In October, one of my personal dreams came true when I was selected to attend the USAF Test Pilot School at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. I looked forward to this trip with mixed emotions, since I would be moving about 600 miles from Glyn. Orders are orders, however, and on October 21, I headed north with all my worldly goods and chattels, in order of importance: car, record collection, and clothes. I wondered how my newly acquired convertible and its recalcitrant windows would fare in the ice and snow of an Ohio winter.
It may seem odd that I was sent to test pilot school after two and a half years' experience in testing. It would, however, improve my ability to evaluate aircraft by teaching me the techniques of performance testing, especially the effects on performance of different weapons configurations. It would also hone my reporting skills, a vital part of a test pilot's duties. Compounding the backwardness of my flight-testing career, ten years later I received a master's degree in aeronautics from Cal Tech. Today it is done more sensibly. The pilot first gets the degree, then attends test pilot school, and finally serves as a test pilot. Of course, my experience as a combat pilot made up in many respects for my lack of formal education and training. Despite my 180-degrees-off approach, test pilot school was to be a most valuable and interesting six months for me, along with another even more valuable and exhilarating change in my life.
13
An Education in Flight Testing
Except for a strange encounter with the Kentucky State Highway Patrol, the drive from Eglin to Dayton, Ohio, was uneventful. Through Tennessee there was no speed limit on the highways outside city or town limits. When I passed into Kentucky I didn't see any speed limit signs, so I assumed that the same rule applied. On a four-lane section of highway near Louisville, I was barreling along at 70 mph when two highway patrolmen on motorcycles joined formation with me on the left side. Not thinking I was breaking the law, I nodded to them but did not slow down until they turned on their red lights and motioned for me to pull over.
When I came to a stop the older of the two dismounted and told me to get out of the car. I was surprised, because police usually tell you to stay in the car. He asked me if I knew that I had been going seventy, and I said that I did. "Do you know what the speed limit is?" he asked. When I said that I didn't think there was a speed limit, he said, "Well, there is, and it's thirty miles an hour." He was belligerent and said that he was sending for a police car to take me to a nearby small town where I could be jailed for a few days until I could appear before the judge.
Somewhat taken aback, I said that I had to report to the Air Force Test Pilot School in Dayton the next day. Seeing my uniform hanging in the window, he asked if I was in the service. When I said that I was in the Air Force, he became a little more pleasant and asked to see my license. Upon inspecting it he asked what I was doing with a Florida driver's license. After assuring him that I was indeed from Florida, he walked to the back of the car and looked at the license plate. He said, "Hell, this is a Florida tag. It's green and white, and I mistook it for an Ohio tag." His whole manner changed, and he patted me on the back and said, "You go on, son, but try not to drive so fast."
I suspected then, and confirmed later, that there was some animosity between Ohio and Kentucky, especially along the border between the states. It may have started during the Civil War when Kentucky, though it remained in the Union, had a large population of Southern sympathizers. I noticed that people in Cincinnati spoke disparagingly of the residents of Covington, just across the Ohio River in Kentucky, and vice versa, and therefore resolved that if I ever had an Ohio license plate, I would drive carefully in Kentucky.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base comprises two airfields, Wright Field and Patterson Field, connected by the major headquarters complex of the Air Materiel Command. Patterson is by far the larger of the fields and is in more open country than Wright, being farther from Dayton. Wright-Patterson, at that time, was the technical center of the Air Force and still is for aircraft and related equipment. Wright is now closed to flying and is the site of the USAF Museum, one of the finest air museums in the world, featuring such spectacular aircraft as the supersonic North American B-70 Valkyrie and the giant ten-engine Convair B-36 Peacemaker. The major laboratories (propulsion, aerodynamics, armament, and equipment) were at Wright Field, and the flight test squadrons and the test pilot school were at Patterson. Chuck Yeager, a graduate of the school when it was at Wright-Patterson, later commanded the new school at Edwards. Despite his lack of formal engineering education, Chuck's flying ability and his innate knowledge of machinery made him one of the best test pilots. He was able to recognize problems and report them accurately, which was especially valuable in the days before telemetry and computers. Today, most test pilots have advanced degrees in engineering.
The flight test school was established by the AAF during World War II in 1944 to provide trained military test pilots for the rapidly expanding AAF. It remained at Patterson until 1951, when it was moved to Edwards Air Force Base in California (formerly Muroc Army Air Field), where the enormous dry lake bed, extremely long runways, and clear air provided ideal conditions for the testing of jets and rocket-powered research planes such as the Bell X-1 and North American X-15. The curriculum and the number of students have been greatly expanded over the years, and the school, now the Air Force Research Pilot School, is recognized worldwide as one of the best. Most of the Air Force pilots who became astronauts were graduates of the Edwards school.
The school at Patterson was located on the west end of the ramp and was housed in a single low building near a hangar. To the east on the ramp were the hangars for the fighter, bomber, and cargo plane test squadrons. The school building had two classrooms, one for the performance phase of the course and the other for the stability and control phase. The class ahead of mine had completed performance and was in the stability and control phase. Two Eglin pilots, Edward "Duke" Ellington and Artie Lynch, were in that class. Duke was as good a pilot as his namesake was a musician, and Artie was one of the best. In addition to the classrooms, there was a film-projection room, a locker room for personal equipment like parachutes and other gear, an instrumentation shop, and offices for the instructors as well as the school's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Moon, with whom I had worked on the .60-caliber gun tests.
Colonel Moon greeted our class and gave us a general briefing on the rules and the curriculum. He said that this class had two distinctions even before we started: it was the first USAF class, and it would be the first class to fly jets at the school. We would fly North American AT-6s, North American P-51s, Beech C-45s, and Lockheed P-80s. The principal instructor for the performance phase was Doc Nelson, a civilian engineer, who in addition to being pleasant was a first-class instructor. There were seven students in the class — three majors, two captains, and two first lieutenants. All were from Wright-Patterson except me.
Although fighter test pilots are, almost by definition, characters, the most interesting character in the class by far was Maj. Chuck Brown, who sat next to me. He had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force at the start of the war and had flown combat tours in Hawker Hurricanes and Typhoons before transferring to the USAAF. He insisted that he had never been taught to fly but had been born a pilot. Following the war he was assigned to the 1st Fighter Group at March Field, California, the first operational group to be equipped with P-80s. He, along with Lt. Col. Pappy Herbst (who had commanded the 74th Fighter Squadron in my group in China) and Maj. Robin Olds (a twelve-victory ace from the Eighth Air Force), formed an aerobatic team that had one of the hairiest finales that I ever heard of. They flew over the runway at 1,000 feet, opposite the direction of landing, in close three-ship vic formation with their wheels down. Just past the landing end, they pulled up to 1,300 feet, rolled over in formation, lowered the flaps, pulled through in a split S (the last half of a loop), and landed.