I subsequently qualified and flew research programs in the F-102A, the F-100C, and then, the F-104A. We had no limits on the number of aircraft that we could fly at any given time, and it was not uncommon to jump from one aircraft into another on any given day. I was current in as many as eight different aircraft during a couple of years and averaged five a year during my career at Dryden. During my nine years as a research pilot, I flew twenty-three different types and several models of various types of aircraft on research and support flights.
I participated in the X-20 Dyna-Soar program and flew the first Rogallo Wing hang glider and the first manned lifting body prior to being assigned as an X-15 pilot.
WILLIAM J. “PETE” KNIGHT
Pete joined the air force in 1951. Following flight training, he was assigned to the air defense command as a jet fighter pilot. During this tour of duty, Pete won the Allison Jet Trophy at the National Air Show in Dayton, Ohio in 1954. Pete attended the Air Force Institute of Technology, graduating in 1958 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. He transferred to Edwards to attend the Experimental Test Pilot School and graduated in 1959. He stayed at Edwards following graduation serving as a test pilot in fighter operations. In 1960 he was assigned to the Dyna-Soar program as a pilot-consultant and was ultimately designated as a Dyna-Soar pilot prior to program cancellation in 1963. After Dyna-Soar was cancelled, Pete returned to Edwards and entered the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He graduated in 1964, and was finally assigned to the X-15 program in the summer of 1965. Pete flew a number of test programs in various fighter aircraft in between his various schools and his Dyna-Soar assignment.
Pete was an excellent and aggressive pilot. He demonstrated this on numerous occasions during his X-15 assignment. The flight test center was very selective in assigning pilots to joint NASA-USAF research programs. They were putting their best foot (pilot) forward, so it was not unusual for each of the air force pilots to be outstanding in all respects.
Pete and I became close friends during the Dyna-Soar program. We suffered through the same stupid qualifying physical examinations that the Mercury astronauts did and then went through additional stress tests at Wright Field and Brooks AFB. Pete and I also spent many weeks at Johnsville undergoing centrifuge tests simulating the Dyna-Soar boost profile. After all of that qualifying testing for Dyna-Soar, Pete and I deserved something more than a cancelled program as a reward. The X-15 program turned out to be our real reward.
WILLIAM H. DANA
Bill graduated from West Point in 1952 and elected to become an air force officer. After flight training he served as a fighter pilot flying F-84s in Korea. Following the war, Bill resigned his commission and returned to school, graduating from the University of Southern California in 1958 with a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. Bill joined NASA in 1958 and began flying as a research pilot in 1959. One of Bill’s first assignments was the Dyna-Soar program. He worked with Neil and me as pilot-consultants on Dyna-Soar for almost 3 years. During that assignment, he and I spent a lot of time in Seattle, individually and occasionally together.
On one trip, I had driven up to Seattle in my Jaguar roadster and Bill had flown up. He asked to borrow my car one evening to tour the town. I gave him the keys and told him to check the gas. He stopped at the nearest gas station and had the attendant fill it up. The attendant checked the oil and told Bill that nothing showed on the dipstick. Bill told him to put in a quart. He did and checked it again. Nothing. Bill told him to put in another quart, which he did. Another check still showed nothing on the dipstick. After 2 more quarts the dipstick finally showed a trace of oil on the bottom tip. Bill said that was enough.
The next day, he was complaining to me about paying two dollars for gas and four dollars for oil. I realized that I had forgotten to tell him that the car held 13 quarts of oil and that I routinely ran it 5 or 6 quarts low before I refilled it. He accused me of intentionally setting him up to get a free oil change.
