Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman

by Neal Thompson

  “Good hop,” an instructor wrote on one report. “Held attitude and air speed nicely.”

  Shepard would not receive another down check during his final few months of training. Just as his brush with expulsion from the Naval Academy had snapped him out of the fog of mediocrity, the looming humiliation of failure at Corpus Christi had done the trick. He would say later that he’d learned from his down check that getting ahead required perfection, which meant pointing a finger at the reflection in the mirror each day and saying, “You know something? You didn’t do as good a job yesterday as you should have. You goofed off a little bit.”

  “Every day you’ve got to say that,” he told a reporter in a rare moment of self-analysis. “That kind of complacency is so insidious. And complacency occurs in everyone. None of us is immune to that.”

  Corpus Christi wasn’t entirely about the flying. Instructors also showed the trainees how to walk (slowly), talk (not much), and stalk (for women) like an aviator.

  Other unwritten lessons emanated from these alpha male veterans: trust yourself above all others; question authority; get what you want; whet your appetites; be exemplary, heroic, precise; if you choose to be unconventional, don’t get caught.

  “Naval aviators were not angels, not by a long shot,” one aviator recalled.

  Indeed, the Trocadero, the Club Swan, and other downtown Corpus Christi bars—as well as the red light district and its infamous Raymond’s Gardens Dance Hall—eagerly awaited the nightly arrival of swaggering young suntanned officers in Ray-Bans.

  It’s possible that the notion of angelic aviators was too high an expectation, that the idea of a by-the-books pilot was an oxy-moron. After all, sometimes the temptations were too strong. The earth looked so foreign from on high, rippling in Technicolor beneath, just begging for a closer look. No towns, no restrictive streets, no borders. Just trees, like a forest of hands, reaching upward. Just streams and rivers, like glistening, slithering reptiles. Just softly curving pastures, like the hips and belly of a woman—the world men thought they knew made new and fantastic by the perspective of flight. For many pilots, the early days of flying solo were like “escorting a fervor as tender as if I had just fallen in love.”

  And many naval aviators of Shepard’s day couldn’t resist the urge to drop down and taste just a bit of illicit, close-to-the-earth flying known as “flat-hatting.”

  In future years it would become Shepard’s trademark. And while there are no recorded instances of Shepard flat-hatting at Corpus Christi, the practice was comparable to spit-balling in grade school—almost everyone has done it at one time or another.

  The name came from an alleged incident in which a pedestrian’s hat was crushed by a low-flying plane. To flat-hat is to dive down onto a target and streak past at a terrifyingly low altitude. A popular target for flat-hatting was the WAVES compound. WAVES were “women accepted for voluntary emergency service,” who worked as mechanics, tower operators, nurses—and who sometimes sunbathed outside their compound. Pilots would swoop down low for a look, hoping to catch a few WAVES in a stage of undress. The trick was to fly fast enough and escape quick enough to prevent someone on the ground from seeing the plane’s tail number. Corpus Christi’s administrators even planted newspaper stories asking citizens to report flat-hatters.

  The risks of flat-hatting—along with hedge hopping, a variation in which a pilot flew low to chase cows at the enormous King Ranch—were great. Those who got caught were sent “to the lakes.” No questions asked, no second chances. Some pilots returned to the airbase with telephone wires dangling from the landing gear and struggled to explain how the wires had gotten there. A few pilots let the ground get too close and were killed; many came close. One famous Corpus Christi story involves the trainee who flew his plane straight into the path of an oncoming train, at night, and then switched on the landing lights. The engineer, thinking the plane was an oncoming train, slammed on the train’s brakes.

  At this stage in his career, Shepard wasn’t known for flat-hatting or hedge hopping, nor for drinking or chasing women or staying out late, nor for arrogance or sarcasm—none of the things that would later comprise his reputation. “He was always happy-go-lucky, smiling, and being funny,” said Tazewell Shepard, a World War II recipient of the Navy Cross who would go on to become naval aide to President Kennedy.

  “Taz” was a lanky, slow-moving Alabaman, with a drawl that contrasted sharply with Alan’s blue-blood New England accent. Some other trainees asked if the two Shepards were related, and Alan would launch into a ridiculous story about how he and Taz had the same father but different mothers, both of them circus performers. It seems their father kept running off with different circus women, he said.

