Apparently the X-1 had a little bit of trouble dropping from the bomb bay at times. On one such occasion “a big red-headed sergeant, came down the ladder with a hammer. That dedicated nut stood on the fuselage of the X-1, poundin on the safety pin stuck in the shackle release. He wore a chute and an oxygen mask, but if he did knock out the pin, we were going to drop as a team. I watched him from the cockpit window, thinking, ‘Man, that guy is pure guts.’”

            The X-1 also had a couple of engine problems. A few times in a row, the engine caught on fire. This was one thing that actually scared Chuck. This was one problem that Chuck inadvertently brought home. Glennis would wake him up from as sleep as he was trying to crawl out of their bedroom window thinking that he was crawling out of the cockpit of the X-1.

            Yeager was not enamored with getting trophies and awards. In fact, all the mail that he had to fill out answers for was a drain on him. Carl Bellinger remembered one time seeing how Chuck Yeager used his Collier trophy:

“Chuck Yeager was a car tinkerer, and I was always tinkering with model trains. I remember driving out to his place one Sunday morning to borrow some tools. We went into his garage, and I was startled to see the Collier Trophy, which he had received at the White House, sitting on his work bench. He was using the most prestigious award in aviation to store his nuts and bolts.”

            Chuck and his family lived quite meagerly. They were only given the regular Air Force pay, and for a while they lived in a one bedroom adobe. Later on, they moved to a two bedroom ranch, but there were holes in the walls, the base was forty miles away, and their nearest neighbor was sixteen miles away. Glennis frequently feared running out of milk and bread, because it was a one and a half hour round trip to the store and back. Later on, they were able to live closer to the base, but their house was four walls and a roof on a concrete slab.

            After years of flying as a test pilot, Chuck was forced back into test pilot school because of some course work he had missed. Chuck wasn’t much of an academic, so school was difficult for him. Along with that, his teachers were out to fail him. In the end, it came down to General Boyd telling the school, “Goddamn it, I’m in charge of this school. You will pass him.” And that’s how Chuck Yeager got his diploma.

            Chuck was not very impressed with Scott Crossfield of Neil Armstrong because they acted like they knew everything and they still had a lot to learn. Armstrong was flying a plane with Yeager and decided to check out the lakebed by doing a touch-and-go. Yeager told him not to do it. Armstrong touched, but he didn’t go. Crossfield taxied an airplane through a hangar.