Chuck Yeager’s 100,000 Foot Zoom Rocket Plane Crash

On December 10, 1963 then Colonel Chuck Yeager flying a modified Lockheed F-104 Starfighter equipped with a liquid fuel rocket engine narrowly escaped death when his aircraft went out of control at 108,700 feet An investigation later showed that the cause of the crash was a spin that resulted from excessive angle of attack and lack of aircraft response. The excessive angle of attack was not caused by pilot input but by a gyroscopic condition set up by the J79 engine spooling after shut down for the rocket-powered zoom climb phase. The crash is depicted in the movie “The Right Stuff.“ However, the director/writer changed most of the facts/events surrounding the crash. About the only thing they got right was that an F-104 did crash and it was piloted by Yeager. Source: