He broke the sound barrier with two broken ribs, sealing the cockpit with a sawed-off broom handle. Then the Air Force kept it secret for eight months.
On October 14, 1947, Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, piloting the rocket-powered Bell X-1 over the Mojave Desert. He reached roughly Mach 1.06, about 700 miles per hour, at around 45,000 feet.
Many experts feared a "sound barrier" that would tear an aircraft apart as it approached Mach 1, and several pilots had already died in high-speed dives. Many engineers also believed a swept wing was required. The X-1 succeeded with a straight one, surprising plenty of professionals.
The X-1 could not take off on its own. A B-29 Superfortress carried it aloft and dropped it at altitude, and only then did Yeager ignite the four chambers of its XLR-11 rocket engine.
Two nights before the flight, Yeager went horseback riding with his wife, fell, and broke two ribs. Afraid the injury would ground him, he skipped the military doctors and had a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond tape him up.
Sealing the X-1's hatch required slamming down a heavy lever with the right arm, which Yeager could not do with broken ribs. He quietly asked his friend and fellow test pilot Jack Ridley for help, and Ridley sawed off the end of a broom handle to use as an extension. One of aviation's biggest milestones was launched with a piece of a broom.
The plane was named Glamorous Glennis after Yeager's wife. The Air Force kept the success secret for nearly eight months, until Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington announced it on June 10, 1948, though Aviation Week had leaked the story that December.
Yeager shared the 1948 Collier Trophy with Bell Aircraft's Larry Bell and NACA's John Stack, receiving it from President Truman, and also won the Mackay Trophy. The original Glamorous Glennis now hangs in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.