The air force first sent me clear down to the border with Mexico, in south Texas. I was assigned to Moore Air Base, a private field just west of the town of Edinburg. On a warm and clear June morning, Pam and I loaded up our new Chevrolet convertible, put the top down, and headed south from her parents’ home on Long Island.
Pam and I had married so that we could be together during my training. We had already decided to spend our lives together, and we didn’t want that commitment interrupted. Why wait, we reasoned? We’d been dating long enough that marriage seemed like a natural step.
America was at peace when I joined the air force. The Korean War had ended in 1953 while I was still at West Point, two years before I graduated. It was clear, however, that America could be pulled into a conflict with another country at any time: the era of the Cold War always felt tense.
The base wasn’t where I wanted to be assigned. When we left West Point, we were allowed to suggest three choices of training bases. I chose locations in Florida and Arizona and didn’t even consider Moore, but they assigned me there anyway. Once in Texas, we found a tiny apartment in hot, dusty Edinburg. For the next six months I traveled thirty miles to the base every morning as part of a carpool of pilots, so Pam could have the car during the day. We couldn’t live any closer; the air base was pretty isolated.
But there wasn’t much for Pam to do in Edinburg even with a car; it was not our idea of a great place to live. It was a typical little Texas town with a small square, a movie theater, and not much else. The nearest interesting place was Monterrey, but that city was located deep into Mexico, and it was hard for Pam and me to escape there other than for an occasional weekend. More often, we’d just drive a few miles south of home to the Mexican border town of Reynosa for some of the best steaks I have ever had in my life. The only other “entertainment” in that border town wasn’t the kind a newly married man should be involved in, so I steered clear of that.
It was a very different life for both of us, which left little time to get to know each other better. But during my training, in the hurried moments I had to reflect on it, I believed that Pam was adjusting to military living just fine. We tried to make time at the end of every day to have dinner and talk for a while, see a movie, or maybe visit some friends. She quickly made new friends in town and kept busy with them, especially a group of women she would invite over to play bridge. One day I came home to find all of them standing on chairs in the living room, and Pam had a broom in her hand. A rodent had snuck into the house and thrown their quiet afternoon into disarray. I had to catch it and throw it out. A mouse was one of the less dangerous creatures that ran around in that desert region. Every morning, as I drank a cup of coffee in my kitchen, I was guaranteed to see a scorpion walk across our doorstep. They never came in so we left them alone, but we checked our shoes before putting them on, just in case.
I started a new round of ground school and flight training classes with civilian piloting instructors who prepared me for my first flights. If I thought they would take it easy on us beginners, I was wrong.
When we showed up in the morning, three of us would sit with one instructor so we could discuss the training for that day. I was assigned to one of the most fearsome guys I ever met. His call sign was “Bendix,” after the brand of washing machines, because he was a scary, tough guy with a reputation for washing out students. He looked like an old crop duster, wrinkled by the sun, leathery, and tough.
Bendix learned to fly the hard way, cleaning airplanes as a kid in Mississippi in exchange for flying lessons. His philosophy was, if it had been tough for him, by God, it would be tough for us, too. He seemed to have no desire to help us learn and pass the course, only to constantly test us. Of the three guys originally assigned to his table, I was the only one who made it through the training.
Bendix took me up on my first flight, and all through it he yelled and screamed at me. He did it on my next flight, too; I realized that this was his teaching style. In fact, to call it “yelling” is an understatement. We were flying T-34s, which are little propeller airplanes ideal for students, and when they were all lined up at an airfield, engines running, they would make quite a noise. Bendix was louder. You could still hear him screaming at some poor student. He scared the crap out of us. It was like my first year at West Point all over again. I began to wonder, was this something I could really do?
Everything Bendix did was for real. He didn’t fool around. I frequently came home exhausted from the ordeal and told Pam that this was not what I thought the air force was going to be. She was a patient listener and helped me though some stressful weeks. Luckily, there were also days when I could tell her I thought I would be okay. Yet it was always tough. Bendix did things in the air that frightened the hell out of me, like suddenly throttling the engine to idle and then telling me to land the airplane without power. I’d quickly search for a field that looked survivable and head on down. One time, I was coming in low without power when at the last moment we both noticed a herd of cows directly in our path. He quickly throttled up the engine, and we must have roared over those startled cows with no more than ten feet to spare. Bendix forced me, however, to think through all his yelling and screaming, and to concentrate on the airplane and my flying. I had to mentally set his voice off to one side and listen to what he had to say without being rattled by it.
I have never been a stick-and-rudder type of pilot who flies by the seat of his pants. Instead, I began to feel a growing love for the precision of flying. I liked the sense of freedom it gave me, combined with the discipline and knowledge that I needed to do it right. Despite all the yelling from my instructor, flying began to feel comfortable. It was as if the airplane had become a part of me. As I grew to understand how it all worked, I became increasingly in tune with the mechanical systems. I realized, with pleasure, that I had a knack for it. Once I could fly solo, I enjoyed it even more because I didn’t have to listen to that damn yelling on every flight.
I was hooked. I loved walking out on the flight line in the morning and hearing the engines starting up. The T-34 was one of the prettiest airplanes I had ever seen, and as it started up it would make a buzzing noise like a sports car. Elsewhere on the field, other pilots would be starting the engines of their T-28s, a heavier, faster airplane with a big radial engine. They had a deep, throaty roar to them; the sounds of the two engines would merge into an all-permeating, gut-shaking rumble. It was an enticing call to strap in and go; the airplanes were urging me to take them up there.
The other students at my table disappeared one by one as they asked to be assigned to other instructors or they washed out. But I just kept going, and Bendix kept on yelling. This lasted until the final part of the training, when we began instrument training. Then he became a totally different person. To teach me how to fly using only the airplane’s instruments, he placed a canvas hood over the front of the cockpit so I couldn’t see out. Then, seated behind me, Bendix very calmly and coolly told me what to do.
Since he wasn’t shouting, I really paid close attention and did everything I was supposed to do. It turned out that instrument flying was the easiest part of the training for me. I really took to it, finally feeling that I could be a good pilot after all. I will always believe that Bendix was the reason I mastered instrument flying, which allowed me to gain the experience needed to become an astronaut. Although most days I hated the guy, I will always be grateful to him. He knew how to make pilots out of students who were willing to try hard and not buckle under his wrath.
After six months of primary training, Pam and I were growing used to life in Edinburg. She’d made a tough adjustment to follow me, but we were doing okay. Of course, as soon as we had settled in, we had to leave. Where we would be assigned next depended on my chosen preferences and how well I had done in the class. Some of my fellow students would go on to train as pilots for multi-engine airplanes. I had done well enough to go on to a more coveted assignment: single-seat jet training.
On graduation day, we celebrated at a local hall. We did not invite wives or girlfriends to this party, and as the drinks flowed, the night took on the feel of a bachelor party. Before long, we had a phone call from a classmate who had driven over to Mexico and hired a “dancer” for the celebrations. The border officials stopped him on the way back, insisting that allowing a stripper into the country for the evening would violate the Mann Act, because the visit would be “for immoral purposes.”
