The Purple Decades (56 page)
Read The Purple Decades Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
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On the ground they had understood the code as soon as they heard Yeager's little exchange with Ridley. The project was secret, but the radio exchanges could be picked up by anyone within range. The business of the “screwy machometer” was Yeager's deadpan way of announcing that the Xâ1's instruments indicated Mach 1. As soon as he landed, they checked out the Xâ1's automatic recording instruments. Without any doubt the ship had gone supersonic. They immediately called the brass at Wright Field to break the tremendous news. Within two hours Wright Field called back and gave some firm orders. A top security lid was being put on the morning's events. That the press was not to be informed went without saying. But neither was anyone else, anyone at all, to be told. Word of the flight was not to go beyond the flight line. And even among the people directly involvedâwho
were there and knew about it, anywayâthere was to be no celebrating. Just what was on the minds of the brass at Wright is hard to say. Much of it, no doubt, was a simple holdover from wartime, when every breakthrough of possible strategic importance was kept under wraps. That was what you didâyou shut up about them. Another possibility was that the chiefs at Wright had never quite known what to make of Muroc. There was some sort of weird ribald aerial tarpaper mad-monk squadron up on the roof of the desert out there â¦
were there and knew about it, anywayâthere was to be no celebrating. Just what was on the minds of the brass at Wright is hard to say. Much of it, no doubt, was a simple holdover from wartime, when every breakthrough of possible strategic importance was kept under wraps. That was what you didâyou shut up about them. Another possibility was that the chiefs at Wright had never quite known what to make of Muroc. There was some sort of weird ribald aerial tarpaper mad-monk squadron up on the roof of the desert out there â¦
In any case, by mid-afternoon Yeager's tremendous feat had become a piece of thunder with no reverberation. A strange and implausible stillness settled over the event. Well ⦠there was not supposed to be any celebration, but come nightfall ⦠Yeager and Ridley and some of the others ambled over to Pancho's. After all, it was the end of the day, and they were pilots. So they knocked back a few. And they had to let Pancho in on the secret, because Pancho had said she'd serve a free steak dinner to any pilot who could fly supersonic and walk in here to tell about it, and they had to see the look on
her
face. So Pancho served Yeager a big steak dinner and said they were a buncha miserable peckerwoods all the same, and the desert cooled off and the wind came up and the screen doors banged and they drank some more and bawled some songs over the cackling dry piano and the stars and the moon came out and Pancho screamed oaths no one had ever heard before and Yeager and Ridley roared and the old weatherbeaten bar boomed and the autographed pictures of a hundred dead pilots shook and clattered on the frame wires and the faces of the living fell apart in the reflections, and by and by they all left and stumbled and staggered and yelped and bayed for glory before the arthritic silhouettes of the Joshua trees. Shit!âthere was no one to tell except Pancho and the goddamned Joshua trees!
her
face. So Pancho served Yeager a big steak dinner and said they were a buncha miserable peckerwoods all the same, and the desert cooled off and the wind came up and the screen doors banged and they drank some more and bawled some songs over the cackling dry piano and the stars and the moon came out and Pancho screamed oaths no one had ever heard before and Yeager and Ridley roared and the old weatherbeaten bar boomed and the autographed pictures of a hundred dead pilots shook and clattered on the frame wires and the faces of the living fell apart in the reflections, and by and by they all left and stumbled and staggered and yelped and bayed for glory before the arthritic silhouettes of the Joshua trees. Shit!âthere was no one to tell except Pancho and the goddamned Joshua trees!
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Over the next five months Yeager flew supersonic in the X-1 more than a dozen times, but still the Air Force insisted on keeping the story secret.
Aviation Week
published a report of the flights late in December (without mentioning Yeager's name) provoking a minor debate in the press over whether or not
Aviation Week
had violated national securityâand
still
the Air Force refused to publicize the achievement until June of 1948. Only then was Yeager's name released. He received only a fraction of the publicity that would have been his had he been presented to the world immediately, on October 14, 1947, as the man who “broke the sound barrier.” This dragged-out process had curious effects.
