Yeager enlisted in the Army Air Corps after graduating from high school in 1941. 'I was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride.' 'What really strikes me looking over all those years is how lucky I was, how lucky, for example, to have been born in 1923 and not 1963 so that I came of age just as aviation itself was entering the modern era,' Yeager said in a December 1985 speech at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Charles Yeager talks to members of the media in October 2012 following a re-enactment flight commemorating his breaking of the sound barrier 65 years earlier, at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. 'In an age of media-made heroes, he is the real deal,' Edwards Air Force Base historian Jim Young said in August 2006 at the unveiling of a bronze statue of Yeager. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done,'' Bridenstine said in his statement. He said, 'You don't concentrate on risks. Yeager's pioneering and innovative spirit advanced America's abilities in the sky and set our nation's dreams soaring into the jet age and the space age. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement, calling the death 'a tremendous loss to our nation.' An incredible life well lived, America's greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.'

Yeager died Monday, his wife, Victoria Yeager, said on his Twitter account: 'It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9 pm ET. Charles (Chuck) Yeager, the Second World WarВ fighter pilot ace and quintessential test pilot who showed he had the 'right stuff' when in 1947 he became the first person to fly faster than sound, hasВ died.

Who broke the sound barrier