Former US Air Force officer Charles 'Chuck' Yeager was the first pilot at the age of 23 to break the speed of sound. He died at the age of 97 on Monday, 7 December 2020, confirmed his wife Victoria Yeager on Twitter.

Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.

— Chuck Yeager (@GenChuckYeager) December 8, 2020

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement about Yeager's death "a tremendous loss to our nation." Yeager was born on 23 February 1923 and his father was an oil and gas driller and a farmer. Bridenstine said in his statement said that “General 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. He said, ‘You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.'” Chuck Yeager, US Air Force test pilot, flew the Bell X-1 which he had nicknamed Glamorous Glennis in honor of his wife and broke the sound barrier. His feat was kept top secret for about a year when the world thought the British had broken the sound barrier first and made public only in June 1948. Yeager took to the skies again, 65 years later, in 2012 to commemorate his historic flight, flying in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California’s the Mojave Desert.

Actor Sam Shepard portrayed him in the movie, "The Right Stuff," 36 years later, based on the Tom Wolfe book. Mr. Yeager would say he was just a lucky kid who caught the right ride.

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