Stillness in Storms

Before he was a household name, Chuck Yeager was a farm boy from West Virginia who could fix an engine before he could shave. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1941 and soon found himself in a P-51 Mustang, flying over war-torn Europe. By the time the smoke cleared, Yeager was an ace—thirteen enemy planes downed, five in a single day. He'd been shot down over occupied France, evaded capture with the help of the Resistance, and returned to the air like nothing had happened. After the war, his cool under pressure and mechanical intuition earned him a coveted seat among test pilots at Muroc Army Airfield—now Edwards Air Force Base—where the real cowboys flew machines no one fully understood, at speeds no one had ever reached.

In 1947, with two broken ribs from a horseback accident and a broomstick handle to help close the cockpit, Yeager piloted the Bell X-1 through the sound barrier. “It was smooth,” he’d later say, “like a baby’s bottom.” That moment made him the first human to go faster than Mach 1. But Yeager wasn’t done pushing limits.

On December 12, 1953, he climbed into the Bell X-1A with a new goal: reach Mach 2.4 at 75,000 feet. It was a razor-thin altitude between the known and the unknown. He ascended cleanly, the rocket engine roaring behind him. As he reached the target altitude, the X-1A topped out at Mach 2.435. He’d done it again—another record. But the celebration was short-lived.

The aircraft suddenly lurched into chaos. Without warning, it began to tumble—spinning violently in all three axes. Roll, pitch, yaw—over and over. His helmet cracked against the canopy. The cockpit stick bent in his hands. The instruments screamed, red lights lit up like a pinball machine. The G-forces flung him against the restraints. Then dropped him like a stone. From 76,000 feet to 25,000 feet—in just 51 seconds.

Most pilots would’ve pulled hard on the stick, tried to muscle the aircraft back into submission. That’s the natural instinct: do something. But Yeager had been around machines his whole life. He recognized this wasn’t a stall or a flat spin. It was something newer, stranger: inertial coupling—a phenomenon few had experienced, and fewer had survived. He knew enough to know this couldn’t be fixed by brute force. So he did what nearly no one else would do in that moment.

He stopped fighting.

He shut down systems. He vented fuel tanks. He trimmed and waited. As the plane plunged into thicker air, the aerodynamic control surfaces gradually started to work again. The atmosphere—denser, more forgiving—offered him back a measure of control. Around 25,000 feet, he steadied the aircraft. The tumbling stopped. The wild dance turned to a glide. He regained control and radioed the chase plane, voice ragged but calm: “I think I can get back to base.”

He landed the X-1A safely on the dry lakebed at Edwards. The aircraft was bruised. So was he. But both were intact. And thanks to Yeager’s restraint, both would fly again.

It would have been easy to make the wrong move. To act, react, overreact. But Yeager’s mastery was in understanding when action would make things worse. When the only way out was through. When the smartest thing—the bravest thing—was to let go, and trust that not all storms need steering.

Investing, of course, doesn’t involve cracked canopies or Mach-speed descents. But there are moments when it feels like it does. Markets plunge. Portfolios get tossed around. News flashes across the screen like emergency lights. The instinct—just like in a tumbling jet—is to do something. Move money. Make a call. Sell before things get worse.

But sometimes, the wisest move is to stay still.

Not because doing nothing is easy, but because doing something would be wrong. Because markets, like planes, can stabilize when the air thickens—when panic settles, when systems catch again. Yeager survived that flight not by gripping the stick tighter, but by loosening his hold. Not by asserting control, but by knowing when he had none.

And in investing, just as in flight, it’s not always the bold move that saves you. Sometimes, it’s the quiet one. The patient one. The one that waits for clarity while the storm rages—and knows that stillness, too, is a form of strength.