Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

January 12, 2004

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Way back in '97, when Ed, Keith, and Jon were the only team members of this project, we considered ourselves fortunate to have learned from an authority at NASA's Dryden Research Center that the fuselage we planned to turn into a land speed vehicle had been part of the X-15 Project as a chase plane. We'd also learned that many, if not all, of the X-15 pilots had flown 763 when it was their turn at chase plane position on a mission. We speculated, but had not been able to confirm with our authority from Dryden, that Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier in the X-1, had also flown her.

In the '80s movie titled, "The Right Stuff", a full length feature movie which documented Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier and the ensuing early space program of NASA, the final scenes of the movie show Yeager taking up 762 - sister bird to the North American Eagle™ - in a zoom climb to an altitude of around 110,000 feet where he lost control of the aircraft. It went into an inverted flat spin and dropped like a rock for about 100,000 feet before Yeager had to eject. The closing scene shows Yeager, burnes on his face from the oxygen out of his mask igniting during ejection, with parachute bundled up in his arms while walking away from the burning hulk that had augered into the desert in the distance; truely a man with "the right stuff"!

So, after a couple of years of progress on our project, and dealing with that constant "nagging" in the back of Ed's mind, he finally wrote General Yeager a letter requesting confirmation of our suspicions. Just the other day, we finally received confirmation from General Yeager himself, through his secretary, that we were right. The following is copy of the correspondence Ed received:

Mr. Shadle;

This last year has been very busy with the 100th year of flight for General Yeager. We are regrettably very behind in our responses. Regarding your letter to General Yeager he wrote the following:

Edward, I flew 763 a lot. I was the first military pilot to fly the F-104 in August 1954. Having worked on the Budweiser rocket car, you probably will need a Canard on your F-104 at around .95 mach as the shockwave goes under the nose.

Jayne Walker for General and Mrs. Yeager

So, it's now confirmed that the North American Eagle was flown by him in its past. The team hopes that, in the not too distant future, General Yeager will be able to watch the bird he flew decades ago break the sound barrier on land and bring the land speed record back to America.

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