Aviation Week
published a report of the flights late in December (without mentioning Yeager's name) provoking a minor debate in the press over whether or not
Aviation Week
had violated national securityâand
still
the Air Force refused to publicize the achievement until June of 1948. Only then was Yeager's name released. He received only a fraction of the publicity that would have been his had he been presented to the world immediately, on October 14, 1947, as the man who “broke the sound barrier.” This dragged-out process had curious effects.
In 1952 a British movie called
Breaking the Sound Barrier
, starring
Ralph Richardson, was released in the United States, and its promoters got the bright idea of inviting the man who had actually done it, Major Charles E. Yeager of the U.S. Air Force, to the American premiere. So the Air Force goes along with it and Yeager turns up for the festivities. When he watches the movie, he's stunned. He can't believe what he's seeing. Far from being based on the exploits of Charles E. Yeager,
Breaking the Sound Barrier
was inspired by the death of Geoffrey de Havilland in his father's DH 108. At the end of the movie a British pilot solves the mystery of “the barrier” by
reversing
the controls
at the critical moment during a power dive. The buffeting is tearing his ship to pieces, and every rational process in his head is telling him to
pull back
on the stick to keep from crashingâand he pushes
it down
instead ⦠and zips right through Mach 1 as smooth as a bird, regaining full control!
Breaking the Sound Barrier
, starring
Ralph Richardson, was released in the United States, and its promoters got the bright idea of inviting the man who had actually done it, Major Charles E. Yeager of the U.S. Air Force, to the American premiere. So the Air Force goes along with it and Yeager turns up for the festivities. When he watches the movie, he's stunned. He can't believe what he's seeing. Far from being based on the exploits of Charles E. Yeager,
Breaking the Sound Barrier
was inspired by the death of Geoffrey de Havilland in his father's DH 108. At the end of the movie a British pilot solves the mystery of “the barrier” by
reversing
the controls
at the critical moment during a power dive. The buffeting is tearing his ship to pieces, and every rational process in his head is telling him to
pull back
on the stick to keep from crashingâand he pushes
it down
instead ⦠and zips right through Mach 1 as smooth as a bird, regaining full control!
Breaking the Sound Barrier
happened to be one of the most engrossing movies about flying ever made. It seemed superbly realistic, and people came away from it sure of two things: it was an Englishman who had broken the sound barrier, and he had done it by reversing the controls in the transonic zone.
happened to be one of the most engrossing movies about flying ever made. It seemed superbly realistic, and people came away from it sure of two things: it was an Englishman who had broken the sound barrier, and he had done it by reversing the controls in the transonic zone.
Well, after the showing they bring out Yeager to meet the press, and he doesn't know where in the hell to start. To him the whole goddamned picture is outrageous. He doesn't want to get mad, because this thing has been set up by Air Force P.R. But he is not happy. In as calm a way as he can word it on the spur of the moment, he informs one and all that the picture is an utter shuck from start to finish. The promoters respond, a bit huffily, that this picture is not, after all, a documentary. Yeager figures, well, anyway, that settles that. But as the weeks go by, he discovers an incredible thing happening. He keeps running into people who think he's the first
American
to break the sound barrier ⦠and that he learned how to
reverse the controls
and zip through from the Englishman who did it first. The last straw comes when he gets a call from the Secretary of the Air Force.
American
to break the sound barrier ⦠and that he learned how to
reverse the controls
and zip through from the Englishman who did it first. The last straw comes when he gets a call from the Secretary of the Air Force.
“Chuck,” he says, “do you mind if I ask you something? Is it true that you broke the sound barrier by reversing the controls?”
Yeager is stunned by this. The Secretaryâ
the Secretary!
âof the U.S. Air Force!
the Secretary!
âof the U.S. Air Force!