Undeterred, we simply moved the party across the border into Mexico. We found the bar where our classmate had hired the dancer. It was a typical border town bar room with a live band, and we found plenty of girls there who would dance—for a fee. Our classmate, however, had already hired the most stunning woman there. She was a very good dancer. She pulled one of our classmates up onto the stage to dance and, as they moved together, they both began to strip. As each article of clothing came off, we became more and more mesmerized by this gorgeous girl. By the time she took off the last piece of clothing, we were all on the edge of our seats. And then, our jaws dropped. This gorgeous woman was, in fact, a man.
Our classmate, half naked on the stage, turned a shade of purple that I have never seen before or since, grabbed his clothes, and left. We scuttled back across the border and never said a word about it again. Not a word, that is, until now.
It was perhaps best, then, that we all went our separate ways to different assignments. This time, the move was at least blessedly short: about one hundred and fifty miles upriver along the Rio Grande to Laredo Air Force Base. Once again, we lived right on the border with Mexico. After my assignment to Moore, I hoped that I would be sent to a nicer location. But, like Moore, Laredo was another isolated spot. The only thing to do was train on the base. There was nothing else around.
In 1956, Laredo had not yet caught up with the twentieth century. It was still a Wild West town. We rented a house on a dirt road close to the base; few of the roads in Laredo were paved back then. We soon got to know our neighbors, mostly Mexican. The guy who lived next door to us went fishing in the Rio Grande about once a month and had a great neighborhood barbecue in his backyard. He snared some of the largest catfish I’d ever seen, and they tasted delicious.
Up until this time I had flown T-34 Mentor and T-28 Trojan propeller-driven training airplanes, but now I would transition into the larger Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star. At last I’d get to fly jets. Since there was very little in the area other than the base, we could do pretty much what we liked in the air; no one would be bothered by aircraft noise. The route of the Rio Grande was obvious from above too, which made it easy to keep north of the border.
This base smelled different, a dark, oily odor that seeped into everything. Jet fuel smells a little like kerosene, and the busy base had tanker trucks driving around filling up the hungry airplanes. I never escaped that smell, which was fine: I loved it. It meant I would be flying soon.
Flying an airplane with a piston engine was one thing; piloting a jet was quite another. It was a little like going from driving a standard car to competing in NASCAR. The first time I strapped myself into a T-33 jet with an instructor in the back and took off, I remember thinking, “Holy crap, this thing can really move!” I also clearly remember my first solo in a T-33. I headed up to twenty thousand feet and circled for an hour, scared as shit, getting used to the feel of the airplane. It was a whole different sensation. No big propeller sticking out in front of me, and the cockpit was a lot smaller and tighter. Once airborne, I felt like I just glided through the air; the speeds were quite different, and the ride much smoother. Although I could make a much tighter turn in a small piston-driven aircraft, I felt the acceleration in turns much more in a jet as the airplane’s sheer power and speed squeezed me down into my seat. Like driving a car, the more I did it, the easier it became.
We had great instructors—mostly. Many were only just ahead of us in their training, with perhaps a few hundred hours of flight time. Yet some got a little impatient with us. I remember one young instructor who, even though some of us probably outranked him as West Point graduates, made us stand at attention and salute every time we saw him. It was done to remind us that he considered us subordinates. He didn’t make for the best teacher. In fact, one of my classmates was having trouble passing the course, to the point where they pulled him in front of an official review board. Curious, I went along to see what the review was all about. After his instructor spoke, they asked the student if he had any comments. He said yes, then pulled out a roll of toilet paper on which he had written his remarks, rolled it across the floor, and began reading from one end. He had kept copious notes on everything that particular instructor had said or done that had caused him confusion and affected his flying performance. After a few minutes, the tribunal board members stopped him and told him that they would give him another chance to pass. I loved the shamed look on that instructor’s face.
We had another instructor who was extremely memorable, for different reasons. A fighter pilot during World War II, he insisted that we all drink with him while he showed us gun camera footage from his low-level flying attacks on Nazi airfields. He was a maverick and he knew it. In fact, he seemed to revel in the likelihood that he would never be promoted. He’d even bent the points on his major’s insignia, stapling his rank permanently to his shirt collars. I remember one day in particular when he pulled a stunt with a T-33 that was sitting out on the ramp. Maintenance was not finished on the airplane—in fact, the tail section had been removed—but he jumped into the aircraft and taxied out anyway. The ground crew frantically tried to wave him down before he could take off, but his attention was distracted by a rattlesnake crossing the ramp. He twisted and turned the airplane around trying to run it over, and ignored all radio calls as he headed out to the runway, pretending to prepare for takeoff.
As the control tower screamed at him to stop, he throttled the engine up to full power and sped down the runway, while the base crew went on alert and prepared for a crash. Then, at the last moment, he slammed on his brakes and returned to the ramp as if nothing had happened. That was his idea of a great prank, and the kind of stunt that guaranteed he’d never be promoted. Yet, for all of his craziness, he was a great instructor.
Under the intense pressure, many students washed out. They were very capable, but they would not all make it as pilots. Many became navigators, while others returned to college, studied for advanced degrees, and became technical officers or worked on guided missiles. All had important roles to play in the air force. I was glad it didn’t happen to me, however, as I loved to fly jets. I was doing just fine and concentrated even more on instrument flying, becoming increasingly proficient. When the second phase of training ended at Laredo after about eight months, I chose the Air Defense Command for my advanced training. It meant I could train for all-weather flying, when relying on instruments would be crucial.
For my advanced instruction I trained on a specific airplane and learned not only how to fly it but also how to operate its weaponry. I learned more about radar and guided missiles, while gaining additional technical expertise. This time I was assigned to Tyndall Air Force Base, close to Panama City at the northern end of Florida. Pam and I found a small house close by in Mexico Beach. After our recent postings right on the border, the name seemed appropriate. It was a beautiful spot, where we walked on the sand and swam in our free time. I was beginning to get used to the frequent moves that a military career entailed. And since I had to abandon Pam during the day to her own devices, living in such a pretty spot eased my sense of guilt.
At Tyndall I was assigned to the F-86D Sabre jet, manufactured by North American Aviation. Even in the mid-fifties that aircraft was pretty old, and after about a year and a half they gave us newer airplanes. Still, I could learn a lot from the F-86. Since it was a single-seat aircraft, my first flight had to be performed solo. That was quite a thrill, especially when I lit the afterburner. I heard some guys say they could make the F-86D go supersonic if they flew it in a steep dive at full power. It was a wonderful airplane, perhaps the greatest in the world at the time. With the increased speed and complexity of the aircraft, however, I had to be even more focused in my flying. It wasn’t that I needed a quicker reaction time; I just needed to think further ahead. I had to anticipate all of the things that could go wrong and stay ahead of the airplane in my thinking.
