The Spoken Word:

Recollections of

Dryden History

The Early Years

NASA SP-2003-4530

edited by

Curtis Peebles

MONOGRAPHS IN AEROSPACE HISTORY #30
i

NASA SP-2003-4530

The Spoken Word:

Recollections of Dryden History,

The Early Years

edited by

Curtis Peebles

NASA History Division

Office of Policy and Plans

NASA Headquarters

Washington, DC 20546

Monographs in

Aerospace History

Number 30

2003
ii

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The spoken word : recollections of Dryden history : the early years / Curtis L. Peebles, editor.

p. cm. -- (Monographs in aerospace history ; no. 30)

 Includes bibliographical references and indes.

 1. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center--History. 2.

 Aeronautics--Reserach--California--Rogers Lake (Kern County)--History. 3. Aeronautical

 engineers--United States--Interviews. 4. Airplanes--United States--Flight testing. 5. Oral

 history. I. Peebles, Curtis. II. Series.

 TL568.N23U62003

 629.13’007’2079488–dc21

 2002045204

____________________________________________________________

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office

Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328
iii

Section I: Foundations ...............................................................................................................1

Walter C. Williams.....................................................................................................7

Clyde Bailey, Richard Cox, Don Borchers, and Ralph Sparks................................19

John Griffith.............................................................................................................47

Betty Love ...............................................................................................................55

Section II: A Second Wind ........................................................................................................63

Richard E. Day ........................................................................................................67

Scott Crossfield........................................................................................................77

Jack Fischel..............................................................................................................87

Stanley P. Butchart.................................................................................................101

Epilogue .................................................................................................................125

Sources...................................................................................................................126

About the Author ...................................................................................................127

Acknowledgments .................................................................................................127

Index ......................................................................................................................128

Monographs in Aerospace History ........................................................................130

The NASA History Series......................................................................................131

Table of Contents

Front Cover: Ma Greene’s Cafe, Muroc, California

Back Cover: Scott Crossfield, the D-558-II, P2B, F-86 chase planes and support personnel.

Book design by Steve Lighthill, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.

All photos of individuals are in the Dryden photo archives
iv

Editor’s Forward

Since the founding of the Dryden Flight Research Center History Office in

1996, its staff has conducted nearly a hundred interviews with retired and

serving employees. Their recollections represent a unique resource in understanding the development of aerospace technology in the second half of the 20th

century. Their personal experiences, insights, and opinions allow the reader to

gain an understanding into what it was actually like to have been involved with

some of the milestone events in aerospace history. These interviews have been

edited and assembled into this monograph, so that a wider audience can also

share in their experiences.

This study covers the early years of what eventually became the Dryden

Flight Research Center. It spans the period between the arrival of Walter Williams and the first group of NACA engineers at Muroc in 1946, and ends with

the establishment of NASA in 1958. This timeframe encompasses the breaking

of the sound barrier, the pivotal inertial coupling research, the first use of

computer simulations, the transformation of the NACA facility from a pair of

old hangars into a state-of-the-art research center, and the dawn of the space

age. These events took place against the background of the end of World War II,

the start of the Cold War, and the twin technological revolutions of jet propulsion and supersonic flight. They are told by the people who participated in these

events, in their own words.

Curtis Peebles

January 2003
1

Section I

Foundations

The foundations of the Dryden Flight Research Center date back more than a half

century, to a time when aviation faced revolutionary technical changes. When the first

NACA contingent arrived in September 1946, they found the Muroc Army Air Field to

be an isolated and barren outpost. The post-war demobilization had left the hastily

constructed base facilities in a poor state of repair. Palmdale and Lancaster in the late

1940s were rough desert towns lacking many of the conveniences to which the new

arrivals from Langley (and their spouses) had been accustomed. Farther north lay

Mojave, a desolate railroad stop with a gas station, White’s Motel, a nightclub, and a

pool hall. Rosamond consisted of little more than several bars open around the clock.

Agriculture continued to be the primary activity in the Antelope Valley: cattle and grain

on the west side, and alfalfa farming on the east.

The high desert was not the only roughhewn part of Southern California. Los

Angeles-still a long drive from the Antelope Valley on a two-lane, winding mountain

road-remained a hard-boiled city, despite its rapidly growing population and sophistication. Kevin Starr, the State Librarian of California described this booming metropolis at

the time of the first X-1 flights:

“It was a Front Page kind of city, the Los Angeles of 1947: a city of cops,

crooks, and defense lawyers; a demimonde of rackets, screaming headlines,

and politicians on the take; a town of gamblers, guys and dolls, booze and sex;

a place for schemers, also-rans, suckers and those who deceived them: the kind

of city in which a private detective such as Philip Marlowe might make his

way down mean streets in search of the ever-elusive truth and get sapped with

a blackjack for his efforts by parties unknown.”

The Muroc train

station circa 1940,

shortly before the

Army facility on the

lakebed was

expanded to serve

as a training base.

(Air Force photo)
2

In contrast to the evolving young city to the south, the landscape around Muroc

was an ancient one. Large dry lakebeds — scattered across the desert from southern

California to eastern Nevada — were remnants of cooler, wetter times at the end of the

last ice age. The largest of these, Rogers Dry Lake, covers some 47.3 square miles of

the Mojave desert. During each brief winter, rains carried silt onto the Rogers lakebed,

and the winds blew the mixture of water and sediment across its surface. With the

arrival of each spring, the high temperatures dried out and hardened the now-smooth

lakebed. The process, repeated each year, occurred over the millennia.

The first permanent settlers in the vicinity of Rogers Dry Lake were Clifford and

Effie Corum, their two children, and Clifford’s brother Ralph, who arrived at the site in

1910. They settled on a homestead on the west side of the lakebed, and were soon

joined by a few other hardy souls. The small farming community–named “Muroc”

(Corum spelled backwards)–consisted of a one-room school house, a general store, and

scattered homes. It also served as a watering stop on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe

Railway. For the next two decades, Muroc remained a tiny cluster of buildings in the

midst of the desert.

In September 1933, destiny caught up with Muroc, when a U.S. Army Air Corps

detachment from March Field arrived to set up the Muroc Bombing and Gunnery

Range on the east side of the lakebed. For the next decade, March Field squadrons

undertook training activities and war games, while a small group of noncommissioned

officers and enlisted men at East Camp, on the opposite side of the lakebed from

Muroc, maintained the targets. They lived in tents and slept on mattresses stuffed with

straw. During the exercises, Army Air Corps squadrons landed their aircraft on the

lakebed, and the crews also lived in tents during the week or so they underwent training. A second camp was established on the west side of the lakebed in 1934. Muroc’s

role expanded in July 1941 with the arrival by train of 140 troops, who set up a tent

camp on the southwest edge of the Rogers lakebed. They began construction of a

training field, later called Muroc Army Air Field, to meet the increased need for pilots

following the outbreak of the war in Europe.

West of Rogers, another part of the area developed. In March 1935, Pasadena

socialite and aviatrix Florence “Pancho” Barnes bought an alfalfa farm close to the

shore of Rosamond Dry Lake. Pancho soon worked out an arrangement to supply the

Muroc personnel with fresh milk and pork. As the base expanded in the 1940s, she

added a roadhouse restaurant and bar catering to the pilots and officers. Within a few

years, this had grown into a 368-acre dude ranch called the Rancho Oro Verde. More

commonly called the “Happy Bottom Riding Club,” it included a motel, dance hall,

swimming pool, horse corral and barns, an airstrip with hangars and a tower, and a

reputation that became legendary.

The sudden U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 saw an acceleration of

the construction at Muroc. An all-weather concrete runway, hangars, a tower, and a

parking apron all materialized. The headquarters building, base hospital, and other

structures were described as “marvels of tarpaper, wire, and wood.” During this period,

Muroc served as an advanced training base, where P-38 fighter pilots and B-24 and B25 bomber crews received their final instructions before being sent overseas. They took

some of their bombing practice on the “Muroc Maru,” a timber and chicken wire

silhouette of a full-sized Japanese Atago-class heavy cruiser. To accommodate the mass

influx of people to the desert, a tent city sprang up to house the new arrivals near

Muroc. Also nearby, “Kerosene Flats” became the housing area for married personnel.

