me in the operations room at Boeing as soon as possible and bring your schematics!” I took one of the flight line trams and entered the operations room just as the missile launch operator, Milt Norsworthy, was on the radio from the air-borne B-52, explaining his problem. “I was extending the lower missile-to-launch position. Everything was normal, and then I had indications that the launch carriage was gone. We’ve lost all power to the missile, but the chase aircraft says that the missile is still in launch position.”
The implications were immediately evident and they were ominous. Normally, in this condition we could jettison the entire launch assembly. In the current situation, the missile was hanging two feet below the B-52’s landing gear and we had no control over it. We had only two options: land on top of the missile and hope that nothing went BOOM, or have the crew eject and lose an instrumented B-52—and maybe the Quail program. If we landed, the possible loss of both the aircraft and crew was very real. We had to figure out how to get the crew and the airplane back safely.
Landing on top of the missile posed obvious problems. The B-52’s main fuel tank vents were aft of the bomb bay, as was the rear landing gear. The engine start tank was on the underside of the Quail and was fueled with explosively flammable ethylene oxide. When we landed, there would be one hell of a ball of flame and, if the missile came off the launch shackles, it would hit the rear landing gear, blowing the tires, tearing out the hydraulics, and possibly igniting vapors from the fuel vent system.
The B-52 had plenty of fuel and continued to circle overhead while we discussed the quandary.
As the errant B-52 continued to circle the base, there were some wild suggestions, including one for Norsworthy to climb down to the launch gear in the bomb bay and attempt to reconnect the electrical umbilical. I described the rigging of the umbilical and clearly and unequivocally stated, “We are wasting time. There is no way to reconnect the umbilical in flight. We should start working on things we
Without a pause, I turned the discussion to other options, brain storming the problem with my Pacific Airmotive team of mechanics. Bob Brown, McDonnell’s best electrical engineer, suggested that if we landed on the missile “softly” the pins in the carriage drive motor would shear, allowing the missile to be pushed back up into the bomb bay. We decided that was the best option. Ralph Saylor, the Quail flight test boss, concurred with the recommendation and voiced the plan to Al Perssons, the B-52 pilot. We then started to look at landing techniques. We were tuned in to the discussions between the pilots, who thought there would be little difference between a lakebed or concrete runway landing. All agreed that we should land on foam to smother the flame when the ethylene oxide torched off. Perssons made the decision to land at Holloman and after a practice approach came in for a perfect landing. If ever there was a need for a “grease job,” it was that day and he pulled it off.
After a brief flash of fire, the missile pushed up along the launch track, the B-52’s landing gear touched down, and the aircraft continued rolling down the runway to a safe stop, chased by a fleet of fire and rescue vehicles. My team had its first flight test save.
By the new year, 1960, we could see the end of the Quail competition in sight. We had the winner, and it was time for me to think about moving on. I wanted to return to active duty, citing my B-52 experience and gaining endorsements from both Boeing and McDonnell flight test pilots and management. I was willing to fly anything.
I received a standard form letter from the Air Force, turning down my application. The Air Force did not need any more active-duty pilots. I was devastated. I had been declared surplus by the Air Force at the age of twenty- seven.
During lunch at Holloman I often read
With the flight test program concluding at Holloman, it was time to figure out where to go next. Remembering my chagrin when the Soviets grabbed the high ground with the launch of Sputnik, I decided to move to space. After the Air Force turned down my request to return to active duty, I accelerated my plans when I noticed a small ad in
I took the advertisement home and talked to Marta. That evening I wrote a letter to the Space Task Group requesting an application for employment. My bosses, Ralph Saylor and George Doerner, applauded my choice, but the pilots thought it was a bad call. They derided the civilian space program because the equipment was wingless and fully automatic; the spacecraft were able to function just as well without pilots, they said. They thought man should go into space in winged rocket ships like the X-15.
Test pilots labeled Project Mercury a Mickey Mouse operation, a man in a can. Then they said, “Everything they launch blows up!” The rockets did have an unfortunate tendency at launch to keel over on their side, a scene that reappeared frequently in the newsreels. Of the nineteen unmanned U.S. rockets launched in 1959, nine failed their missions.
In spite of the risk, I felt I had to press on. I had chosen my direction. I believed that space was the future.
I was hired sight unseen, as virtually all of us were in those early days. I mailed my application and a few weeks later received a phone call saying I had been accepted. This was how fast the agency was moving.
Driving into Hampton, Virginia, on a dreary, rainy day in October 1960, I felt lost. My unease was not just a product of changing jobs. I missed the desert, missed flying, and suspected that I had made a disastrous mistake. Maybe the pilots were right. Maybe this
Marta and I checked into a motel on Military Drive and camped out there while we looked for a house with enough room for us and our daughters, Carmen and Lucy. (Little did I know then that I would not be spending much time at home for the next three years.) I was familiar with Langley Air Force Base from my flying days, but the material sent to me by NASA gave a much deeper perspective. Congress had funded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1915 “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.” In 1917, the first aeronautical laboratory was built at Langley. This was the cradle of early aviation and, as I drove around the base in search of my new home, I felt a reverence for the early pioneers who worked in the labs.
Most of the two-story red-brick buildings dated to the 1930s and seemed to emit a musty antique smell. The people of the Space Task Group were young, much like the members of my squadrons in the Air Force. But the similarity ended there. Just looking at the people, you sensed they were radically different.
In the military, everyone was cut from a common stencil that allowed only minor variations. Those in the Space Task Group were a rainbow of personalities, mannerisms, and speech. They were friendly, almost collegial, but they did not seem to have the intensity and focus I had experienced elsewhere. They seemed to be dreamers, dealing in ideas rather than actions. I wondered what the hell I had gotten into and how I would fit in.
I reported to the personnel office and was directed to walk across the alley to the operations building to find Chris Critzos, the administrative assistant for operations, who had hired me from Holloman. Critzos, a natty dresser with a nasal inflection to his voice, took me down the corridor to my new office. Over the years, I learned to respect Critzos for his ability to slice through rivers of red tape. He was the mechanic who got things done, and I don’t think he ever failed. There were no doors on the offices, so we walked in. The introductions to my office mates were brief and businesslike.
Paul Havenstein was an engineer and a naval officer detailed to work in establishing Mercury Control. Another engineer, a guy named Paul Johnson, was working on the remote sites. A third, Sigurd Sjoberg, was the assistant to the Mercury flight director, Chris Kraft.
Havenstein and Johnson, while pleasant, continued an intense conversation. Only Sjoberg seemed to acknowledge me. I was taken immediately by his friendliness and sincerity. Just talking to him brought a smile, but as I listened to him I saw a depth, a passion, that frequently broke to the surface like a trout taking a fly. Sjoberg handed me off to Johnson to learn about my new job.
This was the first clue I had about the work I would do. Johnson gave me a three-page job description of my position on the control team and an IBM book on Mercury Control. I had been onboard only minutes, and the job description was Greek to me. Johnson said he would get with me later, which, of course, turned out to be those