  Taz recalled that Alan seemed happy just being with Louise, playing golf with her, dining out in town with her, showing her off to his colleagues. For Alan and Louise, that year may have been one of the purest of their marriage.

  Louise hated the succession of 100-degree days—Texas was clearly a world apart from the splendors of Longwood Gardens. But she acclimated to her new Texas life with her usual charm, taking up needlepoint and joining the church and women’s church groups. She was bubbly and easy to talk to at parties, and she was well liked by all. “She captivated everyone she ran into,” one of Alan’s friends recalled. Although she swore that once Alan’s training ended, she’d never live in Texas again, she was happy to have her new husband so close by at last.

  Alan would leave her each morning at dawn and carpool to the base. But the academic schedule allowed him to be at home for dinner. In the hot and steamy evenings, they barbecued, went to parties, and lounged by the pool on the base, sipping drinks with other newlyweds. On weekends they played golf, a game to which Alan was becoming addicted. No months at sea, no enemy threats. Just the two of them starting a life. And one balmy south Texas night, in the second-floor bedroom of their Ocean Drive apartment, they conceived another life, the first child in a family that was to prove a bedrock of Shepard’s life.

  By early 1947, Shepard’s grades had improved enough that his instructors raised his rating from “average” to “above average.” He and Louise transferred to Pensacola, Florida, for the final months of advanced training, and this final test of naval flight training was the toughest of all.

  It’s been said that finding an aircraft carrier at sea is like finding a pencil mark on a white wall. Before the Navy would give Shepard his wings, he had to find that pencil mark and land an airplane on it. Six times. With his father watching from the deck, filming the whole thing.

  Before he learned to fly, Shepard was known mostly for his self-assured attitude and occasional displays of aggressive determination. He was one of a quarter of a million naval officers and, at that time, merely a lowly lieutenant j.g. (junior grade)—just one of the crowd. Earning those wings, however, was the first step toward being marked as exceptional.

  A naval aviator’s “wings of gold” are a pair of wings attached to an anchor. They signify that the wearer has landed a plane on that speck of a carrier, which means, in many pilots’ minds, that they are “the best-trained men in the world.” One pilot said that after he successfully landed his first plane on an aircraft carrier, “it was difficult to walk without swaggering.”

  The crazy notion of using ships as floating runways had emerged in the early 1920s. The first aircraft tenders were retrofitted with long tracks that would catapult seaplanes over the edge. The USS Langley was the first true carrier, a former coal carrier with steel planks welded into a skinny rectangle on top. By 1930, two more ships—the battle cruisers Lexington and Saratoga—had been converted to aircraft carriers, and Navy contractors began building planes with folding wings, so that more could fit atop. Carrier aviation evolved through the 1930s with the important addition of arresting gear—cables that snag and stop incoming planes—and hydraulic catapults that shoved airplanes into the air.

  But probably the most critical innovation—the one t
hat surely saved many pilots’ lives during World War II—was the spontaneous creation of the landing signal officer, or LSO. This was the brave and meticulous man, stationed at the rear of a carrier, who gave signals to incoming aviators with rectangular paddles in each hand. The first LSO was the USS Langley’s skipper, Kenneth Whiting, who got frustrated watching a pilot repeatedly miss his landing. He grabbed two white sailors’ caps, ran down to the rear edge of the Langley, and coached the pilot toward the deck with hand motions to indicate when he was too high or low. That extra guidance proved so helpful that the LSO was immediately initiated into the emerging hierarchy of carrier aviation.

  LSOs guided pilots to safe landings by advising them to add power (two paddles held together in front of the LSO’s body) or to drop lower (both arms raised overhead into a slight V), or to abort and “wave off” (both paddles waved frantically overhead). A basket of netting over the left rear of an aircraft carrier’s deck, a dozen feet below the LSO’s platform, provided a place for him to jump and escape a crash landing.