At the other end of the lakebed, at Muroc Flight Test Base, flight tests began on the

Bell XP-59A Airacomet, the first U.S.-built jet aircraft. Because the vicinity of Wright

Field, Ohio, was too populated for the classified Airacomet to remain secret, in April

1942, Muroc became the XP-59A’s test site. A hangar, barracks, and water tower rose

from the sand, and on October 1, 1942, the aircraft made its initial flights, ushering the
3

U.S. into the jet age. The XP-59A also shaped the future of Muroc. To the project

officers and engineers working on the Airacomet, the advantages of Muroc over Wright

Field — year-round clear weather, open spaces, and proximity to the Los Angeles

aircraft industries — became obvious.

In late 1943 and early 1944, the Army Air Forces leadership considered a proposal

to convert all of the Muroc facilities into a flight test center. Although rejected at the

time due to the importance of Muroc’s training activities, Army Air Forces leaders

decided that Muroc would be converted to test work once the war was over. Consequently, after 1945, the facilities at Muroc Army Air Field, (now called South Base)

and the expanded Muroc Flight Test Base, (now North Base), served as the initial test

sites. The Army Air Forces also committed itself to a Master Plan for a new, modernized base along the western shore of the lakebed, near Muroc.

The need for a new flight test facility had become inescapable. The higher performance aircraft developed during the war entered uncharted speed regimes. Pilots found

that as they made high speed dives, their aircraft shook and the controls became

ineffective. Aerodynamicists knew these phenomena involved the increase in drag and

the formation of shockwaves as aircraft approached transonic flight. Even before the

Wright brothers, wind tunnels had been used to understand aerodynamic forces. But in

this new situation, they could provide no help. At velocities from just below the speed

of sound to just above, data from existing wind tunnels became unreliable.

In light of these obstacles, researchers such as John Stack at the Langley Memorial

Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia decided that only one way existed to

continue the exploration of transonic flight: build specialized research aircraft, instrument them thoroughly, and fly them near and above Mach 1. Even before World War II

ended, two such aircraft began development. The Navy funded the Douglas D-558-I

Skystreak. The designers of the jet-powered Skystreak intended it to reach speeds close

to Mach 1. The Army Air Forces backed a far different Mach 1 contender. The Bell X-1

was powered by a rocket engine, a form of propulsion that engineers in the mid-1940s

The Muroc Maru

was a full-scale

replica of a Japanese cruiser used

for bombing

practice. Officially

called Temporary

Building T-799, the

lumber and chicken

wire structure cost

$35,819.18 to

build. The decaying

hulk remained on

the south end of

the lakebed after

the war, until finally

being demolished

on February 13,

1950. (Air Force

photo)
4

viewed as suspect. It was carried aloft by a B-29, then fell away from the mothership,

and the pilot ignited the rockets. The X-1 was designed not just to approach the speed

of sound, but to exceed it. Although very different in purpose, these two aircraft

actually complemented each other. The X-1 had the higher top speed, but could sustain

it for only a brief time before its rocket engine consumed all of its fuel. The D-558-I, in

contrast, flew slower, but could sustain a cruise speed above Mach 0.8 for a half hour at

a time.

Both the Army and the Navy asked the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to equip the X-1 and D-558-I with instrumentation, assist with flight

planning, and analyze the data at the end of the flights. Once the initial contractor and

military test program had finished, the aircraft would be transferred to the NACA for its

own research activities. To support the X-1 flights, a small team from Langley, led by a

young but experienced engineer named Walter C. Williams, was organized. The initial

NACA involvement began with the X-1 glide flights at Pinecastle Field, Florida

between January and March of 1946. That summer, Langley dispatched the NACA

support team to Muroc. The first two engineers, George P. Minalga and Harold B.

Youngblood, arrived on September 15, 1946. Williams reached Muroc on September

30. He was joined the same day by Cloyce E. Matheny, and William S. Aiken came

soon after. This initial group of five engineers became known as the NACA Muroc

Flight Test Unit. Another group of six engineers and technicians arrived at Muroc on

October 9. In December, two “computers,” Roxanah Yancey and Isabell Martin, arrived

at Muroc. The term then referred to technicians-mostly women-who performed the

laborious math calculations needed to reduce the instrument readings into engineering

data.

As the new arrivals adjusted to their surroundings, they found themselves in a place

far from the green landscape of Hampton Virginia, with few of the refinements to

which they were accustomed. But none of that mattered. As the year 1947 began, they

had other things on their minds. At this place, and in this sky, they flew an airplane

faster than any had ever flown before; faster, indeed, than some thought possible.

NACA research

aircraft at the

original South Base

hangar. From left to

right are the D-558-

II Skyrocket,

D-558-I Skystreak,

X-5, X-1#2, X-4,

and the delta wing

XF-92A. (E-145)
5

The initial NACA group at Muroc slowly expanded as the X-1 flights began in the

spring of 1947. The Muroc Flight Test Unit occupied a hangar at South Base, next to

one used by Douglas Aircraft. Resources were few, the work was demanding, the base

commander offered minimal support, and management at Langley was far away. The

team learned to improvise, and to do their tasks quickly, with a minimum of paperwork

and deliberations.

On October 14, 1947, about a year after the first NACA engineers arrived in the

desert, Capt. Chuck Yeager made the first Mach 1 flight. Soon, operational F-86 jet

fighters exceeded Mach 1 in dives. Even so, the X-1 represented only the first step. The

new frontier of supersonic flight held many unknowns. The demands it presented

meant that virtually every aspect of aircraft technology had to change. Structures,

airfoils, control systems, fuel systems, life support, escape systems, weapons, electronics, and propulsion all had to meet the demands of speeds and altitudes far in excess of

those reached only a few years before. Entirely new wing shapes-swept wings and delta

wings, both with and without horizontal stabilizers, as well as variable-sweep wings,

and low-aspect ratio straight wings-were proposed to deal with these unknowns.

In addition to the revolution in aviation technology, another factor animated the

research programs: the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union. To cope with the

threat posed by the Soviet bloc, faster and more capable aircraft had to be developed on

an accelerated basis. With aviation technology rapidly changing, new designs surpassed

aircraft that had first flown only a short time before. As a consequence, the Air Force

pressed to get data quickly, in order to design the next generation of combat aircraft.

The NACA, in contrast, remained committed to patient, step-by-step research programs. This approach remained consistent with its long tradition of discovering the

underlying principals that governed flight.

To push the limits of flight to higher speeds and altitudes, new experimental

aircraft were developed. The Air Force funded research on an advanced series of X-1

aircraft, able to reach speeds above Mach 2. Bell Aircraft designed and fabricated the

X-2, an advanced rocket aircraft with swept wings, and able to reach Mach 3. The

Navy also investigated swept wings, with the Douglas D-558-II. This design differed

completely from both the D-558-I or the X-2. The D-558-II did have swept wings, but

also, initially, both a rocket engine and a jet engine.

At the same time, a number of new wing configurations appeared on supersonic

aircraft, as well as on other X-planes. Low-aspect ratio wings flew on the Douglas X-3,

while a tailless swept wing design flew on the Northrop X-4. The Bell X-5 took a

different approach. On this aircraft, the wings pivoted, so their sweep angle could be

changed in flight. The wings extended at take off (to give maximum lift), and could be

swept back at high speeds (to reduce drag). An unsuccessful fighter prototype, the

Convair XF-92A, tested a delta wing design. Consistent with the earlier research

aircraft, the NACA participated in the contractor and military tests, then used the Xplanes for its own flight research programs.

These new X-planes and the demands of a rapidly evolving aviation technology

finally transformed Muroc into a modern military base. The Air Force became an

independent service in September 1947, and redesignated the facility Muroc Air Force

Base (AFB). Meantime, the hurriedly constructed wartime buildings deteriorated

during the post-war years, and by 1949 their condition had become poor. The first step

toward renovation involved the construction of pre-fabricated concrete housing for

base personnel. On January 27, 1950, Muroc was renamed Edwards; in honor of Capt.