“No, sir,” he says, “that is ⦠not correct. Anyone who reversed the controls going transonic would be dead.”
Yeager and the rocket pilots who soon joined him at Muroc had a hard time dealing with publicity. On the one hand, they hated the process. It meant talking to reporters and other fruit flies who always hovered, eager for the juice ⦠and invariably got the facts screwed up â¦
But that wasn't really the problem, was it!
The real problem
was that reporters violated the invisible walls of the fraternity. They blurted out questions and spoke boorish words about ⦠all the unspoken things!âabout fear and bravery (they would say the words!) and how you
felt
at such-and-such a moment! It was obscene! They presumed a knowledge and an intimacy they did not have and had no right to. Some aviation writer would sidle up and say, “I hear Jenkins augered in. That's too bad.”
Augered in!
âa phrase that belonged exclusively to the fraternity!âcoming from the lips of this
ant
who was
left behind
the moment Jenkins made his first step up the pyramid long, long ago. It was repulsive! But on the other hand ⦠one's healthy pilot ego loved the gloryâwallowed in it!âlapped it up!âno doubt about it! The Pilot Egoâego didn't come any bigger! The boys wouldn't have minded the following. They wouldn't have minded appearing once a year on a balcony over a huge square in which half the world is assembled. They wave. The world roars its approval, its applause, and breaks into a sustained thirty-minute storm of cheers and tears (moved by my righteous stuff!). And then it's over. All that remains is for the wife to paste the clippings in the scrapbook.
But that wasn't really the problem, was it!
The real problem
was that reporters violated the invisible walls of the fraternity. They blurted out questions and spoke boorish words about ⦠all the unspoken things!âabout fear and bravery (they would say the words!) and how you
felt
at such-and-such a moment! It was obscene! They presumed a knowledge and an intimacy they did not have and had no right to. Some aviation writer would sidle up and say, “I hear Jenkins augered in. That's too bad.”
Augered in!
âa phrase that belonged exclusively to the fraternity!âcoming from the lips of this
ant
who was
left behind
the moment Jenkins made his first step up the pyramid long, long ago. It was repulsive! But on the other hand ⦠one's healthy pilot ego loved the gloryâwallowed in it!âlapped it up!âno doubt about it! The Pilot Egoâego didn't come any bigger! The boys wouldn't have minded the following. They wouldn't have minded appearing once a year on a balcony over a huge square in which half the world is assembled. They wave. The world roars its approval, its applause, and breaks into a sustained thirty-minute storm of cheers and tears (moved by my righteous stuff!). And then it's over. All that remains is for the wife to paste the clippings in the scrapbook.
A little adulation on the order of the Pope's; that's all the True Brothers at the top of the pyramid really wanted.
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Yeager received just about every major decoration and trophy that was available to test pilots, but the Yeager legend grew not in the press, not in public, but within the fraternity. As of 1948, after Yeager's flight was made public, every hot pilot in the country knew that Muroc was what you aimed for if you wanted to reach the top. In 1947 the National Security Act, Title 10, turned the Army Air Force into the U.S. Air Force, and three years later Muroc Army Air Base became Edwards Air Force Base, named for a test pilot, Glenn Edwards, who had died testing a ship with no tail called the Flying Wing. So now the magic word became
Edwards
. You couldn't keep a really hot, competitive pilot away from Edwards. Civilian pilots (almost all of whom had been trained in the military) could fly for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High Speed Center at Edwards, and some of the rocket pilots did that: Scott Crossfield, Joe Walker, Howard Lilly, Herb Hoover, and Bill Bridgeman, among them. Pete Everest, Kit Murray, Iven Kincheloe, and Mel Apt joined Yeager as Air Force rocket pilots. There was a constant rivalry between NACA and the Air Force to push the rocket planes to their outer limits. On November 20, 1953, Crossfield, in the Dâ558â2, raised the speed to Mach 2. Three weeks later Yeager flew the Xâ1A to Mach 2.4. The rocket program was quickly running out of frontiers within the atmosphere; so NACA and the Air Force began planning a
new project, with a new rocket plane, the Xâ15, to probe altitudes as high as fifty miles, which was well beyond anything that could still be called “air.”
