Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight Read online

  “Yes, sir,” Neil agreed. “But she won’t fly any slower without rolling.”

  “Understand.”

  “Eject?”

  “Eject,” said the group head quietly, “and I’ll stay with you all the way Armstrong.”

  The two flyers reflected on the decision they’d just made. Then Carpenter asked, “Think about 14,000 feet will do it?”

  “Should,” Neil agreed. “Just want to make sure I’m high enough to have time to complete all those ejection procedures before I hit ground.”

  “Good idea,” Carpenter laughed, adding, “The nearest friendly territory is down south. It’s Pohang Airport, K-3.”

  “The marines?” Neil questioned.

  “That’s the one.”

  “That’ll be good,” Neil agreed, adding, “But no bailout over North Korea.”

  “Yeah, not too many come back.”

  “If I miss K-3,” Neil told him, “I’ve always liked water. It’s a softer landing.”

  “Roger that,” Carpenter agreed as the side-by-side jets climbed from Green Six located on a narrow valley road south of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan.

  Neil wasn’t alone in his thinking. Both he and John Carpenter were aware they were planning what most pilots viewed as one of the most dangerous parts of their job—ejecting at jet speeds. That was the bad news. The good news was Neil had confidence in Carpenter’s judgment. He was an Air Force major, on an exchange with the Navy. He liked the challenges of flying off carriers, and Neil liked flying his wing—liked learning. But there was more—in his brief 21 years Neil had never really thought about bailing out or ejecting from a plane that could still fly. He had not trained to do such a thing. One of his classmates had gone over to parachute school in El Centro, California, for ejection training and had come back and told them how to do it.

  That was the extent of Neil’s schooling on ejecting and he began thinking through what he was about to do as the two Panthers continued south. The farther they flew the more the mountains of Korea showed beauty. Gone were the tortured profiles and the senseless chaos of the north. To their right reservoirs glistened like fine pearls holding the hills. To their left snow hung upon the ridgelines. Before them the waters of the Sea of Japan held their carrier. But the ship would not be there for Neil.

  He would be ejecting so he studied the hazards. He had a shotgun-shell-powered seat to blow him quickly away from his plane. He would instantly be clear of everything around him, but that instant speed would slam his body with such force he would suddenly weigh 22 times his own weight, or in pilot lingo 22 Gs. Not a lot of tolerance for error! The likelihood of some kind of injury was high—injury to the shoulders, arms, legs, and feet if he was not properly tucked in. He’d best be in the correct position or the ejection could cause him to create a new crater in Korean soil.

  John Glenn, a marine fighter pilot flying combat in the Korean theater, tells the story of his famous wingman, baseball slugger Ted Williams. Williams suffered an engine flameout in his F9F Panther and opted, despite that his jet engine might explode, to fly to the nearest alternate landing field. Ted Williams knew of a pilot who ejected and suffered permanent injuries to his feet. Ted Williams vowed to never eject. He feared it would end his baseball career. Famed test pilot Chuck Yeager, the pilot who first broke the sound barrier October 14, 1947, called ejecting from a speeding jet “committing suicide to avoid getting killed.”

  Neil smiled. He’d heard it all. But when you are left with one choice, you’re happy to have it.

  The science of the day on ejecting made it pretty clear that being shot out of a speeding jet could severely compress your vertebrae. This is why the Navy had put a lifetime limit on the total number of times one of its aviators could eject. Neil had no plans to test the limit. He reached for his ejection seat instructions and began reading carefully:

  One: Reduce airspeed if possible. 250! Yep, that’s about as slow as I want to go.

  Two: Check that safety belts and harnesses are locked.

  Three: Pull pre-ejection lever inboard and push hard down until locked. This jettisons the canopy, dumps cabin pressure, lowers seat, releases knee braces, and pulls safety pin in seat catapult firing mechanism.

  Four: Pull your feet back and place them on their footrests.