Glen Edwards, killed in the crash of a prototype YB-49A flying wing. The following

year, the Air Force Flight Test Center opened at Edwards AFB, with responsibility for

aircraft tests, the operation of test facilities, and for support of contractors and other

government agencies (such as the NACA).

Meanwhile a new test facility (called “Main Base”), rose between the old North
6

and South Base, located near the original Muroc settlement, Kerosene Flats, and the

wartime tent camp. Construction crews razed the old buildings, built a new, longer

runway, and added a new tower, taxiways and hangars. By 1954, Pancho’s had been

bought out and, with the addition of Rosamond Dry Lake, the size of the base nearly

doubled. The railroad tracks which had crossed Rogers Dry Lake were removed,

allowing its full surface to be used for landings and takeoffs. “Contractor’s Row,” the

facilities used by the aircraft and engine companies, went up along the shoreline to the

north of Main Base. Transfer of test activities to Main Base occurred gradually; flight

testing continued at North Base into 1954, the base headquarters did not move from

South Base until August 1955, and the Air Force Test Pilot School finally left South

Base in March of 1956.

As the Master Plan became a reality, the NACA group underwent its own changes

in terms of structure and living conditions. At the time of Yeager’s flight, the NACA

Muroc Flight Test Unit employed 27 individuals. A little over a year later, in January

1948, the number more than doubled to 60 people. By January 1950, the workforce

doubled again, growing to 132 personnel. Just as Muroc became Edwards AFB, the

NACA Flight Test Unit became the NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station.

With the construction of Main Base, the NACA personnel left their cramped,

makeshift quarters at South Base. With the growing size and importance of the station,

a decision was reached to build a fully capable research center in the desert. In August

1951, Congress appropriated a total of $4 million for its construction. The Air Force

leased to the NACA a section of the shoreline north of Contractor’s Row. Shovels

broke ground on January 27, 1953, and construction began the following month. The

NACA facility consisted of a main building with a hangar on either side, a parking

apron and taxiway, and shop buildings. The new facility opened formally on June 26,

1954. On July 1, 1954, it was re-named the High-Speed Flight Station. These buildings,

much expanded and remodeled, still form the core of the Dryden Flight Research

Center a half century later.
7

WALTER C. WILLIAMS

Interview by John Terreo, August 6, 1993

Walter C. Williams was the father of

what is now the Dryden Flight Research

Center. Energetic and demanding, he

bridged the era from subsonic propeller

aircraft to the dawn of hypersonics and

spaceflight. Williams led the first group of

personnel to arrive at Muroc in September

1946, oversaw the NACA involvement in

the X-1 test flights, the expansion of the

NACA team in the late 1940s and early

1950s, presided over the move from

South Base, and directed the High-Speed

Flight Station through the creation of

NASA and the initial X-15 flights.

Williams left in September 1959 to become the Associate Director of the NASA

Space Task Group, and later the Director

of Operations for Project Mercury.

Q: Mr. Williams, could we start out with a little background on the circumstances that

brought you to Edwards? As I understand it, it was the X-1 project.

A: It was the X-1 project. I had been the NACA Flight Project Engineer, almost from

the creation of the program. In other words, I was in charge of the NACA tests of the

X-1. I had been following it for some time before it was completed. I made several

trips to Buffalo and we were laying out the plans for testing. As you know, the airplane

was originally flown as a glider at Pinecastle Army Air Field in Florida, which is now

Orlando International Airport. We made 10 flights there. Testing was conducted in

Florida because [the lakebed at] Muroc was wet. Pinecastle was one of the few places

with 10,000 feet of runway. This was to test out the air launch technique since it had

not been done before. The airplane was very light. As I recall, 3,700 pounds with no

tankage and no engines in the innards. We were at least a year late while we were

getting ready to fly. I went to Florida. The recommendation had been made by people

through the pilot that any further testing, as it got heavier with the engine, be done at

Muroc. When the X-1 came to Muroc, that’s when the small NACA team came to Muroc.

Q: What were the reasons for bringing the X-1 to Muroc?

A: The lake. It gave you a chance to land. See, you were landing without power and

flew with no navigation. We lacked the availability of many-mile long runways. We

could land in almost any direction. As it worked out, the flight planning was such that

they landed on the mock runways on the lake. Until you knew a few of these things,

and also filled them in with some caution, you wanted the lake.

Q: You came out here, I believe in September, 1946. Could you describe what the base

was like and what the surrounding area was like, because even by today’s standards,

this area is remote so I imagine it must have been even more so than [today].
8

A: I wouldn’t call it remote now at all after having driven up this morning. The base,

itself, had a few temporary hangars on the North Base where the XP-59A was being

tested. As I recall, North American still had it for the F-86 tests. At South Base, there

was an 8,000 foot runway, two large hangars and several small hangars. The Army Air

Forces, by then and this was the fall of ’46, had moved most of the test work down to

the South Base. Airplanes that were here were things like the XB-35, which was

propeller driven, the XB-43, which was the jet version of the Douglas Mixmaster, the

FJ-1, which was a North American [Aviation] jet fighter for the Navy. If it wasn’t there,

it was arriving soon, the Ryan FR-1 which was a combination jet and reciprocating

engine airplane. Pretty soon, everything was showing up here to test because it was the

best place in the world. Even though they had a good runway, you always had the lake

available for emergencies. The Hughes XF-11, the reconnaissance airplane that looked

like a big P-38, was tested here. It was the same airplane that he [Howard Hughes] had

used. In the number one airplane, he was almost killed in a crash in Beverly Hills, I

think. It was getting to be a very active place. In addition to the airplanes that were

really based here for testing, other airplanes moved in for special tests such as overweight testing, braking tests, aborted take-offs, things that you needed some extra

space. The weather was very good, too.

Q: I believe that when NACA first moved out here in the [1940’s], there was a little bit

of reluctance on the part of the Base Commander to have you out here.

A: No, not that so much. It wasn’t a question of being reluctant, he wanted to make it

clear that he was in charge. They assigned us two group offices in one of the smaller

hangars down on the South Base. They co-operated as best as they could within the

limits. This was Colonel [Signa] Gilkey. His ambition was to build a new test base. He

had what he called the Master Plan which is not [too] different from the way the Base

looks now with the long runway facing the prevailing winds and so forth. He had tried

to justify building the [new] base but it had not been successful. His attitude was he

didn’t want to have anything improved in a way that we could get by. This was for

barracks, offices, hangars and everything. He would rather have them fall apart, then he

could justify building a new base by the fact that there was nothing there. These were

the things that we had a little problem with. We wanted to modify some barracks for

Aerial view of the

High-Speed Flight

Research Station

at South Base in

1951. A small

facility, it included

only a single

hangar with offices

along its side, a

separate office

building, and a

parking ramp.

Among the airplanes on the ramp

are a B-29 drop

plane, and a D558-II. Both the

NACA and the

Douglas hangars

(foreground, NACA

on the right) still

exist. The other

buildings have

been torn down.

(E-503)
9

better living for both our single males and single females. We wanted to take one of the

Butler [buildings], and add some lean-tos and that would provide us with better office

space, better shop space and Colonel Gilkey wouldn’t have any part of that. In fact,

finally we had to work through the committee of NACA which had the Chief of the Air

Force, the Chief of Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and people like that. They brought the

pressure on which allowed us to go ahead and make these modifications. This all came

somewhat later, in 1947 and 1948.

Q: When you first came out here, and you’re describing all these other projects that

were coming in here, too. I suppose that housing was at a premium.

A: Housing was impossible. Most of these people who were contractors from the Los

Angeles area commuted. They would fly up. They would come up and stay in the VOQ

[Visiting Officer Quarters] for a week and went home on the weekends. Nobody at the

time was trying to live up here if they lived in the Los Angeles area. We were not in

that position. Housing wasn’t very available. You could rent a motel room but that’s no

way to live, particularly with a family. There was Kerosene Flats which was some

wartime housing right at Muroc. This was certainly sub-standard and it was full. There

was a long waiting list to get into the place. You could find places here and there. I

found a place to live in Palmdale which was 40 miles from the base and expensive by

the standards of the time. In fact, the [Marines] had some good housing at Mojave.