I practiced low-level approaches and landings in bad weather in that aircraft. In fact, I earned a special license that allowed me to land when the weather was so bad that I could see nothing outside the cockpit at all. Such a license was extremely unusual because there was little support other than voice commands to assist a pilot from the ground in such weather. I also learned how to operate the radar system and how to go after a target. I learned the best air combat techniques in a very scripted way: we would climb up to the right altitude with a team on the ground supporting us on the radio, while other airplanes towed targets. The ground control told us which heading to take until we were almost on a collision course. At a precisely defined point, I would fire the Sabre’s rocket armaments. If we’d calculated everything correctly, I hit the target.
The air-to-air combat maneuvers were nothing like dogfighting. Instead, I had to place the target on my radar screen, using a hand controller to move a little cursor until it covered the target, and lock on to it by pushing a switch on the control stick. The system would then begin to calculate the correct approach path and how far out to fire the rockets. Next, I would switch to a different mode where I’d keep the target in the center of the screen. If my target started to move away from the middle I’d maneuver the airplane to keep it centered. Sometimes, the target moved so quickly that I had to fly upside down in a crazy barrel roll just to keep up with it. I was comfortable with this control system, and my skills as a pilot greatly improved during this phase of training. I really enjoyed working as a combined unit: human and machine in precise harmony.
You might be imagining a squadron of close buddies, flying wingtip to wingtip. Not us. We launched solo and headed off in our own directions, spreading out so we could look for targets over a wide area. I practiced endlessly, like a student in medical school, honing my skills and experience. But it was mostly solitary learning, which was fine; I was confident and had always relied on my own abilities, not others’.
Training for different kinds of weather was far more challenging in Florida. With all the humidity, we had a lot of turbulent weather. We even had a hurricane come through, and rather than risk damage, the experienced pilots tried to fly the airplanes to other bases, while we students evacuated to the relative safety of the officers’ club. I remember standing in the front door of that club as the power failed, watching streetlights and electrical transformers dramatically arcing and sparking, thinking I was lucky to be alive. While the other pilots evacuated the airplanes, some collided in midair due to the terrible weather, and four guys died. Four jets, four pilots, all gone in one terrible accident.
Even though we were not in a combat zone, it was a dangerous life. I knew it could have been me who died that day. I understood that risks were part of my job, but incidents like that terrified Pam.
That made sense: she was on the outside looking in. As much as I wanted to share the excitement of my career, she couldn’t experience it with me. And when it came to dangerous incidents, like many young, dumb guys I thought it would make her feel better to discuss them, to explain them. Of course, I was wrong. My clumsy attempts to reassure her only increased her fears. I had changed since West Point—risk was part of my everyday routine and no big deal to me. For her, it was the thing that could kill her husband at any hour of the day. How she endured it, I don’t know, but she stuck with me as I dragged her from one military base to another.
The Space Age began in 1957, with the launch by the Soviet Union of the first satellite, Sputnik. I paid little attention, however. Pam and I were moving again, this time to my first post-training assignment, just southeast of Washington, D.C., with the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base. Less than two years earlier I had piloted my first airplane, and now I was a jet pilot defending my country’s most vital assets.
My mission wasn’t called Homeland Security in those days, but essentially that’s what it was. They called our squadron “Defenders of the Nation’s Capital.” However, that grandiose title was a big joke, because for a long, long time we could hardly get an airplane off the ground. We just didn’t have the ability or the resources to keep them maintained. The Korean War had been over for many years, and the nation was scaling back on military spending. The air force was in a slump at that time. We did not have a good supply system for parts to keep our airplanes flying, and it didn’t help that we still flew those old F-86Ds.
Still, in theory, our squadron was part of the air defense command system, designed to guard the nation from airborne attack. Specifically, we were ready to defend the capital from long-range assault. Control centers all over the country, using long-range radars, calculated our intercept courses and told us where to go if they considered any incoming aircraft suspicious. Rather than engaging in combat overseas, we were prepared to oppose anyone who tried to attack the United States. In the middle of the Cold War, it felt like that attack could happen anytime.
President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were engaged in a propaganda war in a fast-changing world. Both countries had nuclear weapons, and Eisenhower used their existence to keep the Soviets at bay. If events became too heated, both nations could destroy each other. In a time before large and reliable rockets, nuclear bombs would be dropped by waves of aircraft. It was our job to stop the Soviet planes.
Our targets would have been the big bombers. We had air force squadrons stationed everywhere, up along the border with Canada, in Greenland, and in Alaska, as a perimeter defense of the nation. We were trained to intercept those incoming Soviets as far out as our airplanes could fly, and to knock them out of the sky before they could get close to American shores. I’m glad that we never had to do what we were trained for.
All of my previous flying was in a training environment, but now I was in an operational environment. We stayed on alert just like firefighters, sleeping in bunks and ready to fly into defensive action. It felt very different from training. And once again, as the new, green pilot, I started at the bottom of the heap and had to work my way up.
Pam and I could finally afford to buy a home, in the District Heights area close to the base. It cost us more than thirteen thousand dollars, a fortune in those days, but it was a beautiful brick house on a pleasant street and we loved it. I wasn’t paid much, but we got by. In fact, I think we had more disposable income than I have ever had since, because we had so few expenses. After the frenetic years of moving, I felt I could finally give Pam a moment to breathe, and a little stability.
It also seemed like the right moment for us to start a family, and in 1958 we had our first child, Merrill Ellen. We gave her my father’s first name, which is also my middle name. I wasn’t totally sure it could be used as a girl’s name, too, but there were a lot of women called Meryl around, so we figured we could get away with it. I was extremely excited to become a father, and it was a very special moment when we visited my family back in Michigan with our new baby.
Nevertheless, my career still consumed me. In my second year at Andrews, the air force finally gave us new fighters, high-altitude supersonic interceptors called Convair F-102 Delta Daggers. These airplanes were specifically designed to defend the United States, and yet we still didn’t fly much. With the new focus on nuclear warfare, the air force was given little money for spare parts. We had a hard time keeping our airplanes flying. We’d cannibalize one F-102 to repair another, and plenty of aircraft just sat in the hangar and looked pretty, because they couldn’t fly. A lot of the pilots sat around, too, killing time, drinking coffee, and playing Ping-Pong.
I was disenchanted by the lack of focus and flying time. But there was more to it than those factors: there was added tension within the squadron because of two very different generations of aviators. My flight commander and the other senior officers in the squadron had advanced through the ranks during World War II, a decade earlier. They’d been let go at the end of the war, but pulled back in to fly in Korea. Many hadn’t flown for years, and when they did it had been propeller planes. They learned to fly jets relatively late in their careers and were cautious and uneasy about jet aircraft quirks. Little things in the air made them jittery, and I kept a wary eye on them when flying close by.
Despite my caution, I respected their years of experience. I didn’t get it in return. Most had never been to college, and they resented those who had. They particularly disliked West Point graduates, believing that we received preferential treatment over war veterans. As there were only two of us in my squadron, we were easy to single out. I gritted my teeth and said nothing—for a while.
