I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

He is the uncle of former baseball catcher Steve Yeager. His first experience with the military was as a teen at the Citizens Military Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison Indianapolis Indiana during the summers of 1939 and 1940. Yeager was reportedly incensed and demanded U.

Yeager's popularity soared in the 1980s when he was prominently featured in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff and in its 1983 movie adaptation in which he was portrayed by Sam Shepard. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager (pron.