed immediately. But her fuel was still gushing out back. Meanwhile, I got on the radio used another channel, and told tower to get the fire trucks out because we had a bad fuel leak. They scrambled. I told her, "Okay, start a gradual left turn and the minute the airspeed gets below 200 knots get your landing gear down." She did. I was right beside her. I said, "Okay, drop the nose. Keep your airspeed up to 150." She did it perfectly and she lined up for a lakebed landing. Man, I got her out of that thing the minute we landed.
The next day Jackie broke the speed record. We came back down, and the official judges verified the data from the special recording devices, and, I swear it was worth the effort just seeing the expression on that woman's face. She was very quiet, really surprised me. "Thank you, Major Yeager," she said, and she hugged me. The first person she heard from was Colonel Ascani, who held the previous record and sent her a warm letter of congratulations. We celebrated her achievement at the officers' club at Edwards. Jackie was so thrilled that she could hardly speak. But the person wearing the biggest smile was Floyd. Man, he practically busted with pride. I had taken him up a few days before in a two-seat jet trainer, after driving him in from the house in my Model A. He was so frail that there was no way to get a parachute on him, but I flew nice and level, and he thoroughly enjoyed going around the course we had laid out for Jackie. Privately, he thanked me for helping Jackie get through the program successfully. I told him, "It's her mark, Floyd, she did it herself." And that was true, even though some of the pilots at Edwards thought I had pulled her around the course like a dog on a leash. Bull. I chased her. That's all.
Five years later, she would prove how good she was. This time she would attempt new speed records in the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, a Mach 2 airplane that plenty of experienced fighter pilots were scared of. And she would set records that still stand. And later that same year, she and I would fly to Russia together and have more adventures in three weeks than most people have in a lifetime. But those stories are for a later chapter. Jackie Cochran was a truly extraordinary person.
GOOD-BY
Before leaving for Germany in 1954, there was a farewell party at Edwards that became a historic occasion because I actually got Jackie and Pancho together in one room. They hated each other from as far back as the 1930s, when they competed in women's air races. Pancho would say to me about Jackie, "How can you stand that old bitch?" And Jackie would say to me about Pancho, "That disgusting bitch-how do you stand her?" I had Pancho on one side and Jackie on the other and there were no fireworks. Glennis said pulling that one off was a bigger achievement than breaking the sound barrier and she was absolutely right.
Really, the person I was saddest to leave behind was Jack Ridley. We had worked so closely together for so many years that I felt naked going out into the world without him. I said to him, "Goddamn it, Jack, how in hell do I get a squadron from point A to point B without your slide rule?" 01' Jack was sad too, because my leaving really symbolized an end of an era for both of us. But he stayed on for a couple more years. He and Nell had a young son, Ronnie, after years of thinking they couldn't have any children. Then Jack was transferred to Japan. Glennis and I heard from them from time to time, and they were happy to be leaving the desert. "Nell is willing to go anywhere in the world where there is no wind or sand, ' Jack wrote.