My superiors also wrote efficiency reports about me, which went in my military record. These reports were always good overall, but I was still convinced that my flight commander knocked me down a little simply because I had gone to West Point. A report that was merely okay would slow my chances of promotion. I vented my frustration in a private letter to Jim Allen, the tactical officer at West Point who had convinced me to become a pilot. He wrote back and told me that if I decided to resign I would be giving in to those people, who would then be in total command of the air force. He advised me to stick around, both for me and for the service. Jim was a clever guy, who ended up heading the Air Force Academy. It was some of the best career advice I have ever received.
I didn’t waste any more time sitting around drinking coffee and talking to those guys. I began to wander around the hangar more and more. Just as I had been curious about taking car engines apart and putting them back together as a teenager, I was eager to see what went on with airplane maintenance. I hung around the maintenance crews, talked with them, and grew even more fascinated. There were storage areas for munitions, guided missiles, folding fin rockets, and other amazing things. I wanted to know it all inside out. The guys who worked there, however, told me that they were having problems. They could never get the attention of the officer in charge, as he was always in the lounge with the pilots, relaxing with coffee and cigarettes. They were left to flounder on their own, and as a result the squadron received poor readiness ratings. It was not a good time to be so disorganized, because the air force was adding a special weapons storage facility, which meant we’d be able to have nuclear weapons on-site.
The squadron commander was aware of the problem and noticed my interest. He finally came to me and said he wanted to make some changes, and they involved me. He told me to take over and run the armaments and electronics shop. I had no idea of the scale of the problem when I began, but once I did my weekends were gone. I put in 120-hour weeks sorting out the mess, in addition to being on constant alert as a pilot for three-day shifts. With the help of my senior master sergeant, I put in all my time reorganizing.
The working conditions were deplorable. All the sensitive electronic repairs took place in a lean-to shed that wound around the back of the hangar wall. It was filthy, and despite the sweltering summer heat it had no air-conditioning. So we approached the Convair company, which built our F-102 airplanes, and Hughes, which built many of the weapons systems, and asked a question they had never heard before. We told them that if they would buy the materials, we would rebuild the armament shop. They saw that we were serious and agreed. It took a while, but we put in sound-absorbent ceilings, fluorescent lights, air-conditioning, brand-new workbenches, and a gleaming tiled floor. The place looked like a medical operating theater when we finished. The tools and all the test equipment were where they were supposed to be, and there was no longer any confusion about who did what. The whole operation turned around, and our air force readiness rating jumped from very low to very high.
It turned out that we fixed up that shop just in time. In 1960 we upgraded to the F-106 Delta Dart, dubbed the “ultimate interceptor” airplane. This sleek jet was an advanced version of the F-102 design, with a more powerful engine. It also had an almost completely integrated electronic flight system, with navigation, radio, munitions, and the flight-control systems in big racks. The F-106 was complex and needed the efficient maintenance facility we now had. Because we were so organized, when the air force demonstrated the airplane to senators, congressmen, and others from Washington, they frequently used our facility.
Our second child, Alison Pamela, was born that year. Many fathers would try to be at home and spend more time with two young children. I focused more on my job. I rationalized the decision by saying it was good for my career—and it was. But, to my regret, I missed a lot of my daughters’ precious early years: time that once lost is gone forever.
Luckily, Pam was a wonderful mother, who could fill in for my absence. I don’t remember her ever complaining about me being gone all the time. Perhaps it was my own guilt that I did not spend more time with my family and was not more of a father when my kids were small, but I suspect that a sense of unease crept into our marriage at that moment.
Up until then, despite any hardships, we had made it through on the understanding that we lived the roving military life. I don’t think Pam expected that things would change when we had kids, but I believe she became increasingly wary about what I was doing. When we married, she was a little upset that I chose to join the air force. She didn’t really want me flying, because there is an obvious element of danger to it. I am sure she must have struggled with the fears that all aviators’ wives have, and the pressure to not outwardly show them.
Then I got into the all-weather fighter business, which was not like flying cargo airplanes—it was far more dangerous. Adding to that stress, I was away from home and flying city alerts in the middle of the night. No wonder it was a tense time for her. I was getting more and more into my work, and she had the frustration of covering for me at home because I wasn’t there.
I understand now that Pam needed me to slow down. To reconsider what was most important to me. To invest in my new family. Yet I have to admit that I was oblivious to her worries at the time; I was so caught up in my career. The Air Defense Command came and inspected our maintenance work, and enthusiasm grew about the great job we had done. They particularly appreciated that the contractors, rather than the air force, had paid for most of the rebuilding. Soon I received a phone call summoning me to headquarters. They wanted me to visit all of the other air bases, talk with them about what we had done, and work with them to do the same.
I was grateful for this validation of my work, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. If I had to sit at a desk somewhere, I didn’t want to do it at Air Defense Command Headquarters. I wanted to make a choice that would benefit both me and the air force. So that day I jumped in my car, drove to the Pentagon, and requested that they send me back to college to obtain an advanced degree. At first, the officers I talked to wanted to send me to North Carolina to study nuclear engineering. No, I countered, please send me to the University of Michigan. In fact, I begged and pleaded to be sent to Michigan, to study aerospace engineering. It worked: they enrolled me.
Before we moved back to Michigan, I had my first brush with the space program. The pilots in my squadron all gathered in our coffee room in May of 1961 where we planned to watch the live television reports as NASA attempted to put Alan Shepard in space on America’s first manned flight. Just before his launch, we heard that there was an emergency back at our airfield. Our maintenance officer was trying to land an F-102 fighter, but he couldn’t get the gear down. He would have to land the airplane on its belly. We needed to decide whether to watch the historic spaceflight live, or to take our hot dogs out to the runway and watch the crash. We decided that we could always watch the launch later on, in repeats, but the crash would be unique. So we forgot about the space program for the next few hours, far more pleased to see our maintenance officer return safely to earth than any astronaut. Sorry, Al, it was nothing personal.
We also played a trick on one of the flight commanders in our squadron, an old, crusty pilot who had never been to college. We had someone from the Pentagon make a prank call to inform him that he had been selected for the astronaut program. We kept the joke going for two weeks, and the guy was just walking on air while we congratulated him over and over. When we finally told him the truth, however, I think he was a little relieved, because he knew that he didn’t have the experience needed to be an astronaut. It goes to show that when the manned space program really got going, it meant little to me other than a way to play practical jokes.
I hadn’t distinguished myself academically my first time at the University of Michigan, and in truth I was amazed that they accepted me into graduate school. I quickly discovered how much I needed to catch up; that first summer was unbelievably tough. I took a math course with around a hundred students, and more than eighty of them were high school graduates who knew more math than I’d ever learned. In the years since I had left West Point, the instruction in high school had advanced so much that these kids were way ahead. I broke my back studying to catch up. It took me a year to feel comfortable.
