Live On The Levee Lineup Announced
Charleston’s annual free concert series, Live on the Levee, will begin on May 24 and run through August 10.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsOn October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 rocket airplane dropped from the belly of a B-29 bomber. Seconds later, Yeager entered the history books as the first pilot to break the sound barrier.
By this time, the 24-year-old Lincoln County native was already an aviation legend. During World War II, he had flown 64 combat missions over Europe and, in a single dogfight, had killed 13 Germans. In his eighth mission, he had been shot down over German-occupied France.
After the war, he served in California as a test pilot for high-speed planes. A year after breaking the sound barrier, he visited Charleston and gave the people a show they would never forget. During a boat race on the Kanawha River, he flew his Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet beneath Charleston’s South Side Bridge.
Yeager retired from the Air Force in 1975 as a brigadier general. Thirty years later, President George W. Bush promoted Yeager to the rank of major general. In 2012, on the 65th anniversary of his record-setting flight, he again broke the sound barrier—this time, at age 89.