What they did, when the base [at Mojave] was closed down in December 1946, was to

keep the housing open for their contractors and NACA people. That really opened it up

for us. We could bring more people in and do some work.

Q: I’ve heard that trying to find temporary housing for your people was indirectly or

directly related to the first time that you met Pancho. Is that true?

A: Yes, that is true. In looking around for places, I think it was Colonel [Richard R.]

Shoop who said, “You might look over at Pancho’s. She has a motel over there.” I went

over and she had a fairly nice motel for the times. She wasn’t very enthusiastic about

having families around. She said, “It would spoil the atmosphere. People come here to

The Kerosene Flats

housing in the mid1940s. Hurriedly

built during the war

as housing for

married military

personnel at

Muroc, these

wooden duplexes

also served the

NACA personnel

who began to

arrive in 1946. The

site got its name

from the penetrating smell of kerosene used in the

heaters. Those

who lived there

recalled the wind

and dust that

penetrated the thin

walls. Both Kerosene Flats and

Muroc fell to

construction

equipment during

the building of Main

Base. (Air Force

photo)
10

raise hell.” It was expensive, again, by the standards of the time if you were paying

motel rates not housing rents. Other than people staying there for a couple of days or

something like that, I think basically we didn’t use her place.

Q: The first time you met Pancho, do you have any recollection of that?

A: Yes, Pancho was Pancho, you know. I don’t recall what she was doing at the time,

but she was cordial and spent time with us. She started telling us about who she was

and so on. She didn’t think much of Gilkey as I recall.

Q: Gilkey’s successor, Colonel [Albert] Boyd, I understand that he and Pancho were

close.

A: They were very good friends. They got along very well. There was a different

personality. Boyd was an old pilot. I should say, “Older pilot.” Gilkey was an old pilot.

Q: I’d like to go back to what you were saying when you talked to Pancho about the

possibility of temporary housing for some of your people and she said that she didn’t

want families around because the place was where you came to blow off steam. Did

you visit there often?

A: Not a lot, often enough. I had my family out here and we had our life. We went to

parties there.

Q: I heard that Pancho used to have parties for milestone flights.

A: Yes, we would go to those. First flights. Pancho provided the facility and the parties

were usually paid for by the contractors.

Q: I have also heard that when Yeager broke the sound barrier [on October 14, 1947],

NACA and some military personnel wanted to have a party out there and that was

squelched because people of higher authority wanted to keep it quiet.

A: You see, a funny thing had happened there. Until we flew Mach 1, the classification

of the program was classified as “Restricted,” which meant that you didn’t send it

directly to the newspaper. Within two hours after it happened, the program was reclassified Top Secret. I got a call from the director of the NACA [Hugh L. Dryden] and he

told me that. The Air Force had heard the same thing. That squelched things quite a bit.

Q: Going on the note of the sound barrier, it was a military pilot, Chuck Yeager, who

flew the X-1 when it broke the sound barrier. I’ve heard that there was quite a bit of

thinking and decision making as to whether it should be a military pilot or a contractor

pilot.

A: There was discussion, but, primarily, let’s start with what the agreements had been.

One, that the contractor would demonstrate the airplane within known flight envelopes,

like up to 0.8 Mach numbers and a few things like that. Then it was to be turned over to

NACA for testing. Meanwhile, Bell managed this part of it. People thought we would

piddle around too long and they wanted to charge to Mach 1 real quick. They had a

proposal which included [Bell test pilot Chalmers “Slick”] Goodlin and a fairly substantial bonus. Colonel Boyd believed that nobody should be doing testing except for

his flight test group and that the contractors shouldn’t be doing the testing. He was a

little ambivalent about NACA. Later that changed again. He and I became very good
11

friends. He [Colonel Boyd] said, “Don’t pay that guy a lot of money. We will do it. We

will do an accelerated program.” That’s the way it happened. It was agreed that the Air

Force would take on the accelerated program and we would take on the details and

research program. We would also have technical surveillance of the Air Force team.

They had a hell-bent-for-leather attitude. We didn’t want to waste any of those pretty

airplanes. (laughter) We worked day by day with the Air Force crew. We reached

agreement on what would be done on the next flight. I guess, technically, we were the

responsible party.

Q: To use your phrase the hell-bent-for-leather attitude, it sounds like a lot of pilots

had this attitude and Pancho welcomed that kind of attitude.

A: People hadn’t really learned yet and we were learning at the time by a systematic

testing. Point it to the firewall and go! To go backwards to the P-47. It had dive problems. It would tuck under and you couldn’t pull it out. There were three or four Army

Air Forces pilots that had experienced that at Wright Field. They kept messing around

with it and then one of them was killed. I, for one, thought we could do this testing

without killing people by knowing what you were doing, planning ahead, taking it a bit

at a time and trying to extrapolate the data which you had. That’s what we did. It took

us [nine] flights to get to Mach 1.

Q: Would you say that the concept of taking a little bit at a time as you evaluated and

analyzed the data was really leading to a transition in flight testing?

A: Yes, it made flight test more technical.

Q: It seems like in many ways that Pancho was representative of the earlier technology.

A: I’m going to say yes and no. She was, but at the same time she had a feel for slowly

walking into things instead of running.

Q: That’s kind of an unusual statement regarding Pancho.

A: Once you found her out, she would run like hell.

Q: You’re saying that she was cautious until she had the course spotted.

A: Yes.

Q: When you were around her, what were some of the things that she discussed. I

assume airplanes.

A: Airplanes and people. I’m going to be honest. I never had a lot of conversations

with Pancho because I wasn’t one of those people who was there every night.

Q: You were mentioning that the contractors used to have parties there. Were these

usually celebrations?

A: For first flight of a new airplane. They were all milestone flights.

Q: I’ve heard, too, that sometimes going away parties or promotion parties were

celebrated there.
12

A: Yes. Anything that was a good reason to have a party. (laughter)

Q: Do you recall any specific parties?

A: Not really. There were a number of them, it’s safe to say. I did remember a convention coming there. It was the Aviation Writers Association. They were there on a

Saturday as I recall. They flew up and saw the base then came over to Pancho’s in the

afternoon. This was the time I saw a DC-3 land on Pancho’s airstrip. Our own peons

were out with them so we had joined them. It was quite a party. She had brought some

additional girls up from Hollywood. Again, as far as I am concerned, there was no

hustling going on here. They were there and they were company. As far as any sex, I

can’t comment one way or the other. I do know one thing, they were all in bikinis of the

times. Pretty soon some of them started taking their bras off. They were sitting on the

fence and sitting by the pool modeling and being photographed. Finally, some of them

took their bottoms off. They were photographed and so forth. I’ll never forget this one

guy, he was a Texan, I used to know his name. He had on a blue gaberdine suit, coat

and tie and everything. One of the girls was sitting across the pool. He walked down

the steps, into the pool and walked over to her, fully dressed. His clothes came out

soaked. There was quite a bit of drinking that day. Beyond that, if there was, I don’t

know.

Q: It’s well known that Pancho had hostesses there, especially, to attract the single

people. I’ve heard that some of them were really lovely.

A: One of them, in particular, was. You see here again, these girls also served as

waitresses in the dining room. Pancho used to say, “I don’t know what they do after

2:00 a.m. I didn’t hire them for that. I hired them to be waitresses and hostesses.

Anything beyond that, they are on their own after 2:00 a.m.” That was her position on

that.

Q: Going back to the party with the Aviation Writers’ Association, I’m trying to recall

A view of the

Happy Bottom

Riding Club, circa

1948. Amid the

dusty expanse of

Muroc, it represented a place

where people

could eat, drink,

dance, and otherwise enjoy an

evening out. (Air

Force photo)
13

that there was one group that wanted to go to Pancho’s. Do you know if this was

group? I think it really irked General [J. Stanley] Holtoner, who was the Center Commander at the time. He couldn’t believe that a group would actually want to go to

Pancho’s.

A: I don’t know if Holtoner was General then or if Boyd was still there. I don’t

remember.

Q: You were saying that Pancho got along real well with General Boyd. From what I

understand, it was a very different relationship with General Holtoner.

