My grandfather was a German immigrant, Peter Joseph Kranz, a remarkable man who came to America in his early twenties. He founded a savings and loan office in Toledo, was elected city treasurer, and became famous as a trout fisherman. He was wiped out in the Depression. His five sons assumed the responsibility of repaying his creditors.
The oldest son, my father, Leo Peter Kranz, died in 1940 of a bleeding ulcer, misdiagnosed as a heart problem. He was forty-nine; I was seven. One of my greatest losses is that I never got to know him. Of the few recollections I have, the most vivid is of my dad listening to the radio when the Germans invaded Poland. He commented, sadly, that this was the start of a “world war.” I didn’t know what he meant, but in later years I learned he had been a medic in World War I—the so-called war to end all wars.
I’m fond of his picture in uniform, erect, proud, crew-cut, and blond. I closely resemble him and for most of my life I have worn my hair in a crew cut. Like many others of his time, my father had no life insurance, so things got tight for the Kranz family after he died. My mother moved us—me and my two older sisters, Louise and Helen— to West Toledo so that she could raise her kids in a better environment. A staunch Catholic and Republican, her German side was evident when she was faced by a challenge; she never backed down, was stubbornly self-reliant, and expected others, particularly her children, to live up to their beliefs and stick to their guns. She was loving, nurturing—and tough. She turned our home into a boarding house to pay the bills and she ran it like a drill sergeant. Among the boarders who stayed there, a few days at a time, were the servicemen who became my heroes, soon to be fighting the land, sea, and air battles in faraway places—some of whom would give their lives in combat.
I retain vivid memories of World War II because of those young men who lived in our house, flirted with my sisters, and wrote them letters from the various fronts on which they fought. As a paperboy delivering both the morning and evening editions, I would walk past the houses of my customers, hurling the paper and shouting, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it” as the first reports on the Doolittle Raid or Midway came in, right through D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and, finally, the capitulation of the Germans and the Japanese. I plotted the major battles on maps I had pinned up on my wall at home.
I also was obsessed with aircraft—just by looking at pictures of fighters and bombers, I could construct models of them the old-fashioned way, gluing them together out of balsa wood and tissue paper. This led me to experiment with powered model aircraft and, later, rockets. I dreamed of the day when I would climb aboard the real thing. I hitch-hiked to Cleveland and Detroit for the air races. Aviation magazines flourished after the war and I hoarded nickels and dimes to buy them. The writings of Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and David Anderton inspired me.
My high school thesis was entitled, “The Design and Possibilities of the Interplanetary Rocket.” I proposed a gigantic two-stage rocket shaped like the German V-2. I rendezvoused it in Earth orbit with another stage for propellant resupply. Once the ship reached the Moon, I had to establish a base to manufacture the propellants needed to return home. Writing in 1950, I made this forecast:
An examination of the current technical and industrial development demonstrates the high probability that the Moon will shortly be conquered by man. The base will probably be established in five years and completed in ten.
I scored a 98 on the paper, never imagining that someday I would be a member of the team that would place an American flag on the lunar surface. But, then, my thesis was not your typical high school junior’s idea of light reading.
Work was a way of life in our home. I spent eight years absorbing the lessons and discipline of the Ursuline nuns. I can’t remember not working two jobs, even while cramming and crashing to keep up my grades. I earned a Naval ROTC scholarship to Notre Dame and a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy, then received the crushing news that I had failed the physical. I had shown signs of diabetes. I had high blood sugar because of my diet—heavy on sweets—while working at the A&P grocery store. The condition was temporary, a small consolation. I believed that my world had ended.
