That to me is a bunch of crap trying to shoot guys up into damned space. What they're going to do is they're going to wipe out half a dozen people one of these days, and that will be the end of it.

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.

All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force.

I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.

The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn't in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.