A: Very cold, or hot, whichever way you want to describe it. He started off as I said

before, she went over to call on him as she did on every new commander. She walked

into his office and she says, “General Holtoner, you know who I am.” He said, “Yes,

you’re the lady who picks up the garbage.” You know that didn’t go over very well

with Pancho. He was the only one she had a problem with. She and Gilkey were at sort

of an arm’s length but no real battle. She and General Boyd were very good friends.

Boyd came out to give her away at her wedding.

Q: Were you there at the wedding?

A: No. I don’t remember being there, but my wife says we were there. I just can’t

remember.

Q: You were saying that people would go to Pancho’s for parties and things. I also

heard that people would just stop by there to have dinner.

A: Yes, we did that more than once and it was very good. Her steak dinners were

excellent. They were very good. It was a good restaurant.

Q: I’ve heard that you could order anything from a full coarse meal to just hamburgers.

A: That’s right. It was ala carte.

Q: Going back to General Holtoner. One of the assignments that he was tasked with

was to expand the base and modernize it.

A: He was following Colonel Gilkey’s Master Plan, as a matter of fact.

Q: As a result of that, a lot of land surrounding the base was bought up.

A: The idea was to have a throughway from the [Rogers] Lake to Rosamond Lake.

There was nothing in between.

Q: Pancho’s property was smack in the middle of all of that.

A: That’s right.

Q: Pancho felt that the government wasn’t offering her a fair price for her property.

She went to court over that. She also sued General Holtoner.

A: That was a different case. There were two different cases.
14

Q: I’d heard that Pancho requested that you testify at one of those cases.

A: It was the latter one. It’s quite a story. Cliff Morris was involved. It started with a

young lieutenant writing to the General and saying, “This Pancho’s place was terrible.

It was immoral and leading young lieutenant’s astray, etcetera, etcetera, and it should

be closed.” He said that he had been virtually attacked by women over there and

insisted he go with them, go to bed and so forth. He felt that this was just terrible for

young lieutenants and it should be closed. Incidentally, I don’t think this young lieutenant was a pilot. (laughter) So, there was publicity on this. He [General Holtoner]

threatened to make the place off limits.

Pancho then sued him for defamation of character, that he was saying things about

her that she was running a house of prostitution and so forth. She wasn’t and so on and

so on. She sued Holtoner for $1,000,000 for defamation of character. She couldn’t get

him to court. She just couldn’t serve papers on him. She had Cliff Morris who worked

for me and worked for her at night. He worked in my instrument shop. She knew

Holtoner’s movements. He was always leaving by air. She knew that he was going to

leave this particular morning. Cliff was down there and served papers on him. I got an

immediate call from the Judge Advocate. “One of your employees has done a horrible

thing!” I said, “What has he done? I’ll have to look into it.” I stalled him as much as I

could. When I looked into it, I found that he [Cliff Morris] was on annual leave and had

served the papers. Meanwhile, they took his badge away. He had to sign in and out

everyday. They also told me that they wanted me to fire him. That’s when I started the

routine of, “Send me something in writing.”

Q: General Holtoner was so upset because he had been served a summons that he

wanted Cliff terminated.

A: That’s right. Once he had delivered the papers, there was a court trial set up. We

were trying to do this in an orderly fashion but there was so damn much going on. Cliff

told me that she wanted me to come to court and testify about what had happened to

him. I said, “For god sakes, talk her out of it.” We’d had so much going on. This was

the year that we built the new [NACA] building. It’s the central building out there at

Dryden. We were dedicating the building in June [1954]. They had a very auspicious

group of people coming out to witness the dedication. People like the Chief of the Air

Force, Chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, Mr. Glenn R. Martin, Grover

Loening, who had been an early pioneer of airplanes, Lester Gardner, who had founded

the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, people of this order. What we had done, we had

quite a ceremony and then we had a buffet luncheon and a dance party like a ball that

night in the hangar with an orchestra and floor show. The way we financed that was the

every employee contributed to it over a year or a year and a half period. I forget the

exact amount of money, but they all contributed to having this. It worked out very well.

I remember when I told John Pickery who was the executive secretary of NACA what

we were doing he said, “Fine. You arrange the party and I’ll get the guests.” This is

how he got these people there. Of course, they had the three center directors of the

other three NACA centers. It was quite an affair.

Pancho, meanwhile, was going to haul me into court and I could see it was coming

right in the middle of all of the ceremonies and getting ready for it and recovering from

it. I said, “Tell her to knock it off.” He said, “No, I can’t.” He came back and told me,

“She is determined.” This was about a week before the celebration. My wife and I had

gone down to get ice cream and bring it back for the kids. When we got back, the kids

said, “There were some people here looking for you.” From the description, I knew it

was Pancho and Mac [Eugene S. McKendry, Panchos’ husband]. I said, “Let’s go to

bed.” (laughter) Which we did. At about 1:30 in the morning there is a knock on the
15

door. “Walt Williams, I know you’re in there. You might as well just answer the door.

I’m going to keep knocking.” It was Pancho. I got to the door and she said, “You

remember me?” I said, “Yes, Pancho, I know who you are.” She says, “Just what did

happen with Cliff Morris?” I described it. She says, “Would you like to repeat that in

court?” I said, “No.” With that, Mac gave me the summons. I said, “Now look, you’re

getting me into a helluva bind here because we’ve got this big party coming up and as

soon as it’s over with, I’m taking off. I haven’t had a vacation in 3 or 4 years. As soon

as this is over with, we’re going off for 3 weeks.” She says, “What days are you

available? I’ll work you in.” Which she did. We got down there to the court. In fact, I

took my wife with me because she wanted to do some shopping to get ready for the

trip. In those days, if you did any real shopping, you did it in Los Angeles. There was

nothing available in Lancaster. Of course, all my Air Force friends were there, including Colonel [Howard C.] Knapp who was a medic [hospital commander] and others.

Pancho saw me sitting with them. She said, “I want you over here.” Just as I had gotten

on and started testifying, the judge’s wife stuck her head in the door and gave him the

“high sign” and he said, “Why don’t we recess for lunch? We’ll be back at 2:00.” I told

my wife that I would meet her in the downtown Bullocks, as a matter of fact, for lunch.

Pancho said, “I want you to come to lunch with us.” I said, “Why?” She said, “I don’t

want you going with the Air Force. They will want you to change your story.” I said,

“No, Pancho, I’m not going with the Air Force. I’m going to go with my wife.” “Are

you sure?” I said, “Yes, she is waiting for me right now.” “Well, if you are doing that,

then it’s all right.” We went through the whole routine with the judge. “Who shot

John?” That type of thing. I was finished then. I don’t know what she got. I’m not sure

she got more than a dollar out of the suit. Mac could tell you better. I know she didn’t

get a $1,000,000. She did get an adjusted bid on the property. I don’t remember the

exact numbers, but I know she got more than they originally offered her.

Q: What do you recall about her property? What all she had there. You mentioned the

swimming pool and the airport.

A: She had this motel which, I’m guessing, had [20] units. It wasn’t real big. She had

the swimming pool and then a building with the restaurant and bar in it. She had an

airstrip with a small hangar. She had some stock. I know she had pigs because that is

why she was getting the garbage [to feed the pigs]. She raised alfalfa which was a big

crop in this valley. I don’t know the exact acreage. It was not small.

Q: When you went to Pancho’s, you were saying that she had good meals and things

like that. I’ve heard that she had what she called the “Happy Bottom Riding Club”. If

you got membership in that, then things were supposed to be cheaper. Was that the

case?

A: I don’t know. There was a gag for a lot of our Eastern visitors to have them become

members of the “Happy Bottom Riding Club”. I don’t know.

Q: She had horses out there, too.

A: She had horses, yes. These were riding horses.

Q: One thing I’ve heard, too, I think it was on Wednesday nights, that used to be a big

night for dancing and stuff like that. Do you recall any of that?

A: That’s all kind of vague to me. I’m going to say, “From time to time, she tried

different kinds of promotions to get people in to spend money.”
16

Q: One of those promotions was the rodeo. I think she had an annual rodeo.