My mother, and Sister Mark, my history teacher, would not allow me to surrender. They found a $500 scholarship for the children of deceased veterans of World War I. We sold my father’s stamp albums and with every resource on the table I enrolled at Parks Air College in East St. Louis. The Korean air war had focused my goal to become a fighter pilot. Parks offered training in aeronautical engineering and a no-frills flight program. The dormitories were Army barracks at the edge of crossed cinder runways. Classes were punctuated by the roars of the PT-17 Stearman biplanes, the primary trainer for pilots in World War II, passing overhead. This was the first aircraft I ever flew, feet on the rudder pedals and my hand on the stick. The emotions of that first flight literally brought tears to my eyes. I was no longer swaying in the top of my tree; I was now truly an eagle, climbing, diving, and practicing turns with the wind singing in my ear. At Parks my dream came to life.
I intended to stay for one year, then apply for pilot training. But with the Korean War winding down, I decided to finish college. Parks turned out to be my field of dreams. The college had opened in August of 1927 in a rented hangar at Lambert Field in St. Louis. Oliver Parks was the owner and only flight instructor, and he started with two aircraft. During World War II, 10 percent of America’s pilots had received their primary flight training at one of his schools.
I graduated on a hot, steamy day in July of 1954 with a commission in the Air Force Reserve. Present were my mother and one of my sisters, Louise, as well as my Uncle Albert, who had helped us through some difficult years and was always there when I needed him. The entire family had pooled resources and bought me a green 1954 Plymouth coupe as a graduation present. It was a wonderful surprise—I had planned on saving my money to buy a car before I entered Air Force flight training. There was one problem: I could fly airplanes but had not yet driven a car!
The fifty-two members of my class consisted of Korean War veterans getting their schooling on the GI Bill, six Israelis, and thirty-eight rookies like myself. I was one month short of my twenty-first birthday and the gold bars on my shoulders were more meaningful to me than my college diploma.
While waiting for a training slot, I applied to McDonnell Aircraft Company in St. Louis and was grateful for the chance to continue my transition from student to pilot. Graduates entering the aircraft industry in the 1950s were generally given options to work in drafting or reading and plotting the data records from flight tests. I chose the latter because it was attached to the flight test department, which was where I wanted to be. The roar of jet engines, the smell of jet fuel, and the constant rumble of the factory permeated the buildings. It was an exciting, busy place filled with high-energy people.
As I walked through the office maze on my first day, I heard a gruff voice ask, “Are you Kranz?” I stopped and the voice continued, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.” I turned to face a balding cherub, with a red nose and forehead, as if he had just emerged from a sauna. He looked like one of Santa’s helpers. He was my height, but he leaned forward, neck bent in a questioning attitude. He had clear, piercing eyes under shaggy brows. I noted his bow tie and suspenders as he said, “Hi, I’m Harry Carroll. Follow me. I’m your new boss.”
He moved out quickly and I followed him to a desk covered with rolls of paper. He shoved them against the wall, pushed me into the chair, and said, “When you reduce these rolls of oscillograph readouts and learn to read the data, you will know more about what happened during a flight test than the pilot, the engineer, and the designer. These rolls of paper are like novels. It is up to you to get the meaning, then sense the plot and determine whether flight objectives were satisfied. You must watch to see if we are getting too close to the flight limits.” Then he stepped back, chuckled, and said, “This is the best job in flight test! Get started.”
His enthusiasm was my enthusiasm; his passion for work was my passion. I had to learn from others that he had flown eighty-six combat missions over Italy and Germany in the B-17 Flying Fortress and over Japan in the B-29 Superfortress. He had many inventions related to data reduction and aviation safety. He was also a poet, actor, and scoutmaster and he led the rugged and difficult grand portage canoe trips across northern Minnesota to Lake Superior. After retirement, he served as a deckhand for barefoot cruises in the Caribbean, and became the oldest individual to complete the Outward Bound mountain survival program.
Each day there was a new discovery under his guidance. No work was insignificant, no job unimportant. The standards had to be the highest if you were to meet with his approval. Harry Carroll was the first in a string of mentors who changed my life.
By the end of my third month on the job, I was sitting with the test pilots and flight test engineers during debriefings, reviewing flight cards (a pilot’s checklist for the test sequences), transcribing pilot’s notes, and
