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Report of Chuck Yeager accident in Georgia

Posted by AIRIC on Sat Oct 04, 2003 08:47:00 AM

Famed test pilot Chuck Yeager went off the runway and into a small ditch
Thursday after being caught in a cross wind while landing at a new airport
community in northeast Georgia, where he was a guest of honor at an aviation
symposium.

Neither Yeager, 80, nor his wife were injured, and their plane was not
seriously damaged in the accident at Heavens Landing, according to the Rabun
County Sheriffs Office.

The community is honoring Yeager and other World War II aces by naming its
streets after them. The symposium was planned for 7:30 p.m. Friday at the
Rabun County Civic Center.

Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, in a
bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane over the Mojave Desert in California.
The flight was depicted in the 1983 movie, The Right Stuff, which made
Yeagers name familiar to a generation of Americans unfamiliar with his
aerial exploits.

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