A: I think she did. I never went to it.

Q: Pancho was pretty generous with people she liked.

A: Oh yes, she was.

Q: Do you recall any specific instances of her generosity?

A: I know that she helped Cliff Morris buy his house. Whether she loaned him the

down payment or made the down payment, I don’t know. I know she helped him.

Q: It seems that Pancho’s friends were very loyal to her, too.

A: Yes, they were. She was irascible. People would get upset with her from time to

time.

Q: I think she was somewhat of an actress. She would put on this rugged image but if

you got to know her, she would calm down.

A: I think that is right, yes.

Q: There were a lot of people who used to hang out at Pancho’s because Pancho knew

a lot of people from pilots to movies stars. Did you ever notice or run into any people

like that when you were there?

A: I probably did, but I just don’t remember any of them at this point in time.

Q: Pancho just loved pilots, whether they were military or civilian. How did she relate

to other people, like flight engineers?

A: It depended on the individual. Either she liked you or she didn’t. It depended on the

personality of the guy.

Q: One thing I would like to get into a little bit. You mentioned that General Holtoner

wanted you to fire Cliff Morris. I think you told him, “Well, write me a letter about it.”

Did he ever do that?

A: No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t. Every time I would see him for any reason or

other, he’d ask me if I still had that man on the payroll. Finally one day, this is the

climax, he asked me if I had ever fired that man. I said, “No, I can’t” He said, “ What

do you mean, you can’t?” I said, “He works for you.” He [Cliff] was working in the Air

Force instrumentation shop. He [Holtoner] went critical. He called Paul Bikle in, who

was the technical director of the Base at that time, and said, “Bikle, you have a

‘commie’ working in your shop.” (laughter)

Q: So, when he found out that Cliff was actually working for the Air Force, he called

him a “commie”?

A: Yes. He said, “In fact, that whole shop is full of ‘commies’.”

Q: I also understand that General Holtoner, allegedly tried to keep processors off the base.
17

A: That was true. That goes back to when I talked about he and the Judge Advocate

coming to see me at the end of the day to tell me that he had given Cliff his badge back

and didn’t want to take any further actions right now, but later, they would want me to

fire him. Again, I said, “Let me know.” The reason he had done that was, they had been

down in court that day. The judge just chewed them up and down and told him, “A

military man cannot hide behind the reservation to avoid civil process. That’s what you

had been doing and that’s illegal.”

Q: I was a bit curious, did they try to make things tough for any other NACA people

or was it only toward Cliff?

A: It was only Cliff. There were problems here and there. There always would be.

Half of them were the NACA people’s problems, too. They would get arrogant, too, but

nothing serious.

Q: We have covered a lot of ground. Is there anything, before we conclude, that you

would like to mention

about Pancho or those

early days that you were

here with NACA?

A: It was a great adventure, I’ll say that....A lot

of things happened. I’ve

only had that feeling

several times in my life.

That was one of them.

Another one was when I

was driving between

Orlando and the Cape

and knowing that before

I left the Cape, we will

have launched John

Glenn. It was that same

feeling.

From the pages of

the X-Press.
18

Richard Cox

Ralph Sparks

Don Borchers

Clyde Bailey
19

CLYDE BAILEY, RICHARD COX, DON BORCHERS, and

RALPH SPARKS

Interview by Michael Gorn, March 30, 1999

Although Walt Williams played a critical role as the center director, the men and

women who worked for him actually made it a reality. They each followed different

paths to Muroc - some had worked for the NACA at Langley Field, some heard about a

job at Muroc, and some learned of opportunities through the military and the aviation

industry. Tales of the early days at Muroc often stress the hardships, such as poor

housing, unsanitary conditions, and the heat and dust. In contrast, this interview

presents the other side of the story — the reasons why these men stayed while others

left. They had been given a hard task, demanding long hours with minimal resources in

spartan, isolated conditions. These shared hardships created a special bond that outsiders could not share. But the conditions would not remain indefinitely. The task ultimately required better facilities and more resources if they were to be accomplished

successfully.

GORN: All right. I think what we’ll do first is just go around to the four of the gentlemen assembled.

BAILEY: All right, Clyde Bailey. I’d like to make a comparison with working conditions at Langley Field and Muroc Army Air Base. At Langley Field, we had 95-degree

days with 90-percent humidity. The humidity was so strong you thought it would rain.

We came out here, and we had many hundred-degree-plus days, but the humidity was

in the neighborhood of three to ten percent, which made it very pleasant. During the

month of September, we could expect hurricane-force winds at Langley Field, which

Don Borchers remembers correctly. Richard was also out there at Langley. It seemed

that every September, we would have to fly whatever airplanes were flyable that we

had out on the base somewhere else where they wouldn’t be affected by the winds.

Everything that was in the hangar, we had to jack up, take it and put overhead in the

mezzanine floor that we had and jack up all the airplanes as high as you could get them

off of the floor. Because there are high-water marks in the hangars at Langley Field that

are as high as two feet.

So, at one time, all of Langley Field was covered with water. It must have [taken]

them months to get the dead fish off of the Field. This was prior to when I went out

there, but it was still something that we talked about. So conditions back there were not

Shangri-La by any means. At Langley, we prepared for a hurricane each September.

And, like I said, we had to move all of the equipment and the aircraft, and so forth. So

we lost an awful lot of man hours back there. We never had to jockey the aircraft on the

field at Muroc, and I don’t recall ever having to fly those off because of high winds, do

you?

BORCHERS: No.

BAILEY: Or have to jack them up or do anything else with them. As far as working

conditions in the buildings were concerned, [in] the hangars at Langley, we had no heat

in the wintertime. We had no air conditioning at all. Our hangars faced east and west at

Langley Field so that we had full benefit of the wind going through there. We came out
20

to Muroc, and we had heat in the offices adjoining the hangars, so you could go in there

and get warm. In the summertime, if you got out of the sun, it wasn’t too bad. But our

living conditions were such that we had heat in the wintertime, all that we needed, and

we had a evaporative coolers. We had none of that back East. It was just as hot in the

house in the summertime as it was outside. The only thing you could do was open up

the doors and have a lot of stationary fans around to blow through there. But it was a

lot more comfortable here in the houses than it was back there. My home was four-anda-half-years old when I came out here. The living conditions were probably, in some

respects, better out here as far as climate control was concerned.

BORCHERS: Don Borchers. Do you want me to give you a brief summary of before I

came out here?

GORN: Just a little bit, if you could.

BORCHERS: In March of 1941, I was working for the Glen L. Martin Company. I was

a service rep on the Martin B-26. I first came across Langley when I went down there

with the 22nd Bomb Group. And, incidentally, it was my first airplane ride. I was a new

member, and I rode a flight in a B-26. It was a great experience. I didn’t ever think that

I would come back to Langley. But after I got out of Service, I had two jobs. I could go

back to Martin on the flight line for $1.28 an hour, or I could come to Langley for

$2,600 a year at NACA. I chose to come back to Langley. I really enjoyed my time at

Langley because we could go down to the water and see all the aircraft carriers and

catch a lot of fish and crabs and stuff like that. But to get back to here, Clyde had a

New Year’s Eve party, December of ’47. And he asked me whether I’d want to come

out to Muroc. I thought about it, and I came out here. And to get back to his things

about the living conditions— He was perturbed about roaches? Well, when I came out

to Mojave, we did have roaches. But I bought some spray and some roach powder. And

in three days, our roaches were gone. Much different than we ever had back in Langley.

BAILEY: That’s right.

BORCHERS: I lived in an apartment in Langley, and we never did get rid of those

roaches.

BAILEY: That’s right. No, in Virginia, you don’t get rid of them.

BORCHERS: And those kind of things never bothered me a bit. Because I had just

come back from the South Pacific where the roaches were about four inches long. The

first days out here in Mojave, I really enjoyed. I went hunting for coyotes; you could

see beautiful flowers; I saw flocks of quail. And I’d never seen these things before. It

was just wonderful. We used to go up to Oak Creek, and they had wild horses running

around. For a city kid, I really enjoyed it out here.

GORN: That was right from the beginning?