I wanted to go back to Michigan because they had a course specifically for air force officers, with a focus on guided missiles. The course was quite specific to what the air force needed at the time. Ballistic missiles were becoming crucial to our national defense, and rocket airplanes were being built that could reach the edge of space. This was clearly the wave of the future, and I could see that it was better to be ahead of the wave than behind it. Most people in the class went on to work with ballistic missiles, but other pilots like me hoped to go into high-performance flight work. I wanted to learn as much as I could about subjects like control systems, instrumentation, and rocket propulsion. We did a lot of space-related work, which was important for both ballistic missiles and manned spaceflight careers. We also studied a great deal about trajectory analysis, orbital mechanics, and rocket propulsion. I didn’t plan to become an astronaut, but nevertheless I learned much of what I’d need for the job.
I also thought about my air force career beyond being a pilot. Any good air force officer doesn’t obsess about flying. The air force is a management organization, and I looked forward to steady progression through the ranks. At some point that would mean I’d have to leave much of the flying to those under me, and I wanted to learn the necessary management skills.
Once in Michigan, we rented a house only thirty miles from my parents’ home, which was great. Although I’d been happy to leave, I had still missed my family and it was good to be close again. For Pam and the girls, however, it was the same sad story. On the whole, going back to college was a huge mistake. I was busier than ever, and it meant even less time with my growing family. When one parent is away all the time, the other parent has a tough job. If that parent doesn’t complain, nothing changes. If the parent does complain, however subtly, the children will pick up on that feeling. The only way to ease that tension would have been for me to cut back on a career that was advancing rapidly, and I didn’t want to do it.
With Pam and our daughters Merrill (left) and Alison, in Michigan in 1962
I had so little home life because I was not just studying: I was also the air force operations officer for all of the other pilots at the college. In my two and a half years there, I had to give around thirty students their check rides, instrument training, and schedule their flying time. Add to those responsibilities studying for master of science degrees in aeronautical, astronautical, and instrumentation engineering, and it is little wonder that I was so preoccupied.
Meanwhile, I looked ahead. I discussed my next move with two other pilots studying at the college. Jay Hanks was the head of academics at the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and Bob Buchanan was the deputy commandant. I spent a lot of time with the two of them, and the more I learned about their work, the more I realized that test pilot school was a natural career path for me. It was the top of the ladder for all active aviators. I’d have a chance to further understand the airplanes already in use in the air force, while testing aircraft not yet in service. This experience would put me ahead of the curve, and position me for even higher-ranked air force positions.
My hard work in Michigan paid off academically, and by 1963 I was all set to graduate from college. Bob and Jay had both strongly encouraged me to apply for the next test pilot school class. So I did, and hoped that such highly placed backers would ensure I’d soon be in California, testing the newest and hottest jet fighters. Yet a couple of months later I read an announcement listing the class members starting at Edwards that year. My name was not on it. I could have been upset, but instead I remained philosophical. Forget about it, I told myself, you just didn’t make the cut.
About a week later, the secretary of the air force called me. Had I seen the list of people selected for Edwards, he asked, and had I noticed I was not on it? Yes, I replied, wondering where this call was going. To my surprise, he told me the air force had deliberately taken my name off the list. They had an exchange program with the Royal Air Force over in England and had decided to send me there instead. The exchange program had never been a great success because the American pilots had been unable to meet the academic standards the British required. My superiors had looked at my records, seen that I had a solid academic background, and thought I’d be a perfect fit. It sounded like a great opportunity.
I had a six-month wait before the assignment in England began. Talking it over with some air force advisors, they thought that it would be helpful for me to go through an instrument pilot instruction course while I waited. Flying in England would mean bad weather. Plus the British did not use radar; they relied on directional radio beams to pinpoint aircraft positions. I would have little help when judging my position in the sky. So at Randolph Air Force Base, close to San Antonio, Texas, I spent a few months practicing flight using only instruments. After a couple of years living in one place, my family was leading a nomadic life once again.
Before we left for England, I heard that NASA was accepting applications from jet pilots to become astronauts. It sounded like a good way to enhance my career, so I sent in my paperwork. I figured that I had nothing to lose. While I still wasn’t a test pilot, I had accumulated a lot of flying time and some good reports from my superiors. The answer I received back said, essentially, that timing was not in my favor. They wanted to talk to me, but I was going on an exchange program and they couldn’t interfere with my orders. I figured I would be in England for at least three years, and older than NASA’s age requirements by the time I returned. So, forget it, I thought: it just wasn’t in the cards for me to become an astronaut.
Pam and I decided that all four of us would live in England while I attended the Empire Test Pilot School at Farnborough, in the south of the country. We also decided that if we were going to spend time in a foreign nation, we would not hide in an American compound and pretend that we were still at home. Since I was on exchange to the RAF, I would live as an RAF officer. The whole point of the program was to create good connections between the two nations, and living in the English community, rather than segregating ourselves like most American pilots, seemed like the best way to do it.
When we first arrived in England in a military aircraft, a very helpful and friendly air force officer from Oklahoma met me at the bottom of the steps. His name was Bill Pogue, and he was also in the exchange program. Bill had been asked to welcome us to England and make sure we got to our destination in one piece. After a brief chat where he shared some helpful tips about the school, Bill put us in a car. That was the last I saw of him until a couple of years later, when he turned up again at the astronaut selection physical tests.
Some of the officers who had gone over earlier paid hundreds of dollars a month in rent to live in an American enclosure, a huge amount of money back then. Instead of living with Americans, I asked my RAF counterpart who made my moving arrangements to find us an English house to rent. He located a beautiful five-bedroom bungalow in Crookham Village, with a large vegetable garden in the back. It was quite close to the air base at Farnborough, in the pleasant rural county of Hampshire, and cost about a fifth of the rent for the American compound. In such beautiful surroundings, I no longer felt sad about missing out on an Edwards assignment in the dusty California desert.
My family became completely immersed in the British way of life. We went weeks at a time without seeing another American except in my classes. Our two daughters started school, and because they were still so young, they picked up English accents amazingly fast. To our amusement, Pam and I found that we now had two children who sounded like they were born and raised in Hampshire.
It was a fascinating time to be in England. In 1964, after years of austerity following World War II, the country was coming to life again. You could feel it in the music; the Beatles were really making a big splash. Every Friday night we would have a party at the officers’ club. They’d pack a hundred people into a tiny room, play Beatles records, and we’d party all night long. I still consider my British friends to be the best I ever had.
Even though we lived in England, we threw a Fourth of July celebration at my house. A little insensitive, perhaps; after all, the British lost that war. However, I wanted to show my English colleagues how we Americans could throw a good party. My whole class came over to my home, as well as all the instructors. We had cold American bottled beer, hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad exactly as we would have served it in the States. At that time in England, these dishes were pretty exotic. Although the English pilots insisted on calling us “colonials” that day, they had a great time. The commandant of the school even showed up, in a full dress uniform with white gloves. He probably regretted that when he began to run around, playing a game where we threw raw eggs over the bungalow while others tried to catch them on the other side. Those white gloves didn’t stay clean for long.
The British taught test flying very differently than Americans. We had to do everything by hand; there were no electronic recording devices. Back in the States, a big control room recorded the test data. In England, I measured data myself, took my own notes in the air, and wrote my own reports.