  Carrier aviation had indeed come a long way by the time Shepard prepared for his six required carrier landings, and he was set to earn his wings at an ideal time to be a pilot in the U.S. Navy. Though President Truman had signed the National Security Act in 1947, creating a new U.S. Air Force, Navy pilots considered themselves—would always consider themselves—the nation’s best pilots. And throughout the late 1940s stories rippled through the insular naval aviation community of various records and firsts performed by ice-in-the-veins Navy pilots: an eleven-thousand-mile, nonstop trek from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio; the first ejection seat, tested at six thousand feet above Lakehurst, New Jersey; an amazing 170-hour endurance flight. Some records lasted but a blink. The world speed record of 641 miles an hour, set at Muroc, California, by Turner Caldwell, was bested five days later by a pilot who reached 651 miles an hour. Pilots were now even flying jets off and on aircraft carriers. It was a whole new world, Shepard’s world—if he could nail six landings.

  On the second day at sea, aboard the USS Saipan, Alan and a handful of other trainees prepared to make their six landings. The wind blew steadily that day, making an already complicated maneuver more difficult. Even the takeoffs were rough, with the winds slapping the planes sideways as soon as they were airborne. And the wind played tricks with the trainees’ efforts to line up their landings. One pilot came in at a horrible angle and the LSO frantically waved his paddles, sending the pilot away from the ship and back around to the end of the line. Another pilot’s wobbly attempts and subsequent wave-offs made the ship’s officers so nervous that the pilot was sent back to land on shore.

  As Shepard approached for his first-ever carrier landing, Shepard’s father, Bart, pointed a 16 mm camera at the approaching dot of a plane, which grew larger as it neared the ship. Shepard had convinced the captain of the Saipan to allow Bart aboard for the two-day trip; in his uniform, Bart proudly walked around the deck, saluting all who came near.

  Shepard had performed the prelanding pattern by flying ahead of the ship, banking into a U-turn, and then passing at a low altitude, U-turning again, and following the ship’s wake until he spotted the LSO’s paddles. His descent was slow and steady. His speed was just right—a few knots above the stall speed. Each time the wind nudged Shepard off track, the LSO tilted his paddles to get him straightened out. Finally, when it seemed as though he was going to fly right over the ship, Shepard saw the LSO’s paddles drop down and left—the signal to cut power. He pulled back on the throttle, let the nose drop a little, and then pulled it up again. His SNJ dropped to the Saipan’s deck, bounced hard, and then caught one of the arresting wires with its tail hook. Pilots call carrier landings “arrested landings” or “traps”—more like a controlled crash than a gentle runway touchdown. Shepard’s body was thrown forward into his shoulder straps, and he nearly head-butted the instrument panel—the violent conclusion to every safe carrier landing.

  “Absolutely perfect,” Shepard yelled. “Right in the center.”

  His next five landings were also nearly perfect.

  The next day Bart pinned on Alan’s wings of gold, and the uniformed father saluted his uniformed son. Alan called it “one of the best moments” of his life.

  5

  A perfectly charming son of a bitch

  After receiving his wings, Shepard, like other knighted Navy pilots, paused anxiously at a fork in the road. Both paths led to a career as a naval aviator, but only one offered the full flyboy package—speed, thrills, danger, and adventure.

  On the day he received his wings, he had been handed a one-page form on which to list his preferences for a squadron assignment. Like many of his peers, Shepard wrote “CV”—the Navy’s alphabetical code for carrier aviation. Next to that he wrote “VFB” (a fighter-bomber squadron), then “VF” (a fighter squadron), and then “VTB” (a torpedo-bombing squadron). Each of his selections was a request to become a so-called single-engine pilot. Newly winged pilots were assigned to either single-engine or dual-engine aircraft. The latter meant big bombers or transport planes, oafish, lumbering air buses used to transport troops or supplies. Due to their size and the need for a long runway, dual-engine planes were based on land. At the time, the best way to reach an aircraft carrier was to be selected for the smaller, speedier single-engine aircraft.

  Single-engine flyers, furthermore, would be entrusted with the Navy’s fastest, most sophisticated planes. And if chosen for single engines, they’d be pointed down a path leading to the next generation of aircraft—jets. In the late 1940s the Navy had begun slowly replacing its propeller planes and their piston-driven engines with jet-propelled aircraft. Only a handful of the Navy’s top pilots were flying jets at that time (the first U.S. jets were flown in 1942 and 1943). But the next best assignment—which placed an aviator in line for jets—was to serve as a single-engine pilot.