Edwards
. You couldn't keep a really hot, competitive pilot away from Edwards. Civilian pilots (almost all of whom had been trained in the military) could fly for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High Speed Center at Edwards, and some of the rocket pilots did that: Scott Crossfield, Joe Walker, Howard Lilly, Herb Hoover, and Bill Bridgeman, among them. Pete Everest, Kit Murray, Iven Kincheloe, and Mel Apt joined Yeager as Air Force rocket pilots. There was a constant rivalry between NACA and the Air Force to push the rocket planes to their outer limits. On November 20, 1953, Crossfield, in the Dâ558â2, raised the speed to Mach 2. Three weeks later Yeager flew the Xâ1A to Mach 2.4. The rocket program was quickly running out of frontiers within the atmosphere; so NACA and the Air Force began planning a
new project, with a new rocket plane, the Xâ15, to probe altitudes as high as fifty miles, which was well beyond anything that could still be called “air.”
My God!âto be a part of Edwards in the late forties and early fifties!âeven to be on the ground and hear one of those incredible explosions from 35,000 feet somewhere up there in the blue over the desert and know that some True Brother had commenced his rocket launch ⦠in the Xâ1, the Xâ1A, the Xâ2, the Dâ558â1, the horrible XFâ92A, the beautiful Dâ558â2 ⦠and to know that he would soon be at an altitude, in the thin air at the edge of space, where the stars and the moon came out at noon, in an atmosphere so thin that the ordinary laws of aerodynamics no longer applied and a plane could skid into a flat spin like a cereal bowl on a waxed Formica counter and then start tumbling, not spinning and not diving, but tumbling, end over end like a brick ⦠In those planes, which were like chimneys with little razor-blade wings on them, you had to be “afraid to panic,” and that phrase was no joke. In the skids, the tumbles, the spins, there was, truly, as Saint-Exupéry had said, only one thing you could let yourself think about:
What do I do next?
Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, with all aerodynamics long gone, and not one prayer left, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: “I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!” And then that truly spooky click on the machine.
What do I do next?
(In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff. There was no national mourning in such cases, of course. Nobody outside of Edwards knew the man's name. If he were well liked, he might get one of those dusty stretches of road named for him on the base. He was probably a junior officer doing all this for four or five thousand a year. He owned perhaps two suits, only one of which he dared wear around people he didn't know. But none of that mattered!ânot at Edwardsânot in the Brotherhood.
What do I do next?
Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, with all aerodynamics long gone, and not one prayer left, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: “I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!” And then that truly spooky click on the machine.
What do I do next?
(In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff. There was no national mourning in such cases, of course. Nobody outside of Edwards knew the man's name. If he were well liked, he might get one of those dusty stretches of road named for him on the base. He was probably a junior officer doing all this for four or five thousand a year. He owned perhaps two suits, only one of which he dared wear around people he didn't know. But none of that mattered!ânot at Edwardsânot in the Brotherhood.
What made it truly beautiful (for a True Brother!) was that for a good five years Edwards remained primitive and Low Rent, with nothing out there but the bleached prehistoric shrimp terrain and the rat shacks and the blazing sun and the thin blue sky and the rockets sitting there moaning and squealing before dawn. Not even Pancho's
changedâexcept to become more gloriously Low Rent. By 1949
the girls
had begun turning up at Pancho's in amazing numbers. They were young, lovely, juicy, friskyâand there were so many of them, at all hours, every day of the week! And they were not prostitutes, despite the accusations made later. They were just ⦠well, just young juicy girls in their twenties with terrific young conformations and sweet cupcakes and loamy loins. They were sometimes described with a broad sweep as “stewardesses,” but only a fraction of them really were. No, they were lovely young things who arrived as mysteriously as the sea gulls who sought the squirming shrimp. They were moist labial piping little birds who had somehow learned that at this strange place in the high Mojave lived the hottest young pilots in the world and that this was
where things were happening
. They came skipping and screaming in through the banging screen doors at Pancho'sâand it completed the picture of Pilot Heaven. There was no other way to say it. Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving and Driving & Balling. The pilots began calling the old Fly Inn dude ranch “Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club,” and there you had it.
