Walter C. Yeager died in 2023 at the age of 87.
Yeager earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University in 1958, and a certificate in Propulsion and Power Conversion from UCLA in 1970. He was a licensed Safety Engineer in California.
Yeager began his 40-year engineering career at Douglas Aircraft in California, where he worked on the liquid oxygen tank vent and relief valve for the Thor missile, and on the design of propulsion for the Skybolt missile. He then spent several years activating Atlas missile bases in Kansas and Nebraska before working on the Nuclear Engine Rocket Vehicle Application project for interplanetary space vehicles at the Bendix Corporation in Indiana.
Returning to California, Yeager worked at Hughes Aircraft on vernier propulsion for the Surveyor spacecraft and thruster rockets for synchronous orbit satellites. The remainder of his career was spent at Garrett AiResearch, which was a subsidiary of the Signal Corporation, and which eventually became Honeywell.
He began work on a business jet advanced turbofan propulsion engine and turbochargers for small aircraft as an engineer. He then became director of Product Integrity and later was a program manager for emergency power and start systems in over 27 aircraft programs, which included the hydrazine F-16 emergency power units and the U2 in-flight start systems. These projects involved travel to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. After retiring in 1999, he kept busy by doing engineering consulting, pursuing his computer and electronics hobbies, and actively managing his farm in Indiana.
