Falling to Earth

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