Get a load of this guy.
Chuck. Yeager. United States Air Force Brigadier General Chuck Yeager. The man himself.
Back in 1947 he piloted the experimental aircraft Bell X-1 and at 45,000 feet in the air got the puppy to Mach 1 — the first human to ever do so. Six years later, in 1953, he broke the record again, eclipsing a previous mark of Mach 2 by getting his flier to Mach 2.44.
To say Yeager is an aviation legend is an understatement. It’d be like saying Shakespeare is merely a writer, or that Thomas Edison was merely an inventor. Old Chuck changed the game of flying, and his name will live on as long as humans are putting their fannies in planes and defying the laws of gravity on earth (and beyond).
In the following footage, watch the icon — at 89-years-old, mind you — get into the cockpit of an F-15 Eagle for an honorary flight at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada.