He started his military career as an aircraft mechanic. He went to flight school and became a pilot. He flew P-51s in Europe. He was shot down over France and spent some time evading the Germans while helping the French Underground. He was able to get back to England and convince Eisenhower to let him fly over France again (policy was that escape-and-evaders could not fly over the areas where they had been captured). He returned to combat over France and Germany, became an Ace (shot down five enemy planes) in one day. He was the first to shoot down an ME-262 (Germany's famous twin-engined jet fighter); he finished the war with 11 1/2 kills, three Air Medals, a Bronze Star with V devise, a Purple Heart, a Distiguished Flying Cross, a Silver Star, and a Legion of Merit.
After World War II he became a test pilot at Edwards AFB in the Mojave (it was called Muroc Field then) and was selected to fly the experimental X-1. Two days before the flight he broke two ribs and went to a veterinarian for treatment so the flight surgeon wouldn't ground him for the big test flight. He flew the X-1 to Mach 1.07 on October 14, 1947. There are some who dispute that he was the first: a German 262 pilot claims he did it in 1945 and another test pilot said he did it first, but the official record is Chuck Yeager's; he did it in an X-1 named for his wife (Glamorous Glennis), did it with two broken ribs, and did it without a brass band or parade waiting for his return.
Yeager was the model of what a pilot was supposed to be. His calm, country twang was the voice every pilot and air traffic controller of the time wanted to copy. He demeanor was as calm as his voice; he remained unrattled in any emergency. In an altitude test in a Rocket-assisted F-104, he calmly declared an emergency and bailed out, his oxygen mask burning on his face as he fell. He couldn't take it off; at the extreme altitude he would have died before he got to air thick enough to breathe. When the crash crews roared out onto the desert, they found him walking towards them, parachute wadded up under his arm, charred helmet and face mask dangling from his O-tube. Before Steve McQueen put a Hollywood face on it, Chuck Yeager was the epitome of "cool".
Today, while Felix Baumgartner was jumping out of a perfectly good balloon trying to break the sound barrier in freefall, the hero who first broke the barrier was up in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle, out over the area he flew in 1947, 89 year-old Major General Charles Yeager, USAF (retired) once again broke the sound barrier, 65 years to the minute after it was done for the first time.
This is one hero of history that I wish I could sit and talk to for a few minutes. The man truly was a giant of aviation history and like so many of them, he never felt like he had to toot his own horn.
Oh yeah, by the way, Baumgartner was apparently successful, reaching more than 800 miles-per-hour from an altitude of 128,000 feet.