Bill met his future wife in Seattle while assigned to Dyna-Soar. As they prepared to leave Seattle for Edwards, Bill decided to get rid of her car since he felt she would not need it after they were married. The night before Bill was to leave Seattle, Boeing hosted a dinner for the Dyna-Soar pilots. Several Boeing VPs and their wives attended and Bill sat near one of them. He was telling the VP about his desire to sell his wife’s car. The VP asked what kind of car it was. Bill informed him that it was an MG roadster. The VP said that he might be interested in buying it for his wife and that he would like to see it. The VP’s wife was sitting between the two men. Bill looked at her and said, “Oh, no, she’s too old for this car.” The VP almost fell off his chair laughing but when he calmed down, he wrote out a check on the spot for the car without even looking at it. Bill has always been brutally honest.
One of Bill’s first flights as a NASA pilot was with Jack and me in the C-47 on a trip to Ely, Nevada. We hauled some radar technicians up to check out the radar at the Ely tracking site. Jack, Bill, and I stayed in Ely while the technicians went on up to the site. Jack and I had a few beers and played the slot machines while we waited. When the technicians returned, we headed back to the airplane, cranked it up, and took off. Jack was flying as pilot and I was copilot. Bill had not checked out in the airplane yet. He was just along for the ride.
Shortly after takeoff, Jack decided to go in the back to get some rest since he had been up late the night before. I had Dana come up to take over as copilot. After about an hour, I decided to go back and get some rest too and I left Dana as pilot in command. We left Dana in the cockpit alone for almost two hours. Jack and I both returned to the cockpit before we got to Edwards, but Dana told me later that he could not believe how casual we were about flying that airplane. He had just come out of the military and he was flabbergasted by our informality.
While still a bachelor, Bill Dana would quite often make cross-country flights on weekends to build up his flight time. He preferred flying the F-104 on these trips but we had only three F-104s for use as proficiency and support aircraft and we needed all of them to support each X-15 flight. Walker was reluctant to let one go on a weekend. He would usually suggest that Bill take our T-33 or lesser aircraft. After many refusals of his requests for an F-104, Bill walked into Joe Walker’s office one day and asked if he could take an X-15 on a cross-country flight. Joe glared at him and then slowly the scowl turned into a grin. Bill finally got his F-104.
I found a chink in Bill’s armor when I checked him out in an L-19. We were using an L-19 to tow the paraglider research vehicle to altitude for its research flights. We decided to check Dana out as a tow pilot in the L-19 to have a backup tow pilot. I put Dana in the front seat and I climbed in back. We took off on the north lakebed and headed for Tehachapi. I had to deliver a package to the airport operator there. I let Bill fly most of the way and then landed it at Tehachapi while I followed him through on the controls.
On departure, Bill made the takeoff and then flew the return trip to Edwards. As we approached Edwards, I got a call that I was to attend a meeting as soon as I could get on the ground. Bill landed the aircraft on the lakebed, while I followed through on the controls. We taxied up to NASA and I got out.
The paraglider project engineer was there to meet us and I told him to climb in the back seat and go with Bill to show him our flight pattern. Bill taxied out and took off. I went to my meeting and came back to the pilot’s office about a half hour later. Within a few minutes, Bill came walking in from the lakebed. He had flown around the pattern and had then come in for a landing. The instant he touched down, the airplane ground looped. He bent the right main gear under the aircraft, but fortunately did not damage anything else. He tried to contact NASA by radio, but could not raise anyone. He finally had to walk in from about a mile offshore.
He later informed me that he had never flown a tail wheel airplane. All of his pilot training had been in tricycle gear aircraft. I had probably unintentionally assisted him in his landings
by following on the controls, thus preventing him from sensing the ground loop tendency of a tail wheel aircraft.
The accident was potentially very embarrassing to NASA. We had borrowed that L-19 from an army reserve unit in Long Beach. We did not tell them what we were going to use it for. We would fly the airplane to Edwards and then install a glider tow hook and release system and use it to tow the Parasev. We would use it during the week and, after removing the tow hook, return it before the weekends so the reserves could fly it. We had been doing this for months at the suggestion of an army pilot who was temporarily assigned to our office. Now we had a dilemma. We had a damaged landing gear and no spare parts.
