CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nothing on the radio. Not a word in the newspaper. Not even a picture to prove it.

But 60 years later, it remains one of the most fabled events in Charleston's history.

 "It was known only to those of us who saw it, and through word-of-mouth later on," said Neil Boggs, a Clay County native and retired NBC correspondent.

Nobody talked about it on the record for years, he said. "Tens of thousands of people saw it. They knew it was done by one of them, for one of them, and they joined in a conspiracy of silence."

On Oct. 10, 1948, on a festive Sunday afternoon, thousands of people lined the Kanawha River to watch boat-racing championships sponsored by The Charleston Gazette. Hundreds more hung over the railings of the South Side Bridge.

Roaring hydroplanes churned the river into a choppy sea. The Stonewall Jackson High School band played peppy tunes on the judges' barge. Announcements from Gazette Editor Frank Knight blared over the public address system.

Boggs, a 19-year-old Gazette reporter, scribbled hurriedly in his notebook to keep up with the action.

The F-80 jet appeared out of nowhere.

Bill Kelley, 14, stood midway down the riverbank steps at Brooks Street. The eventual WSAZ photographer had a camera even then. He forgot to bring it.

"Frank Knight had just announced that Capt. Chuck Yeager was going to fly over," Kelley said. "I didn't see a plane in the sky. I looked east, below the horizon, about where the Capitol is, and I saw a plane.

"I actually had to look down to see it. That's how low it was. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness!'"

He watched that jet fly right under the South Side Bridge.

The jet did a victory roll and roared out of sight.

"The crowd went nuts."

"We all just looked at each other open-mouthed in disbelief," said Boggs. "Then there was a swell of applause. By then, Yeager was probably halfway to Cincinnati."

"I was on the docks when he did it," said lifelong Charlestonian John Lilly. "I was 11. It was so quick, it hardly even registered until he was gone. It shocked me."

He almost missed it. He was watching a crane at the levee plop a hydroplane race boat in the river. Suddenly, he heard a thunderous sound in the other direction.

"The plane was about at the bridge. It seemed like it was right on the water. It went under the bridge. About where Magic Island is now, it started going straight up.

"I was flabbergasted."

Boggs wrote a long story about the boat races the following day. The article mentioned Yeager's visit: "Capt. Charles Yeager of Hamlin, the first man to exceed the speed of sound in a Bell XS-1 jet, buzzed the course shortly after 3:30 p.m. as he started back to his base in California.

"Officials present said his speed when he flew over the river probably was more than 600 miles an hour. As he flew over in a jet Shooting Star, he did three slow rolls before disappearing from sight."

Three slow rolls? What about flying under the bridge?

That evening, the Daily Mail published a photo of Yeager with his father at the airport. The caption stated simply that the celebrated pilot buzzed the boat races on Sunday afternoon.

What about flying under the bridge?

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nothing on the radio. Not a word in the newspaper. Not even a picture to prove it.

But 60 years later, it remains one of the most fabled events in Charleston's history.

 "It was known only to those of us who saw it, and through word-of-mouth later on," said Neil Boggs, a Clay County native and retired NBC correspondent.

Nobody talked about it on the record for years, he said. "Tens of thousands of people saw it. They knew it was done by one of them, for one of them, and they joined in a conspiracy of silence."

On Oct. 10, 1948, on a festive Sunday afternoon, thousands of people lined the Kanawha River to watch boat-racing championships sponsored by The Charleston Gazette. Hundreds more hung over the railings of the South Side Bridge.

Roaring hydroplanes churned the river into a choppy sea. The Stonewall Jackson High School band played peppy tunes on the judges' barge. Announcements from Gazette Editor Frank Knight blared over the public address system.

Boggs, a 19-year-old Gazette reporter, scribbled hurriedly in his notebook to keep up with the action.

The F-80 jet appeared out of nowhere.

Bill Kelley, 14, stood midway down the riverbank steps at Brooks Street. The eventual WSAZ photographer had a camera even then. He forgot to bring it.

"Frank Knight had just announced that Capt. Chuck Yeager was going to fly over," Kelley said. "I didn't see a plane in the sky. I looked east, below the horizon, about where the Capitol is, and I saw a plane.

"I actually had to look down to see it. That's how low it was. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness!'"

He watched that jet fly right under the South Side Bridge.

The jet did a victory roll and roared out of sight.

"The crowd went nuts."

"We all just looked at each other open-mouthed in disbelief," said Boggs. "Then there was a swell of applause. By then, Yeager was probably halfway to Cincinnati."

"I was on the docks when he did it," said lifelong Charlestonian John Lilly. "I was 11. It was so quick, it hardly even registered until he was gone. It shocked me."