Some may have thought the American, more high-tech approach was better, but I didn’t. I had to really think about what I was doing while learning to test fly in England, rather than rely on the ground to record everything for me. Perhaps because I enjoyed a hands-on relationship with cars and other mechanical things, I found this approach far more interesting. A handheld gauge told me precisely how much force I exerted on the stick when I pulled it, and I would use this in the air together with a tape measure and a notebook while carefully testing the aircraft. I could directly measure what happened whenever I made the slightest adjustment to the airplane. It sounds old-fashioned, for a pilot to be fiddling with a handheld force gauge while flying a jet, but by personally reading off the forces I placed on the airplane, I felt even closer to the machine. It was incredibly valuable, because I learned what it took to make each aircraft perform at its best.
I don’t recall any of my American colleagues looking down their noses at this more direct testing method. In fact, we all really appreciated our time in England because, if we had been in the United States, we would only have been allowed to fly two different types of aircraft, maximum. At Farnborough, I flew at least thirteen varieties, from a tiny de Havilland Chipmunk propeller airplane all the way up to a Vickers Viscount airliner that could seat around fifty passengers. We flew a wonderful diversity of unique aircraft with intriguing names like Provost, Devon, Dove, Canberra, and Skyhawk. We even flew gliders: it was pilot heaven. The British philosophy was that we were pilots, so we should be able to fly anything. It was quite different from the American mindset of specializing in one kind of fighter jet.
Most of the time, we flew Hawker Hunters or Gloster Meteors. The Meteor was the first operational British jet fighter and a potentially deadly airplane—not only for the enemy, but also for the pilot. It was tricky to fly, and in certain flight conditions the Meteor would become unstable and almost uncontrollable. The Hawker Hunter, on the other hand, was one of the best airplanes I ever flew. It was smooth, comfortable, easy to fly, yet very powerful. I loved to spin upside down and watch the world rotate around me. I fell in love with that airplane, and flew as many of my test exercises in it as I could.
At Farnborough we’d start the day with academic sessions, then have lunch, often with a pint of beer, before we suited up and went flying. There were some British flying practices that weren’t necessarily better—in fact, I am sure they don’t do them anymore—and drinking before flying was certainly one of them. But that beer accompanied some of the most wonderful lunches I ever had in the military. I learned to love eating fish while I was in England, and I have never had Dover sole as good as I had at Farnborough. We’d finish up the lunch with a traditional English brandy-soaked trifle dessert with custard, empty our beer glasses, and head down to the operations area to go flying. Once there, we had one more lunchtime treat before we’d take to the air. The cleaning lady at the flight line office always had a big mug of hot tea ready for us. It was the strongest tea I ever tasted: you could probably have stood a spoon up in it. It was the perfect refreshment before a long flight and probably also helped counter any bad effects of the lunchtime alcohol.
Farnborough was my first time living overseas, and I loved it. I didn’t have to learn a new language, which made adapting easier. As part of the training, we students traveled all over the island. We would pile into the Viscount and head off to airplane manufacturers in towns like Blackpool and Edinburgh. We’d visit anywhere and anyone related to aviation. I also found time to take Pam and the kids on some great trips to places like Bristol, Lancaster, the beautiful castles of north Wales, and the lovely city of Chester with its impressive Roman and medieval city walls and buildings. Learning how to drive on the left was intriguing enough. But even the roads were different. Some followed the path of old Roman highways, which would cut across the landscape in a straight line. Others, English-style roads, wound around the contours of hills, so there were few rises and dips to negotiate.
To get around, I bought a Volkswagen Beetle. Like all cars in England, it was a stick shift. I drove to the store at South Ruislip Air Station every week to buy groceries and also to do something a little extra: I was the unofficial supplier of liquor for my British colleagues. With coupons from the American Embassy I could get it at the air force store for a dollar a bottle. English ladies had a particular liking for straight shots of tequila, so I had to buy extra bottles every week.
I soon realized, however, that Pam didn’t want to drive the car. In my haste, I had never asked what kind she would feel comfortable driving. When we finally talked about it, I learned that she was frightened to drive on the left-hand side of the road. She also didn’t want to learn how to change gears. So I compromised with her and traded the Beetle for an American Oldsmobile station wagon with an automatic transmission.
It was only a little thing, but it symbolized our growing disconnection. I found it strange: it seemed that she did not want to join me and fully adapt to British life. In fact, she felt a little intimidated by life in England. While I tried to do everything I could to make her comfortable, I increasingly felt I was alone in my interests and ambitions. The last thing I wanted to do was give up exciting opportunities and settle for comfort and familiarity, but I felt I was subtly being asked to do just that.
I graduated second in my class at Farnborough. Not long before I did, the class from the test pilot school at Edwards came over for a visit. Among them was Chuck Yeager, a legend in the test piloting world because he was the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Now, almost two decades later, he was the commandant of the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards, which trained pilots and engineers to test new and experimental airplanes. I didn’t know him personally at that time, but I had been told a lot about him. One of the stories was that he didn’t like pilots with a lot of education. Like a lot of World War II veterans, he’d never been to college himself. So it was a surprise when, almost as soon as Chuck stepped off the airplane, he tracked me down, introduced himself, and said that he needed me to come back and teach at his school.
It was a flattering offer, but I had to tell him that I didn’t know if I could accept: I was in a formal three-year exchange program. I was scheduled to leave soon for another British flight test center, RAE Bedford, where the British were developing vertical lift aircraft. I would test vertical takeoff maneuvers and equipment. I was looking forward to this two-year assignment, because they had some really interesting and innovative testing going on.
I could tell that Chuck wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He spoke with the commandant of the test pilot school, who in turn discussed it with the British defense ministry. They approved my return to the States, but the U.S. Air Force was still nervous about accepting. They didn’t want to do anything that might upset an international exchange program. I believe the discussion went all the way up to the secretary of the air force before it was agreed that I would return to the States. In the meantime, I had graduated from the school, and no one had any idea where to assign me.
While the decision was made, I marked time at the exchange office of the American Embassy in the center of London. I was placed in a small rented office above a Wimpy’s hamburger café, a couple of blocks from the embassy. It was frustrating: I wanted to keep flying, but instead I was stuck at a desk. There wasn’t much for me to do except for some nonsense paperwork, so I walked around and enjoyed London instead. It was Christmas of 1964, and the big stores gleamed with colored lights. It was the last calm moment in my career for a very long time.
I was commuting into London from Crookham Village every weekday by train. One morning, I spotted a familiar face at the station: Robbie Robinson. He was a British pilot who had been on exchange duty in the United States doing top-secret work before becoming an instructor at Farnborough. Years later, it was revealed that he’d flown highly classified missions in U2 spy planes over the Soviet Union’s rocket testing sites, which the British officially denied at the time. I always had a lot of fun with him, as we got along so well; he had a great sense of humor. This morning would prove no exception.