  Five: Sit erect, head back against the headrest with muscles tensed. Pull face curtain down until fully extended.

  Six: After drogue chute opens and seat stabilizes, release the face curtain, cast off harness, and roll forward out of the seat. If altitude permits, delay at least five seconds before pulling the ripcord.

  Neil took a deep breath and read a final warning on the instructions. DO NOT PULL RIPCORD WHILE IN SEAT.

  Damn good idea, Neil thought as he moved his eyes from the ejection procedures for a last look outside. His squadron had all come back before with bullet holes in their Panthers. They’d patch them up, covered them with fresh paint, and they looked pretty good. This would be the first time he’d ejected, but with John Carpenter playing nurse on his wing Neil’s confidence grew. He was ready. His calmness was inborn. During his adolescence, he’d had a recurring dream about flying. He would hover in the air and if he held his breath he would never fall.

  Silently, across the sky the two jet fighters trekked south side by side. Neil was aware he and Carpenter had never been particularly friendly—their interests and ages varied. They never talked much, but now in the sky with sunlight gleaming on the mountains they seemed like best friends. In his earphones he heard Carpenter open his microphone.

  “We’ll make it, Armstrong,” his lead said reassuringly.

  “Yeah, no doubt,” Neil quickly agreed, impatient to end any conversation that might prevent his thoughts from focusing on the task ahead.

  Carpenter sensed Neil’s unwillingness to break concentration. They moved ahead through the sunny spaces, nursing Neil’s crippled Panther over North Korean villages. From time to time they could see a burst from a gun, and then suddenly they were there, moving over Pohang Airport with the sea in view. Carpenter told him, “Armstrong, make sure your shoulder straps and seat belts are tight.”

  “They’re already choking me,” Neil replied.

  “Good boy,” acknowledged Carpenter. “You ready to hit every item on your checklist?”

  “Roger, I’m ready.”

  “You holding 250?”

  “Roger.”

  “You’d better jettison that canopy right now.”

  “Good idea.”

  “See you back on ship,” Carpenter said and Neil, with the loud snap of his canopy jettisoning and the blast of outside air whipping across his helmet, pushed as far back in his seat as he could. He firmly placed his feet on their footrests.

  Muscles tight, he took a deep breath and shouted aloud his final checklist:

  “Pre.” (All was in place.)

  “Pos.” (He was in proper position.)

  “Ox.” (He’d switched on his small green bottle of oxygen that would keep him breathing on his way to the ground.)

  Neil was blessed with the ability to put off fear until the predicament he was in was over. He reached up, grabbed the face curtain that would protect his upper body, shouted “pull,” and with one quick and firm jerk, he pulled the curtain over his helmet and face to the center of his chest.

  WHAM!!!!!

  He exploded!!!!!

  Neil was blown out of his cockpit by a violent crack of thunder as he held the face curtain firmly over his helmet and eyes. The 22 Gs made him feel as if all his body parts had been squeezed into the space the size of a bread box and he felt himself tumbling head over heels backward.

  He was aware his seat and his body were rocketing upward. Adrenaline pounded through every muscle. The small drogue parachute popped out and stabilized Neil and his seat in the airflow. He felt the blast of wind and the noise leave, and he was most aware his tailbone was hurting from the ejection’s kick in the ass.

  It was time to le
t the face curtain go. Now he could see sea and sky rapidly vanishing and quickly reappearing again, and he quickly caught his breath as he felt the Gs leaving his body … and he was suspended in midair … weightless … and he felt his seat become more stable. He literally ripped off his harness and rolled forward out of it—suddenly free with his ripcord in his grip. Despite his altitude he counted, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi,” and pulled. The chute came streaming out gradually so as not to break his back. Then the best sight Neil had ever seen—a big Day-Glo orange-and-white main parachute blossoming above him. He felt safe, he felt well—he’d survived the high-speed ejection.