  At the bottom of his request form, Shepard added an extra plea, an effort not only to be assigned to single-engine planes but to get the nastiest single-engine of all.

  “I earnestly desire to fly fighter-bombers—Corsairs,” he wrote.

  Shepard had been introduced to the powerful, ugly, and notoriously tricky F4U Corsair during the final year of World War II. He watched from the deck of the USS Cogswell as divisions of the menacing planes grumbled overhead, aggressively bound for some aerial enemy confrontation. He’d heard thrilling stories about the Corsair’s kamikaze-killing sprees. Still, there was an asterisk beside the Corsair’s success. It was an imperfect plane, and only the best pilots could fly it—which, of course, was all Shepard needed to hear.

  The Navy made its assignments by reviewing a student’s grades and assessing which squadrons needed new blood. Shepard had to worry whether his late surge of improvement during Corpus Christi training had been enough. He knew the Navy wanted careful, “check-happy” pilots—those willing to check and recheck their planes before taking off, in pursuit of error-free flying. Navy airplanes were getting faster, more sophisticated, and more unforgiving by the day. It was not a time for Dilberts.

  Shepard did not have to wait long for his answer. Five days after scribbling “CV” and “Corsairs” he received a letter ordering him to report the following week to Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida.

  But surely the two letters he saw most clearly on the half-page letter were VF—the code for a fighter squadron. Not only had he received his wish to be a carrier pilot, he had been chosen to fly the coolest, most dangerous plane in the Navy.

  The single-engine F4U had a long snout and V-shaped “gull” wings, earning it various nicknames like “Hose Nose” and “U-Bird” or simply the “Hog.” A two-thousand-horsepower engine drove its enormous thirteen-foot propeller. It had terrible visibility; it was difficult to see over the long nose, and early versions had a birdcage over the pilot instead of a bubble canopy. Pilots had to zigzag while taxiing down runways, just to be able to see around the nose and in front of them. The C
orsair’s fuel cells leaked and had to be taped up. On takeoff, pilots had to practically stand on the right rudder to keep it from turning or “torquing” to the left. The plane bounced hard on landings, which pilots often compared to “milking a mouse”—a delicate feat. As one famous Corsair pilot said, “The air, not the runway, was the Corsair’s element.” The manufacturer, Chance-Vought, was constantly modifying the plane to correct the problems and even hired the most famous pilot of all, Charles Lindbergh, to work out kinks and teach other pilots how to handle the temperamental plane. Late in World War II Lindbergh had traveled to Corsair operating bases in the South Pacific as a civilian technical adviser; that’s where he had nearly crossed paths with Shepard, on the corpse-covered island of Biak.

  Despite its maddening and dangerous quirks, the Corsair was also an incredibly successful enemy-killer during the war. It could fly more than four hundred miles an hour and could turn on a dime. During World War II, heavily armed F4U Corsairs shot down more than two thousand Japanese aircraft, most of which had just a fraction of the Corsair’s power and maneuverability. In a fast dive, the front edge of the Corsair’s wings made a whistling sound, and the Japanese called the terrifying planes “whistling death.”

  Among the many notable wartime Corsair pilots was an unflappably talented Marine named John Glenn, Shepard’s future colleague and friend. Glenn flew fifty-nine combat missions in World War II. Despite being hit by antiaircraft fire five times, he always managed to fly his damaged but sturdy Corsair back home. “Nothing gave me more pleasure than to be flying a Corsair,” Glenn said in his memoirs. “You reach a point of oneness with the plane, as if you are the brain and it is the body.”

  Joining a Corsair squadron was a very sweet assignment for a twenty-three-year-old. Practically every Navy pilot of the day wanted to fly off aircraft carriers, although not all of them wanted to do so in the Corsair. Many of Shepard’s colleagues had a love-hate relationship with the temperamental Corsair. But Shepard absolutely loved the plane, calling his Hose Nose a “for real men only” kind of machine.