Robbie sidled up to me, we exchanged glances, and he whispered, “Follow my lead.” I guessed he had a prank in mind, so we entered the same rail compartment and pretended not to know each other. It seemed that no one ever talked on the train; they preferred to bury their faces in a newspaper. Robbie sat and read his paper, too. As the train started to move, he began to mutter to himself about the “damn Americans,” as if a story in the paper had angered him.
I guessed that this was my cue. After a few minutes of his grumbling, I announced that I was an American, that he was insulting my country and needed to stop. He immediately argued back. We kept this act up for a while, and gradually the other newspapers in the compartment were lowered and the passengers began to stare at us. As we neared London, the argument became more and more heated, and other people on the train joined in. Luckily, some took the American side, or I could have been in big trouble. As we pulled into our final stop, the other passengers were all arguing like crazy. With a final exchange of insults, Robbie and I jumped off the train and hid at one side of the track. We watched as the passengers came out, still quarreling furiously with each other. As soon as we were sure they were not looking, we laughed like hell. From then on, every time we rode a train together, we tried to pull the same trick.
After about six weeks, the British and Americans had worked out all of their paperwork. In the spring of 1965 it was time for me to head back to the States. My children, who by that time sounded completely English, went back into American schools. Surprisingly fast, they lost all traces of their British accents. We left the beautiful English countryside behind for the hot, dry desert of Edwards Air Force Base, northeast of Los Angeles. I felt a little strange: teaching at Edwards was an unusual arrangement. However, the test pilot school in England had taught me essentially the same skills I would have received in the basic flight test courses. I was given credit for the basic courses along with the students, while I wrote and taught the advanced courses. It was odd, graduating with the students I taught, but it suited everyone.
I always felt slightly nervous around my boss, Chuck Yeager, as I still sensed that he didn’t like educated people much. It seemed to me that he let those immediately under him, such as his deputy Bob Buchanan, run the show while he went out having fun with his air force pals. From what I saw, he was a completely different kind of pilot than me, very good at flying by the seat of his pants, learning by experience and feel, but without much of the sophistication needed for flying the newer, more technically challenging aircraft. He was also extremely self-confident and unwilling to take good advice from others. Not much more than a year before I arrived at Edwards, Yeager lost an NF-104 airplane when he took it to the edge of the atmosphere and it went into an uncontrollable spin, forcing him to eject. No one dared say it around him, but everyone at Edwards thought that Chuck had pushed his abilities too far that day.
Chuck had been passed over for astronaut selection, too, because he did not have the mandatory college education, and he seemed to take this a little personally. Worse, the primary purpose of his Aerospace Research Pilot School was to breed future astronauts, a club he could never join despite being the world’s most famous test pilot. Still, no matter how I felt about him personally, I was grateful that Yeager had pulled me right into studying and teaching techniques designed to train future spacefarers. We learned all about orbital mechanics and rocket flight in the classroom, then practiced zoom maneuvers in the air in F-104 aircraft, appropriately named Starfighters. Wearing full pressure suits, we flew trajectories similar to the flight path of the X-15 rocket plane, which could reach the fringes of space.
I’d start out at thirty thousand feet, dipping down slightly to pick up extra speed, and then once I was racing over Mach 2, I would pull up and coast to the edge of the atmosphere. There was little time to look out; I closely monitored my gauges, ensuring my wings were absolutely level and my engine stayed at a safe temperature. If the jet turned sideways, even slightly, my large canopy could have acted like a sail and spun me around.
The afterburner soon blew out, and above seventy thousand feet I shut the specially modified engine down before it overheated. Now running only on batteries, the airplane slowed. Reaching the top of the arc, pushing for one hundred thousand feet, slowly coasting, almost floating, I gradually let the nose of the airplane drop. At last, I had a brief moment to look out, and observe—everything.
I felt like I could see the whole world. The sun was white, burning with a cold, unforgiving glare that highlighted every tiny scratch on my canopy. The sky was not yet black, but it was dark, and bright stars were beginning to appear. Below me, the earth was brilliantly lit. I could gaze from the orange desert of Edwards down across Los Angeles, past San Diego, and deep into Mexico, until the land and ocean finally disappeared in the blue, glowing haze of the atmosphere. Gazing into the deep, darkening horizon, I could see the slight curve of our planet’s edge. It was eerie—and beautiful.
But there was little time to look. Above much of Earth’s atmosphere, my still-rotating engine parts tried to act like a gyroscope and turn the airplane sideways into a dangerous spin. Carefully adjusting ailerons and rudder, I kept the wings dead level as I gradually nosed back down into thicker atmosphere. Restarting the engine, I’d dive down to a landing on the Edwards runway. If I could not get the engine to restart, I’d aim for the dry lake beds that dotted the area and attempt a landing there. The flight was a halfway step to space; I’d had a glimpse of a new frontier.
We also practiced landing without power, just like an X-15. We lined up with the runway at around twenty thousand feet; reduced the engine to idle; extended the speed brakes, flaps, and landing gear; and dropped like a stone to a landing. It was difficult, but after a few attempts we could usually land on a predetermined spot on the runway.
Flying jets at Edwards Air Force Base, around 1965
We were a mixed bunch of pilots. Many of us were in the air force, of course, but we had naval and marine corps aviators there, too. I was more of an outsider, because I came in as an instructor, but we all stood up for each other and were a very supportive group. We were being groomed to fly winged vehicles that would go into space, such as the X-15. The air force had recently canceled a proposed space plane, the X-20 Dyna-Soar. They considered it too expensive and difficult to develop. A new air force space program, the Manned Orbital Laboratory or MOL, was being developed instead. We also couldn’t help but notice that many of NASA’s astronauts came from Edwards and had backgrounds similar to ours. The space agency had been selecting astronauts since 1959 and flying them in space since 1961. Since the day I missed Al Shepard’s spaceflight on TV, NASA’s space program had progressed at an astonishing pace. By 1965 they were flying impressive two-pilot space missions in their new Gemini spacecraft. Despite the promise of the MOL program, NASA was the only organization putting astronauts into orbit.
We had a bizarre spaceflight simulator at Edwards, shaped like a doughnut ring that could move in three different axes. When strapped into it, pilots could train for some of the spacewalk experiences of a spaceflight. One week, a couple of astronauts from NASA showed up to practice on it, and I was asked to help instruct them. Gene Cernan and Charlie Bassett were assigned to the forthcoming Gemini 9 mission: Bassett planned to make a spacewalk, and Cernan was training as his backup. Charlie had been through the test pilot school at Edwards himself only a few years earlier, and he impressed me right away. I flew with him that week and learned that he was an incredibly good pilot and a friendly guy whom I chatted with a lot. Meeting him made me think how good it might be to join the astronaut group at NASA. If I were really lucky, I might even fly a mission with Charlie. A number of fellow Edwards pilots probably had the same thought that year: Ed Mitchell, Stu Roosa, Charlie Duke, Bob Crippen, Dick Truly, Hank Hartsfield, and Bob Overmyer were all at Edwards around the same time. Although it took some of us many years, eventually we all made spaceflights for NASA.