  Neil’s ejection from his F9F Panther was like the one shown here from this F9F Cougar. (U.S. Navy)

  It was a great feeling to believe you were home free. Neil was happy to see his ride down was taking him back to land—back to Pohang Airport, K-3, where U.S. marines would have his back.

  He floated earthward, swaying back and forth, and as he dropped lower, he could see a rice paddy below. He opened his helmet’s faceplate and quickly disconnected all hoses and snaps. Then he removed his helmet, dropping it to Earth. Neil wanted nothing impeding his hasty exit from his chute just in case there were unfriendlies around.

  He braced himself for—

  Into the rice paddy he went with a good pop. Certainly not as bad as the kick he had just received ejecting from his Panther. He freed himself from the chute and began running for cover.

  He had taken only a few steps when he saw his helmet and its straps. He stopped and picked them up, noticing his helmet was cracked from its fall.

  He stood erect, surprised to see an American jeep racing toward him.

  There was no doubt he had landed on the marines’ K-3 base—driving the jeep was a face he knew. His smile was suddenly wider than half of Texas. It was one of his roommates from flight school, Goodell Warren.

  Warren was now a marine lieutenant operating out of Pohang and he yelled, “Armstrong, what the hell are you doing in my rice paddy?”

  “Goodie,” he called smiling from ear to ear. “You never looked so good.”

  The two midshipman buddies grabbed each other and Goodell Warren told him the explosions they were hearing out at sea came from the mines in the bay the North Koreans were laying.

  Neil suddenly realized if his parachute had not drifted back to land, he might now be afloat in those deadly waters.

  But all was well. Lieutenant Warren took care of his friend Neil, taking him to the brass for immediate debriefing.

  Neil would only spend one night with Goodell and the marines before being sent back to duty aboard the Essex. There he was greeted with some good-natured ribbing. One of his fellow pilots was John Moore, who would in years to come be elected mayor of Cocoa Beach, Florida, the hometown of the launch site that would send Neil to the moon. Moore insisted that Armstrong pay for the navy property he’d destroyed including the helmet he’d cracked.

  With his parachute’s ripcord still in his hand, a pilot tradition, Neil Armstrong tells his marine rescuers all about his ejection. (U.S. Marines)

  Neil had a good laugh, not in the least aware that the gods of providence were saving him for history.

  TWO

  TEST FLIGHT, HIGH DESERT, AND A SATELLITE OR THREE

  The Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland in the 1950s was a much nicer place than North Korea’s ugly mountains. It was perched on top of a lush green valley carved by the picturesque Rocky River. It stretched for miles to Lake Erie and was part of the thousands of acres of rustic parks that formed Cleveland’s “Emerald Necklace.”

  That was on one side. On the other was, and still is today, Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport. The famed Lewis Laboratory is now the John Glenn Research Center, but before Neil could chase his dream of working and test-flying for such a research center, he had to transition from fighter pilot back to the classroom.

  Most recognized Neil was more than a pilot with natural skills. He was smart, analytical, and blessed with an understanding of the technical. He returned to Purdue and cut himself a wicked schedule.

  His alma mater in the 1950s was influential in aviation and he needed to complete his aeronautical engineering degree. It was no longer practical just to drive an airplane. You had to be much more, with an emphasis on research. There were the swept wings, Mach numbers, rockets … the lexicon of the budding new age, and Neil recognized it was not only exciting but a warning—exciting because of the promise of rocket and spaceflight that lay just over the horizon, and a warning because being a pilot wasn’t enough. There was also this little thing about his earning a membership in the Navy’s Aviation Midshipman Program. It cut the cost to pennies.

  Neil doubled up on his classes. The outside world seemed to merge into a fog. He ignored it, logging one college credit after another.

