I would like to express my gratitude to Major General Fred J. Ascani for sourcing the audio and transcript for my website. On this page you will find the transcript of the actual air to air and air to ground communications of Chuck Yeager's wild ride in the Bell X-1A on December 12 1953.
Below are four segments of the most fascinating parts of the audio, converted into highly compressed WAV files. Each clip is approximately 100KB in size and last's for around 1 minute. To hear the clips, just click on the graphic. If you wish to save the file, right click and choose "save target as". The transcript is also in 4 parts, click each thumbnail for the larger image.
On this flight, the first ever instance of inertia-coupling occurred. A terrifying incident in which Chuck Yeager was fortunate to escape with his life. Fellow legendary test pilot A. Scott Crossfield said that "It was fortunate that it was Charlie Yeager at the controls that day. Otherwise we might not have had the ship to fly another day".
It is in this author's opinion, that no-one else would have been able to save the X-1A from drilling a hole in the desert floor. The most impressive thing I have ever heard!
Below are photographs of the X-1A and Chuck Yeager. The image at the extreme left has the data trace from this flight overlayed onto the image. All photographs can be enlarged by clicking on the thumbnail.