BORCHERS: That was right from the beginning.

GORN: Okay.

BORCHERS: I’ll tell you one story. I was the first guy in Mojave to put a lawn in the

front yard.
21

GORN: [Laughter]

BORCHERS: Yeah. Sure. Anyhow, getting back to this story. I’d come out from

working [and] I would go out dig in the hard ground and do just a little bit. Well, one

day, it had gotten dusk, and I was still working. I felt something up my leg, and I just

swatted it; I didn’t think [and] kept on working. When I went in to take a shower and

put my pants down, the whole leg was red, violent red. So I said, “My God, what the

hell is happening to me?” So I got a flashlight and went outside and looked around, and

I found this great big, hairy spider. I didn’t know what it was, so I put it in a can.

Because over at the base, they had a corpsman. I took it down to his place, and I

showed it to him. He told me it was a tarantula. Anyhow, he said, “I’ll tell you what

you do. You go back home. If you get sick during the night,” he said, “I’ll take you up

to Tehachapi where they have a hospital.

GORN: Well, good. That’s a good start. And thank you. Rich Cox?

COX: I was a local guy. I’m originally from Santa Monica. And after I got out of the

Air Force, I went back to school. When I got through with school, somebody told the

class that these people at Muroc had two openings [and] were looking for people in

aviation. And I thought, “Gee, Muroc.” And I can remember, the local, southern

California guys used to run roadsters at Muroc on the dry lakes, back when I first

became aware of automobiles. They would go run in there. One of the big things was

when they hit a hundred miles an hour out there. So I said, “Well, I’ll go up and give

this a shot.” I went up and interviewed with Clyde and some of the other people and,

fortunately, I was hired. We were talking about salaries. I think Don said $2,600. I think

I hired on at $2,400, something like that. But, gee, that was like all the money in the

world, when I was a single guy, especially. But, to get back to the point, I came from

Santa Monica, and it was very well developed. Now, at the time I came to work out at

Muroc, there were probably—what?-3,500 people in Lancaster, something like that.

BAILEY: About that.

COX: About that. And I have no idea how many were in Palmdale. But everybody was

aware—locals, southern California people, knew where Lancaster was and knew where

Mojave was and knew where Palmdale was. But it was out in the desert, and you

recognized that. However, at no time when I first went to work here did I have any

feelings of being isolated. And, again, as Clyde pointed out, I found lodgings in Kerosene Flats. It was great for a single guy. I mean, everything you wanted was there, so

there was real no problem. And then, of course, things improved. One of the things was

I got married, and we moved into Lancaster, and so on. On a personal basis, that was all

good, as far as I can see. And just as a point of information, for whatever it’s worth—

and I don’t care how you use this—but I can honestly say that in the 28 years or

whatever it was that I worked for NASA and NACA there may have been 50 times that

I didn’t feel like I wanted to go to work in the morning. I don’t know how many people

would say that about a job that lasted as many years as it did for me. So it was just a

great situation as far as I’m concerned.

GORN: Was that part of the attraction—was the love of the work and a sense of the

importance of the work?

COX: The camaraderie and working with the—I think, when I hired on with Clyde, I

was number 26.
22

BAILEY: In the whole group.

COX: So, you know, we were like that size, 25, 26 people. That included everybody

from Walt Williams on down. So it was a tight team, and it was a good team. It was

great. I talk, now, to young aeronautical engineers, and I think, “These guys are all

going through the same experience.” And they can’t believe the things we did. Not

because of the magnitude of the things we did but the way we were able to do it

without reams of paperwork and all kinds of reviews and those kinds of things. If it had

to be done, we got it done, because it had never been done before. And that was part of

the attraction, I think. You felt like you were helping to plow some new ground.

BORCHERS: I want to emphasize that. We had no safety rules, none at all. I can’t hear

high-pitch sounds now, because going up there and listening and looking around at a

rocket engine, a jet engine and it’s all gone. When the rocket was running, I’d get up on

the tail, look in there, the damn fillings in my teeth were shaking. And we had absolutely nothing, no earmuffs.

BAILEY: Don [Borchers] was our first safety

officer out at Muroc. And when Don left after

many years, Richard [Cox] became in charge of

all safety.

BORCHERS: Mmmm hmmm.

BAILEY: With about five or six individuals

working under you.

BORCHERS: Yeah.

GORN: Ralph? Sir?

SPARKS: Ralph Sparks. I didn’t go to work for

NACA until 1950, but I’d worked for Northrop.

But, prior to going to work for Northrop, I was

with Douglas. And they occasionally used

Muroc for flight testing. They were running the

A-20 and a later model. But the main thing was

that after war was declared, the cadets were

flying P-38s out there. And after I went to work

with Northrop, they always had some project

going. So if an airplane was available, two or

three of us would jump in and come up here in

the morning to eat breakfast with the cadets.

Because they got ham and eggs, and we

couldn’t buy that anyplace. But in 1950, I left

Northrop and went to work with NACA. We

lived in the old BOQ out there on North Base.

Dick and I sometimes would take off and go

someplace else to eat, but we had our own cook

there—most of the time. The food on the base

there wasn’t bad. And the environment and the

work—you worked as a group. The group was

fairly well established. And you felt at home

From the pages of

the X-Press.
23

right away, with Dick and Don and all. Why, you were one of the crew. We all worked

together. If somebody had a project going and needed some extra help, you went over

and helped them. It didn’t make any difference what your classification was; if they

wanted wires pulled in an airplane, you pulled wires in the airplane. It was a fun place

to work, and I really enjoyed it.

BORCHERS: Well, let me emphasize something on the early days. I made it out to

Muroc, December the 11th, 1941, in a DC-2. I got out of that thing, and I just had a

Homburg hat and a camel-hair coat on. The wind hit my Homburg and it flew. I chased

that hat for around two miles until I finally got it. But, anyhow, to get back, I was

traveling with the 22nd Bomb Group. They were flying anti-submarine missions off the

coast. And talk about conditions then: we ate off of just boards and, mostly, you just

had hot dogs and cheese for about five days. They hadn’t set up the tents, so they put

me in a barracks, or bachelor offices quarters, the only building on the base then. They

gave us sleeping bags.

We could hear the little flying wings, but I never could see it. It never came above

the mountaintop all the time we were there. That was a little rougher. Some first

lieutenant—his wife had driven him out at Christmas time, he’d take me to Hollywood.

And the week before Christmas, he took off with three 500-pound bombs and went in.

We picked up five—seven guys and put them in bushel baskets. Rough, rough, rough,

rough.

GORN: When was that?

BORCHERS: That was December the 18th, 1941.

GORN: You say, 1941, it was a little rough. When does it start to really become where

that’s no longer [true]? You’ve got camaraderie with the group. Is it as the NACA team

comes out?

BAILEY: Well, Northrop was established out here before we got out here. So I would

say, starting in probably 1942. So Muroc started to become more habitable. I think

Muroc was under March Field, right? Originally?

SPARKS: Yeah. Things started building pretty fast there after we got to the into the

war. They started building barracks there, prefabs, and, of course, they built the O Club

[Officer’s Club] in ’42. I don’t know, it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t want to do it now.

There was certainly no air conditioning. Whenever I was staying on the base, I always

wanted to work out in the gym. They did set up a nice gym there for us. There was no

air conditioning, and you’d go over there in the afternoon—it had been locked up all

day—and open that up; you had to take the windows out. They didn’t open, so we’d

take them out. It was two stories and the wind blew through there.

BAILEY: Speaking of air conditioning, we didn’t have them in the automobiles, either.

SPARKS: No.

BAILEY: And that Oldsmobile I had didn’t have a heater in it, either, did it?

COX: No.

BORCHERS: The cars had those old things we’d put on the side of the window. Plus

we always had a canvas bag on the front.
24

Two views of the

NACA Men’s Dorm

at North Base.

