JUST IN: Retired Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, First Pilot to Break the Speed of Sound, Dies at Age 97

Legendary test pilot, retired Brig. Gen. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, who was the first to fly faster than the speed of sound, died on Monday at the age of 97.

Yeager, who was born in Myra, West Virginia on February 13, 1923, went on to become a fighter ace in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and then transitioned to flying as one of the first test pilots for the fledging U.S. Air Force in the postwar years. On October 14, 1947, he flew the experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” after his wife, to Mach 1.06 at an altitude of 43,000 feet, breaking the speed barrier for the first time. He went on to set numerous other speed and altitude records during his storied aviation career, attaining the rank of one-star general before he finally retired from the service in 1975.

On MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, host Brian Williams closed out his first segment reporting the breaking news of Yeager’s death and included a brief homage to a man who “was as close to fearless as just about any American we’ve ever produced.”

Yeager, who chose not to become an astronaut, was famously played by actor Sam Shepard in the movie adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s famous book about the pilots who populated the country’s early space program, The Right Stuff

“Chuck Jaeger who pushed the edge of the envelope and lived to tell about it over a good long life, among us back here on solid ground gone tonight at the age of 97,” Williams noted in his valedictory.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.