It surprised me when, less than a year after arriving at Edwards, I heard an intriguing announcement: there would be another opportunity to apply to become an astronaut. NASA was looking for pilots for its fifth intake, and in September of 1965 a number of us applied. There were actually two astronaut groups we could apply for: NASA’s group and the air force’s own MOL program. The air force had chosen the same moment because they didn’t want NASA to take all of the top pilots. You could apply to one, the other, or both programs at once. I applied to NASA only; I figured the air force would steal all of the best pilots from the dual selection but would never get their own space program off the ground. I didn’t know much about NASA yet, but I knew the air force didn’t have a good track record for that kind of program.
I applied to become an astronaut because, professionally, I figured it couldn’t get any better than that. Even being a test pilot couldn’t compare with becoming an astronaut and making a spaceflight. That also seemed to be the general feeling amongst Edwards pilots. I knew that I was only able to apply because Yeager had pulled me back to the States; otherwise I would still have been in England for this selection period. I was thirty-three years old, not far under the maximum age limit, and if I didn’t make the cut I’d probably be too old for NASA’s next intake. This was my last chance, and I knew it. I sent in the required stack of paperwork, including military efficiency reports, flying time, and a complete résumé—then waited.
While I hoped for an acceptance letter, Pam was distressed by my decision to apply. Our relationship had already been weakening. Test pilot school had created a big problem between us because my work became increasingly dangerous. My astronaut application was a breaking point. Pam just could not handle it.
I had to weigh everything in the balance, however, and decide what was best for us. Could I turn down the chance to fly in space? No, I couldn’t. That was the short, difficult answer. They say that hope is not a plan. I guess that is true. Still, I hoped that Pam would come around in time and support me.
Ironically, I had just spent a decade flying during one of the safest possible times for air force pilots. I began my piloting career after the Korean War had ended, and until 1965 America’s involvement in Vietnam was relatively low-key. When I applied to NASA, however, the Vietnam War was escalating dramatically. If NASA did not select me, I would soon be flying in combat in Vietnam, which is exactly what happened to most of my classmates and friends. I seriously doubt that I would have had a less risky life if I had never applied to NASA.
In January of 1966, when I was invited down to the Aerospace Medical Health Center at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, I knew I was in the running. NASA received applications from hundreds of qualified pilots, but only around seventy-five of us—less than a tenth of the applicant pool—were chosen for medical checks. My roommate for the tests was another Edwards pilot named Bob Lawrence, who had recently graduated from the Aerospace Research Pilot School. We spent ten days together, and I got to know him well. He was one of the nicest, down-to-earth guys I ever met. However, I guess he applied for MOL, too, because the air force pulled him into their program. Less than six months after he was selected, Bob died in an F-104 aircraft accident. Pam had a point: it was a dangerous business.
The physical testing at Brooks was brutal. The doctors stuck a pin in my shoulder and a pin in my wrist to measure the speed of electrical current between the two points, then thrust my hand in a bucket of ice water to see what happened. I wondered what this procedure had to do with flying in space or testing my health. They ran us through test after test of crazy stuff, whatever torture they could conjure up, it seemed.
The doctors also gave us about three days of psychiatric testing, which in my opinion didn’t tell them anything either. They asked us some of the most inane questions, which you would only answer differently if you were clinically insane. We’d stare at inkblots and describe what we saw. We were shown all kinds of goofy pictures, even a blank piece of paper, and asked to describe them. At the outgoing briefing I asked the psychiatrist what possible use it all was, and if it actually helped weed anyone out. He told me they could only drop someone if he were insane. If he were just a little odd, they couldn’t stop him, only make a recommendation. It was craziness, and worthless information.
I didn’t prepare for the psychological testing at all or try to figure out what they might ask me. I decided that if I were sane, then great, and if not they would find out. I never worried about it. I was more concerned about them finding any disqualifying condition related to my blood-pressure problem or mysterious “rheumatic heart” diagnosis from my childhood. The doctors found nothing wrong with me at all, which was a dual relief, as a bad result could also have affected my air force career.
I was never told exactly how many of us were in the running, but I believe the medical testing cut the candidates down to about fifty. In February, we were asked to go to the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas, for a series of written and oral exams. There we wrote essays about trajectories and flights, pretty basic questions compared to the work we did at Edwards. The second day, we met the interview panel for some head-on discussions. One of the pilots on the board was Mike Collins, who had been at Edwards before he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1963. Seeing Mike there, someone who I really admired, made me want the astronaut job even more.
During the testing, we heard some terrible news: Charlie Bassett, the astronaut I had helped to train not long before, had died in an airplane crash, along with fellow astronaut Elliot See. I was stunned and could only repeat to myself, “Oh shit, what happened?” I was left with a sense of both amazement and shock that Charlie was gone. He was one of the best, had become an astronaut just like I hoped to do, and now he was dead. He’d been in the back seat of a T-38 jet while Elliot See, an astronaut I didn’t know, flew the airplane. I had heard that Elliot was more of a stick-and-rudder kind of pilot: instruments were not so much his thing. In atrocious weather conditions, needing to land, he’d tried to circle under some clouds to visually line up with the runway and hit a building. NASA had now lost three astronauts to air crashes, including Ted Freeman, another guy I barely knew, also from Edwards, who had died in a T-38 jet accident in 1964.
It didn’t change my mind about NASA, nor did it slow anything down that day. No one came in the room to make an announcement. Most of the guys there were test pilots and through experience had come to accept this kind of thing as just something that happened. The feeling was “Yeah, another good guy’s gone.” It was very much a test pilot way of doing business. They didn’t stop the interviews, and the day went on.
When I came out of the interviews, I had no idea how I had done, or whether I had impressed anyone. Throughout the process, I had no sense of who was in, who was out, and how I was doing. I don’t recall talking to any other pilots about how they gauged their chances of selection. I was so focused on getting in myself that I didn’t feel like comparing notes. It was time to head back to Edwards, and wait for a phone call telling me if I was an astronaut or not. Even back in California, although I was friends with guys who had just been through the tests, we didn’t discuss it much. Perhaps because I had come to know them as an instructor rather than a member of the class, they saw me in a slightly different light. Our friendships weren’t deep enough for us to share those thoughts and hopes.
Having endured the exhaustive tests and interviews, I would have been really disappointed if I hadn’t been selected. But then again, I had to consider that NASA had started out looking at hundreds of pilots, and we had already been pared down to around fifty. I also had no idea how many astronauts they wanted to pick. I said to myself that if I didn’t get selected, then hey, that’s the breaks, man. I may have been just as good as the rest, but someone else might be ahead of me on one little category or another. At that point in the selection process, most of us were far ahead of the basic selection requirements, with much more than the minimum flying time or academic credentials, so it was going to be a tough choice for NASA.
The phone call from Deke Slayton, NASA’s director of Flight Crew Operations, came in early April of 1966. Deke didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He told me straight out, if I were still interested, that he’d like me to come and work for him in Houston, starting the next month. I knew, at that moment, that my wife would never forgive me if I accepted. Nevertheless, I said yes. I was now at the top of the heap when it came to pilots. The most exclusive club of all: I was an astronaut.