I confess Y e a g e r is my hero... In 1975 I was stationed at Norton AFB
and I proudly participated in his Pass and Review retirement ceremony...
Among the greats who honored him that day was none other than Jimmy
Doolittle...

Bob Hoover and a gaggle of P51s planned a fly over but couldn’t pull
it off for some reason...

Fast forward to 1996 at the Grass Valley fly-in and I noticed Yeager
just casually walking among the crowed... I excitedly blurted out "Gen
Y e a g e r sir" but he blew me off and bolted before I could bring up
Norton and his retirement ceremony... I know he hates adoration for
just doing his job and is suspicious of people claiming to be at his
retirement but I think if he would check my recollection of the event
and review my photos he would graciously afford me a signature in my
Yeager autobiography...






Quote from Y e a g e r's book where he trimmed a tree with his P39 and was grounded...

We use to buzz Pa Clifford's ranch all the time Tonapah Nevada, and if
he came out and waved a bed sheet, it meant yo' all come over tonight
for Ma's chow. Mack and I used to fly over and drop the Clifford boys
all kinds of ammo for their hunting, whole belts of thirty-ought-six,
since bullets were hard to come by in wartime. There was a dry lake
bed about a hundred yards from the house, and we would practice
dive-bombing over that lake bed, dropping practice bombs, while Pa
Clifford, down below, watched and laughed like hell. One day I heard
Pa mention that he'd like to get rid of a tree that stood near the
roadway to the house. The next day, I buzzed that tree in my P-39 and
carefully topped it with my left wingtip. I enjoyed that kind of
challenge, but when I landed there was hell to pay. The maintenance
officer demanded to know why my smashed wingtip looked as if it were
taking root-hunks of wood were rammed into it. "I hit a bird," I told
him. "Well," he replied, "that son of a bitch must've been sitting in
one helluva nest." I was grounded from flying P-39s for a week. But
there were several BT-13s available, and I flew them instead.