Someone finally realized that the civilian version of the L-19 used the same landing gear. We located and bought a landing gear strut for the civilian version. We painted it olive drab and installed it on the aircraft in time to return it to the army for the weekend. Bill Dana was formally presented the damaged landing gear strut. It adorned his desk for years before it finally disappeared.
I checked Bill out in another vehicle some time later. It was the M2-F1, the wooden lifting body. I had flown the first flights on this vehicle and then checked out some other NASA pilots and an air force pilot, Chuck Yeager. Dana was to be the third NASA pilot and Jerry Gentry was to be the second air force pilot. Dana, Gentry, and I got out on the lakebed early one morning and after waiting for some rain showers to pass over, I made a quick flight to check the vehicle. We then put Bill in it and sent him off on his checkout flight. He did fine, but he had a little trouble with the rainwater that had leaked into the aircraft, since it pooled on the nose window during descent. That was the window that we used to determine when to flare. The rainwater turned that window into a big magnifying glass. Bill landed safely and then it was Jerry’s turn.
We got Jerry strapped in, then lowered the canopy and hooked him up to the C-47 tow plane. When Jerry called to let everyone know he was ready, the C-47 started its takeoff roll. At 75 knots, Jerry raised the nose of the M2-F1 just as I had instructed him to and shortly thereafter, he lifted off the ground. He climbed up to a position slightly above the tow plane and stabilized in that position for the climb to altitude. Then, slowly, the M2-F1 began to oscillate on the towline from side to side while simultaneously rolling back and forth.
The amplitude of the oscillation began to increase rapidly. I called out on the radio for Jerry to steady his wings and hold them level. The oscillations became more violent. The tow plane was only a couple hundred feet off the ground and struggling to climb higher. I began to panic. The oscillations had increased to the point where the M2-F1 was rolling up almost inverted as it swung from side to side. I was screaming over the radio for Jerry to try to level the wings and as it got worse to “Release! Release!” and finally as he rolled completely over the top I hollered “Eject! Eject!” At this same instant, Jerry released the towline while simultaneously the observer in the tow plane released the towline from his end. Jerry was only about 400 feet in the air. We normally started the landing flare at that altitude, but Jerry was inverted. He somehow simultaneously rolled back to wings level while he flared to land. He essentially landed on the bottom of a slow roll. He touched down hard, but the vehicle appeared to be intact. Dana and I were in total shock.
The ground crew picked us up in the carryall and we drove out to the M2-F1. Jerry was out of the cockpit when we arrived and he immediately began telling us what the problem was. He had, in his own mind, convinced himself that he knew exactly what he had done wrong and he wanted to try again immediately. Bill and I were in such a state of shock that we agreed to try it again.
We began towing the vehicle back to the takeoff spot, when we noticed that the vehicle was listing slightly. When we stopped at the takeoff position, our crew chief began to inspect the landing gear. While we were waiting for his report, we got a call over the radio from Joe Walker. He did not mince any words. He said, “Get that thing back in the hangar, NOW!” Someone had told him what had happened and that we were thinking about making another flight. Thank God someone had retained his sanity. When we got the vehicle back in the hangar, we found some severe damage to the hull structure at the landing gear attach point. If we had tried another flight, the landing gear may have simply fallen off. We decided to delay any further checkout flights in the M2-F1. It was not until a year later that we decided to try again.
During that year I had checked Jerry out in sailplanes to give him some experience on the towline. He did quite well. I felt confident that he would do a great job in the M2-F1 on his upcoming checkout flight. We had the same cast of characters on this second attempt. We got him in the cockpit and closed the canopy. After a final check, Jerry instructed the tow plane to begin the takeoff. Again Jerry made a perfect takeoff and climbed immediately to a position just above the tow plane. He stabilized there and I finally began breathing again.