  Just as important, Purdue was well under way building the first university airport. Neil managed flight time to stay efficient, and once he had his studies well in hand, he was content to spend a day here and there lazily.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t anything grabbing his attention. There were plenty of coeds filling out tight dresses. One in particular was Janet Shearon. She had been a person apart from the others Neil had known and whom he’d dated. While neither of them ever had broached the subject directly, the assumption rested quietly that a future between them waited. Janet had never pushed, and even in her unconcealed deep pleasure at greeting Neil she was certain, as always, to keep their relationship unstilted and undemanding.

  Neil had in fact told his roommate he planned to marry Janet. Of course given his tendency to keep his mouth shut, he never told her.

  The summer before his last semester, Neil presented his resume to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

  The agency was the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the world’s premier group for aeronautical research. Neil not only wished to be a research test pilot and engineer at the NACA’s Edwards High Speed Flight Station on California’s high desert, he equally desired to play a major research role in the science of flight. Most assuredly, Edwards was where Neil Armstrong was convinced he fit.

  There was just one problem. When Neil was ready Edwards wasn’t. The High Speed Flight Station didn’t have an opening, but what Neil didn’t know, the cutting edge high-speed flight group didn’t wish to lose him. NACA sent his application to its other centers. “The result was the Lewis Laboratory talked to me about filling an opening they had. It was the lowest paying job I was offered,” he said. “But I think in retrospect, it was the right one.”

  * * *

  At Lewis Neil was given an old and very slow airplane. The Air Force called it a C-47. Airline drivers called it a DC-3. The Navy called it an R4D.

  An R4D was what NACA had, and the agency modified it as a flying laboratory. Neil grunted disapproval, but it was his—all his. It was perfect for studying winter ice buildup on wings and propellers. Neil soon learned the best way to study these icing conditions was during the winter months over Lake Erie. He flew his R4D into freezing rain and shed lots of the frigid stuff on the lake’s icy waters. That was fun. Not the other part.

  “The only product of NACA was research reports and papers,” Neil grumbled. “Once research flights were completed, then you prepared something for publication. Next you had to face the ‘inquisition.’ This was a review of said paper by experts who were predominantly lady English teachers or librarians who were absolutely unbearably critical of the tiniest punctuation or grammatical error.”

  Good weather proved to be his savior from the inactivity of his flying lab. Clear skies lifted his spirits and lifted Neil into the air. He got to fly a faster, more agile F-82 in high-altitude flights over the Atlantic. In these tests he fired multistage rockets downward into thicker atmosphere for higher heat transfer rates.

  Neil was jus
t getting the hang of firing the multistage rockets when the call came from Edwards. NACA’s High Speed Flight Station wanted him to come on board as a research test pilot.

  They didn’t have to ask twice. Research test pilot fit him like old clothes. Neil dropped his assignments at Lewis, and with his Edwards orders clinched tightly in his fist loaded his car and headed out. But there was one most important item. Janet. If he had his way she was to become his wife and the mother of his children.

  En route to California he drove past Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, then headed north to see her at her summer job at a camp in Wisconsin. She was simply the most important person in his life, and the quiet one convinced himself he should invest a word or two in letting her know how he felt.

  In the tradition of his true personality Neil thought long and carefully about what he would say. The words could be the most important he had ever spoken and he wanted to be absolutely certain he’d chosen the most sensitive and correct ones that would express warmth, caring, and meaning. “You know,” he told Janet, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you would marry me and come with me in the car to Edwards”—he was grinning widely—“NACA would reimburse me six cents per mile instead of four.”

  Janet laughed. “Sort of makes marriage worth considering, right?”

  “Right,” he laughed, “how about it?”

  “Well…” She smiled as he watched the wind move around a few strands of her dark hair. “Perhaps it’s a thought that should be considered.”

  * * *

  Janet didn’t ride with Neil to California that day, but she did marry him—a few months later in her hometown of Wilmette, Illinois, on January 28, 1956. As she had promised her parents her wedding had all the trimmings and proper protocols. Afterward, she and Neil drove their just-starting-out possessions across the Rockies to California’s Mojave Desert, a barren, blistering place of sand and sun where Edwards Air Force Base sweltered.