Yeager was returned to flight status and resumed his duties at ARPS. In time he would go on to fly more than a hundred missions in Southeast Asia in B–57 tactical bombers. No one ever broke the Russian mark with the NF-104 or even tried to. Up above 100,000 feet the plane’s envelope was goddamned full of holes. And Yeager never again sought to set a record in the sky over the high desert.