As Bill and I watched the tow plane begin the climb, we noticed a slight motion of the M2-F1 from side to side on the towline. As we continued to watch, the amplitude of that motion began to increase. The motion became hypnotic. We stood there and watched an exact repeat of the flight the year before. I finally broke out of the trance long enough to scream, “Eject! Eject!” as Jerry rolled up on his back above the tow plane. This time, Jerry simply released the towline, fired the landing rocket and continued the roll to a wings level position while flaring for a landing. This time he made a perfect landing.
Neither Bill nor I could talk when the ground crew came to pick us up. We were in total shock. Years later when I was asked to take over as chief pilot, I remembered those two incidents and decided that I never wanted to be responsible for the actions of other pilots. I was more terrified watching those two incidents than at any other time in my life. Bill felt exactly the same way. Jerry Gentry went on to become one of the more capable lifting body pilots, distinguishing himself while flying the M2-F2, the X-24A, the HL-10, and the M2-F3. Bill and I still shudder, however, when we reminisce about those early M2-F1 flights.
Bill Dana is one of my better friends. He is an excellent pilot and a person of high moral character and integrity.
MICHAEL J. ADAMS
Mike joined the air force in 1950 and received his wings and commission in 1952. He served as a fighter-bomber pilot during the Korean War. Mike attended Oklahoma University while in the air force and graduated in 1958 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. In 1962 Mike attended the Experimental Test Pilot School and won the Honts Trophy as the best scholar and pilot in his class. He subsequently attended the Aerospace Research Pilot School, graduating in 1963. Mike was designated as a MOL (Manned Orbital Laboratory) astronaut on completion of this school. Mike served as both a MOL astronaut and a test pilot at Edwards until he became impatient waiting for the MOL to launch. He applied for an assignment to the X-15 program. He was accepted and designated as an X-15 pilot in the summer of 1966.
While attending the Aerospace Research Pilot School, Mike survived a harrowing accident in an F-104 aircraft. Mike was in the back seat of the F-104 which was being flown by Dave Scott, another student who later became an Apollo astronaut. Dave was making a simulated X-15 unpowered landing for training and evaluating purposes. As he approached the runway, the aircraft suddenly lost power and the rate of descent began to rapidly increase. Dave rotated the aircraft and advanced the throttle in an attempt to arrest the rate of descent, but the engine failed to respond. Both pilots quickly realized that the aircraft was going to hit the runway hard. Dave decided to ride it out, Mike decided to eject. The aircraft slammed into the runway with sufficient force to break off the landing gear. Mike ejected just as the aircraft impacted the runway—an optimum time for a successful ejection. If he had ejected before impact, Mike’s ejection would have been unsuccessful due to the high rate of descent. The chute would not have had time to deploy. If Mike had delayed a fraction of a second after impact, he would have been crushed since the engine slammed forward into th
e rear cockpit within milliseconds after impact.
Dave Scott stayed with the aircraft as it slid down and off the side of the runway and began to burn. As soon as it stopped he attempted to evacuate the aircraft, but his ejection seat had partially sequenced due to the impact and his feet were locked in the stirrups. He finally had to pull the emergency cable cutter handle to release his feet. As he was climbing out of the burning aircraft, he noticed Mike standing several hundred feet down the runway waving at him. Mike’s parachute had successfully deployed just seconds before impact. According to observers, Mike swung through just one oscillation after chute deployment before touching down. Mike was lucky that time.
Mike was an outstanding pilot, as he so aptly demonstrated on his first X-15 flight. Mike appeared to be a very laid-back, easygoing individual. He and Jack McKay—a man of similar nature—quickly became good friends. I went deer hunting with Mike and Jack one time, but other than that I had very little personal contact with Mike. I really did not know him very well. I had left the X-15 program before he was assigned.
Flight 3-65-97
10:29:06 NASA-1: “One minute now, Mike, one minute.”
Adams: “Rog.”
At the Edge of Space Page 4
