Chuck Yeager

World War II Fighter Pilot

By: Don Keith

Narrated by: Josh Robert Thompson

For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, the riveting true story of United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot Chuck Yeager.

Bold, brash, and brimming with courage, Chuck Yeager burst onto the scene as a national hero in 1947, when he became the first to fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound. Yet even before his days as America’s most famous test pilot, Yeager was a young fighter ace in the US Army Air Force, flying a P-51 Mustang over Nazi-occupied Europe. His exploits are the stuff of legend.

Soon after downing his first enemy fighter, Yeager, too, was shot down, surviving thanks to the help of the French Resistance and his own skills as a bomb maker—and earned a Bronze Star for saving the life of a fellow American. Against regulation, and only with the approval of General Eisenhower himself, Yeager returned to duty as a fighter pilot. While fiercely protecting Allied bombers, he shot down eleven enemy planes, including a lightning-fast Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first jet-powered airplane, and completed more than sixty missions.

In Chuck Yeager, acclaimed author Don Keith tells the true story of the American icon during the war in which Yeager first proved he had the right stuff.


Cover image courtesy of the San Diego Air & Space Museum