He almost missed it. He was watching a crane at the levee plop a hydroplane race boat in the river. Suddenly, he heard a thunderous sound in the other direction.

"The plane was about at the bridge. It seemed like it was right on the water. It went under the bridge. About where Magic Island is now, it started going straight up.

"I was flabbergasted."

Boggs wrote a long story about the boat races the following day. The article mentioned Yeager's visit: "Capt. Charles Yeager of Hamlin, the first man to exceed the speed of sound in a Bell XS-1 jet, buzzed the course shortly after 3:30 p.m. as he started back to his base in California.

"Officials present said his speed when he flew over the river probably was more than 600 miles an hour. As he flew over in a jet Shooting Star, he did three slow rolls before disappearing from sight."

Three slow rolls? What about flying under the bridge?

That evening, the Daily Mail published a photo of Yeager with his father at the airport. The caption stated simply that the celebrated pilot buzzed the boat races on Sunday afternoon.

What about flying under the bridge?

"When I got back to the paper to write my story," Boggs said, "Ed Brannon, the night city editor, turned a call over to me. It was an Air Force public information officer from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.

"Flying under a bridge violated all kinds of Air Force and FAA regulations. He didn't ask me directly if Yeager flew under the bridge. Instead, he wanted to know if my story would include anything 'unusual.'

"He said if a violation had taken place, the Air Force would be forced to take action. But if it wasn't in print, or hadn't been broadcast or photographed, then it never happened.

"He asked if we had any photographs. We photographed the races extensively, but nobody expected Yeager to go under the bridge, so we didn't have pictures. Anything we got would have been a blur anyway.

"The Daily Mail didn't staff it because it was a Gazette promotion. There was no radio broadcast. And West Virginia didn't get its first commercial TV station until the following year."

The paper chose to protect him.

"It wasn't exactly suppressing the news. I didn't react as much like a journalist as a country boy from West Virginia. We were just trying to protect a local guy who was always in trouble with the Air Force.

"He was such a rebel. He basically thumbed his nose at the brass to give the home folks a show. He's a wonderful character, and I think he loved to defy authority."

"He broke every rule in the book," said Ret. Brig. General J. Kemp McLaughlin, renowned World War II fighter pilot and former commander of the West Virginia Air National Guard. "Chuck was a maverick all his life. That guy would do anything."

He frequently borrowed P-51 jets from the Guard just to fly around, McLaughlin said. "One time, he brought his brother with him. Those jets only have one seat. He put his brother on his lap and climbed to the end of the northwest runway. Just as the gear was coming up, he did a slow roll with his brother strapped to his lap."

McLaughlin attended a luncheon for Yeager the day of the famous bridge fly-under. He watched the incident on Kanawha Boulevard, outside the Press Club. "We all just laughed. Nothing ever surprised me about Chuck."

Later, Boggs interviewed Yeager concerning his space flight. He asked about the bridge incident. "He said, 'Let's not talk about that.' Then he gave me that Chuck Yeager grin."

Boggs left the Gazette in 1955. He eventually worked as a correspondent for NBC and co-hosted "Meet the Press." He taught journalism for 12 years in Belen, N.M., where he retired.

"I got to know Chuck Yeager many times over the years," he said, "but I never asked him about the bridge thing again. We talked about Hamlin and fishing and Mud River and going to Huntington on a Saturday night. He didn't want to talk shop."

In today's technological, media-saturated environment, a cover-up like the one to protect Yeager in 1948 wouldn't stand a chance, Boggs said. "It would have been on YouTube in an hour. But in 1948, it was unusual for a family to even own a box camera."

Yeager knows he lucked out. In 1983, after a talk at the University of Charleston, a woman in the audience asked him about his historic flight under the bridge.

"I dropped down to about 6 feet above the water," he said. "They were having a boat regatta. These guys were coming up river [in their boats] and I could see their eyes get bigger. I went under the bridge, pulled up, did a roll and went on ...

"Every time I would come back home in a jet, or even yesterday in a P-51, I know damned good and well there were probably at least three press photographers sitting under the bridge just waiting for me to come back."

That won't happen. "We learned in combat you only make one pass," Yeager said, "because that man is going to shoot you down the second time you come back."

In his autobiography, he mentioned the South Side Bridge along with many other bridges he flew under in his jet pilot heyday.

He learned to fly low in combat, he told the audience at U.C. "You get pretty good at flying low with those guys smoking at you," he said.

Over the years, Charlestonians got accustomed to seeing Yeager's plane swooping over the city. Yeager got a kick out of buzzing the city whenever he flew to town, Kelley said.

"It was a common occurrence to see him flying over Charleston when he would come in to see his parents. I was at Lincoln Junior High when he flew over, and we all waved at him, and he wiggled his wings. He kept coming around."

Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 348-5173.