RIP Chuck Yeager

[Motofun]

Chuck Yeager has passed on.  97 years young.  WWII, Korea, rocket planes, sound barrier...certainly had the right stuff.  I think I'm going to go to the store and buy some Beemans gum. 

[FJ_Hooligan]

Wasn't he the only one to shoot down a German ME262 jet in WWII?

[red]

Wasn't he the only one to shoot down a German ME262 jet in WWII?

FJ_Hooligan,

Chuck Yeager was the first American pilot to shoot down a ME262, but not the only one.  In the movie Red Tails, one of the Tuskegee Airmen did too.  Actually, they shot down three of the German jets.
From WIKIpedia.

RIP Gen. Chuck Yeager, a true American hero.
.

[T Legg]

My next door neighbor back in the eighty's and ninety's was a P-38 pilot in the Pacific . At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to him about hearing the sonic boom from the Thrust SSC out on the black rock desert when they broke the landspeed record and he told me about Chuck Yeager. A bunch of the former WW II pilots got together regularly and Chuck was one of them. He said he was a regular guy and just part of the group when they got together. What a  practical generation they were. My neighbor was very independent he would tell me the only person he ever worked for besides himself was Uncle Sam. The subject of nuclear power came up one time and I remarked I thought it was too dangerous. He said"hell son weve been using nuclear power for forty years(it was in the early 90's) and not one person has been killed. We know what we are doing ". I felt like a weanie he was absolutely right. They were a tough can do generation.