Breaking the Celebrity Barrier

By R.Z. Sheppard

The American hero is traditionally a loner who risks his life cutting a glory path through officiousness and red tape. But the past few years have seen a subtle reversal. The dull organization man of yesterday's sociology has returned as the beautiful bureaucrat. Lee Iacocca and the executive thoroughbreds trotted out for In Search of Excellence and A Passion for Excellence have pulled off a corporate takeover of the national imagination. Best-seller lists are stacked with adventures in management. Even prime-time entertainment reflects this trend. Hill Street Blues, for example, is basically a series of dramatic lessons in administration. Each week, Captain Furillo arrives in a three-piece suit to work his interpersonal magic on office crises.

Not a moment too soon comes General Chuck Yeager to re-establish old-fashioned standards of heroism. Yeager does not arrive out of the blue yonder. He is the world's most famous aviator, the hillbilly Lindy who shot down 13 German aircraft in World War II (five in one day) and went on to become the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound and live. His legendary career as a test pilot and hell raiser was sketched in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Played by Sam Shepard in the movie, Yeager inspired the film's strongest image: the sooty phoenix emerging from the desert after bailing out of his burning plane. Now 62, the real Yeager stars in auto-parts commercials as a persuasive Mr. Fix-It.

His autobiography should carry him effortlessly through the celebrity barrier, though it is not likely that talk-show hosts will draw the usual life-style blather from this tough old rooster. The world he describes is an arena of endless combat where victory means maneuvering behind your opponents and "hammering'em." It happened to Yeager over France, when he was flying his P-51 Mustang and three German fighters jumped him. He parachuted, evaded capture with the help of the underground, and not only made it to England but got the rules bent to allow him back into the air war.

Yeager's style is to push planes and regulations to the limits of his skill and confidence. This means further than anyone else. He is frequently "cobbing" his engine, flying "balls to the wall," and coming close to "augering in." As an Air Force test pilot on captain's pay, he took the same risks as his high-salaried civilian counterparts. He resented those who flew for the money and was riled by flyers he felt did not listen to an experienced country boy. Scott Crossfield "just knew it all, which is why he ran a Super Sabre through a hangar." Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and "the last guy at Edwards to take any advice from a military pilot," ignores a warning and sticks his aircraft in mud. Yeager's comment on Richard Bong, a former fighter ace who died because he neglected to switch on a fuel pump: "Dick wasn't interested in homework."

Yeager's practical approach to death may have its origins in his West Virginia childhood. Not long after six-year-old Brother Roy accidentally killed his baby sister with a shotgun, Yeager's father sat the boys down and said simply, "I want to show you how to safely handle firearms." This matter-of-factness fits right in with the airman's cocky stoicism. Violent death may be inevitable, but problem solving goes on until the moment of impact. There is also a sixth sense of machinery that Yeager calls his "knowledgeable feel," his love of engines and valves "and all those mechanical gadgets that make most people yawn." Time and again this supersonic Zen led to discovery of critical data: a bolt installed upside down that caused several fatal crashes, a mental flash of a mispositioned stabilizer that saved his life.

Yeager's decision to remain in the Air Force for 34 years rather than take lucrative civilian jobs paid off. There were challenging assignments in Europe and Asia, and the perks were good. He tells of using bombers to airlift him and his cronies to remote hunting and fishing grounds. The military also allowed him to do what he does best: fly fighters. His last combat missions were in Viet Nam, where, he coldly notes, he was credited with killing 50 V.C. on one mission. Yeager sees the world through gunsights. He takes potshots at astronauts ("little more than Spam in the can, throwing the right switches on instructions from the ground") and Air Force equal-opportunity programs ("There never were black pilots or white pilots . . . only pilots who knew how to fly, and pilots who didn't").

Throughout this autobiography-of-sorts, skillfully shaped by former TIME Correspondent Leo Janos from interviews and transcripts of Government tapes, Yeager strives to be himself: an elite member of the warrior class. To vary the pace and tone, Janos has wisely included commentaries and observations by friends and Yeager's wife Glennis. All contribute to the conclusion that their hero belongs to a breed apart, and it is not hard to understand why. The myth of transcendence inherent in flying separates those who do from those who don't. It is as if Yeager and his comrades evolved from birds while the earthbound dropped from trees to become prisoners of gravity. --By R.Z. Sheppard