changedâexcept to become more gloriously Low Rent. By 1949
the girls
had begun turning up at Pancho's in amazing numbers. They were young, lovely, juicy, friskyâand there were so many of them, at all hours, every day of the week! And they were not prostitutes, despite the accusations made later. They were just ⦠well, just young juicy girls in their twenties with terrific young conformations and sweet cupcakes and loamy loins. They were sometimes described with a broad sweep as “stewardesses,” but only a fraction of them really were. No, they were lovely young things who arrived as mysteriously as the sea gulls who sought the squirming shrimp. They were moist labial piping little birds who had somehow learned that at this strange place in the high Mojave lived the hottest young pilots in the world and that this was
where things were happening
. They came skipping and screaming in through the banging screen doors at Pancho'sâand it completed the picture of Pilot Heaven. There was no other way to say it. Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving and Driving & Balling. The pilots began calling the old Fly Inn dude ranch “Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club,” and there you had it.
All of this was fraternal bliss. No pilot was shut off from it because he was “in the public eye.” Not even the rocket aces were isolated like stars. Most of them also performed the routine flight-test chores. Some of Yeager's legendary exploits came when he was merely a supporting player, flying “chase” in a fighter plane while another pilot flew the test aircraft. One day Yeager was flying chase for another test pilot at 20,000 feet when he noticed the man veering off in erratic maneuvers. As soon as he reached him on the radio, he realized the man was suffering from hypoxia, probably because an oxygen hose connection had come loose. Some pilots in that state became like belligerent drunksâprior to losing consciousness. Yeager would tell the man to check his oxygen system, he'd tell him to go to a lower altitude, and the man kept suggesting quaint anatomical impossibilities for Yeager to perform on himself. So Yeager hit upon a ruse that only he could have pulled off. “Hey,” he said, “I got me a problem here, boy. I caint keep this thing running even on the emergency system. She just flamed out. Follow me down.” He started descending, but his man stayed above him, still meandering. So Yeager did a very un-Yeager-like thing. He
yelled
into the microphone! He yelled: “Look, my dedicated young scientistâ
follow me down!”
The change in tone â
Yeager yelling!
âpenetrated the man's impacted hypoxic skull.
My God! The fabled Yeager! He's yellingâYeager's yelling!âto me for help! Jesus H. Christ!
And he started following him down. Yeager knew that if he could get the man down to 12,000 feet, the oxygen content of the air would bring him around, which it did.
Hey! What
happened?
After he landed, he realized he had been no more than a minute or two from passing out and punching a hole in the desert. As he got out of the cockpit, an Fâ86 flew overhead and did a slow roll sixty feet off the deck and then disappeared across Rogers Lake. That was Yeager's signature.
yelled
into the microphone! He yelled: “Look, my dedicated young scientistâ
follow me down!”
The change in tone â
Yeager yelling!
âpenetrated the man's impacted hypoxic skull.
My God! The fabled Yeager! He's yellingâYeager's yelling!âto me for help! Jesus H. Christ!
And he started following him down. Yeager knew that if he could get the man down to 12,000 feet, the oxygen content of the air would bring him around, which it did.
Hey! What
happened?
After he landed, he realized he had been no more than a minute or two from passing out and punching a hole in the desert. As he got out of the cockpit, an Fâ86 flew overhead and did a slow roll sixty feet off the deck and then disappeared across Rogers Lake. That was Yeager's signature.
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