Because of the

long travel distances and limited

housing in

Lancaster and

Palmdale, single

NACA personnel

usually lived on

base. During 1953

and 1954, a double

room in the Men’s

Dorm cost $3.69

every two weeks,

while a single room

went for $6.00. In

contrast, renters

paid $75 to $100

per month for a

single bedroom

apartment in

Lancaster. Since

the starting salary

for an engineer at

this time was only

$3,410 per year,

the dorm had its

attractions. (E-431

and E-432)
25

COX: Something else, too, I was a flight engineer in the military on B-24s. And a flight

came up, and somebody said, “Well, you’re a southern California guy, would you like

to go with this B-24 out to Muroc?” And this was the beginning of the war. I said, “Oh,

sure.” So, we labored through the skies and finally got to Muroc. The plane went over

the south lakebed, and I looked down, and there were about four buildings on the south

lakebed.

The guy said, “I think that’s where we’re going.” I looked down; and the thought

that entered my mind was, “How in the world can anybody live out here? I just can’t

believe they do that here.” So we landed, and we were taxiing down and, pretty soon,

here comes a jeep. The guy says, “You can’t come down here, and he moved us. Here

we were sitting in the middle of a great, big lake bed. He moved us out of that road,

over here, so we could park and shut down the engines and stuff. But, at the time, I

thought to myself, “Man, I just can’t believe that anybody would live out here.” And,

so—what?—six years later, seven years later, there I was. It was a good experience.

GORN: Because we talked about camaraderie – how important it was – could anyone

talk a little about Walt Williams and what his role was in bringing people together, the

kind of a leader he was?

BAILEY: It seemed like every project I got on, Walt was the project manager. I was on

two or three projects with him back at Langley Field. Then, when the XS-1 program

came along, Walt was involved in that. Before NACA accepted the airplane, he would

fly back and forth to Niagara Falls to the Bell Corporation. Then, when the airplane

became flyable, Walt and four other people went down to Orlando and did a few drops

down there which were not too successful. He wipes a boundary marker and some other

things because the visibility of the field was not very good from the air. So, that’s when

they decided that they would bring the vehicle out here. I came out in the first of

November—Mel Gough and Buckley and myself. We flew a C-45 out here. Walt left at

the same time in a Chevrolet automobile, and he brought [LeRoy] Proctor with him. He

was an instrumentation man.

So I worked with Walt when he was actually just a young guy practically out of

college. So I’ve known Walt for a long, long time. But he got housing out here. And

when we came out here as families, we got the Marine base housing. It wasn’t long

after that that Walt moved into that. I think he was pretty much responsible for the

Wherry housing out at the base, which was the first new housing built after the war. So

Walt was pretty much responsible in that respect. He was a gung-ho individual. I don’t

think that he ever thought there was anything that he couldn’t do. Nothing seemed to

stop him. He was particularly concerned about safety. Whatever you were going to do,

you had to show that it was safe for the other men. Don has been a friend of Walt and

Helen for many years. If you, Don, if there is some input you would like to make.

BORCHERS: Don Borchers. I’ll tell you about Walter. He was a real good friend of

ours. And Clyde happened to mention about the O Club burning down? Well, Walt and

Helen took Margaret and myself, and Harold Minichek and his wife; out to the O Club.

Walt took his brand-new Ford. On the way out the float in the carburetor was acting up.

Well, we got about to Ma Greene’s place, and the damn thing quit on us. I got out there,

and I hammered on the carburetor, and the float came up. And we were able to get into

the base. So we went to the dance, had a great time, came out— Harold Minichek had

had too much to drink— We couldn’t get the damn car started. So I took the carburetor

apart. I was handing the screws to Harold to hold, and, unbeknownst to me, he was

throwing them over his shoulder. So when I tried to put it back, I couldn’t. Well, here it

was, two o’clock in the morning; the whole parking lot was empty. So Walt said, “What

are we going to do?” I said, “Well, I think maybe I can coast over to NACA and steal
26

the weapons carrier. I get over there, and the damn weapons carrier, from the ignition

switch to the coil, had a great big, heavy, spiraled cable on the top of it. I was able to

break it and get the two wires together. I had to be crunched under the dash holding the

damn thing to the switch while Walt drove. I held that thing all the way to Mojave; the

girls were freezing; Minichek is passed out. Well, early the next morning, we got the

word that Walt had to go out to the base because his car was still out there, and they

thought he had something to do with the fire. We had a lot of fun with him.

BAILEY: Clyde Bailey. Speaking of Walt’s Ford and the problem that Don and Walt

had with that stupid car. My uncle was a Ford dealer back in Hampton, Virginia, and

Walt had bought a new car from him. I don’t know if that was the one he brought out

here or not. But, anyway, along the same lines, somebody put a radiator cap on Walt’s

gas tank. He lost the [gas] cap, and somebody put a radiator cap on. Well, he also

tripped down the road. But what happened was, since the tank wouldn’t vent-the

vacuum, of course, was real strong—and it collapsed the whole tank. He wondered why

for a while. He said his car was getting such poor mileage. He’d fill it up, but it only

held about five gallons.

COX: Rich Cox. Now, my experience, not being one of the

original group that came out here— Walt Williams was the

boss, and I knew he was the boss. However, I have to say

this, that because, I think, of the size of the group and, also,

again—I keep coming back to this word—the camaraderie

of the group, I never felt like I was a new employee. I never

felt like I had to work my way up the system, and so on, and

so forth. I was made to feel welcome. Walt was one of the

people who was down on the hangar floor with you all the

time. And if there was any problem, I would never hesitate.

You could go to Clyde or go to Don or whoever, and

hoped—and I knew it would get to Walter. He was a people

person, Probably, I think, that’s as good a description as I

can think of. He was followed by other directors who had—

Oh, I don’t know, their skills maybe were different. But my

feeling was [that] we were coming into a group that was

already established. But as I look back now, I think that Walt

was the right person in that job at that time.

BAILEY: Yeah, I’d like to amplify on that a little bit, too.

My name is Clyde Bailey. What we didn’t have out here was

a caste system. Back at Langley Field, if you were down on

the floor, and you went up and spoke to the pilots, they’d say

you were brown-nosing. If you went to speak to Mel Gough

[chief pilot and head of flight test at Langley] they said you

were brown-nosing. These were friends of ours, you know? I

was never exposed to anything like that before I worked for

the government. That was something that I could never

understand. I put six and a half years into that field. It was

the same when I left, and I’m sure it’s probably same today.

SPARKS: Worse.

BAILEY: Probably. But we came out here and, like Dick and

Don and Ralph said, we all worked together. Hell, Joe Vensel

From the pages of

the X-Press.
27

would come down and help us change tires. And he was in

charge of flight operations. Walt would do the same thing.

There was never any distinction. Our grade against their grade. Right now, if you go to

Washington, [and] some guy is a GS-15, you’re supposed to take your hat off to them,

you know? And we didn’t have that.

The 1949 NACA

annual picnic.

Because of the

isolated conditions

and shared hardships at Muroc, the

NACA personnel

came to think of

themselves as a

family. This resulted in a number

of group traditions,

such as the yearly

picnic, the softball,

and the bowling

teams.

(E 236)

From the pages of

the X-Press.
28

BORCHERS: This is Borchers. And just to go back on that with Walt. We had a poker

game every week with Walt. A few people would come out and play and Joe Vensel and

myself. And we had a good time. But, one thing that threw me for a loop— Just a

couple of years ago, Dick Payne, who used to be one of the crew chiefs on the X

planes—we were just talking about playing poker, and he said, “Well, you were in a

different class.” And it never entered my mind that I was in a different class, that I was

playing poker with the big guys.

COX: Rich Cox— As Clyde said, I was back at Langley with the B-47 with a couple of

other people from out here and really ran into the caste system that Clyde described at

Langley. This is not to put it down; it’s just, that was the way the system worked back there.

The three of us very, very obviously avoided getting in a buddy-buddy relationship with

anybody because we never knew which way it was going to go. We got to know whose side

these people were on, you know? This was really a tough go. It wasn’t a comfortable

feeling because we were used to something better. What I felt was better.

SPARKS: Getting back to Walt, I was working for Northrop, and we had the X-4

airplane up here and running tests on it. It was going to be turned over to the Air Force,

and the Air Force was going to loan it to NACA. One day, I went out to the airplane,

and here was a couple of guys climbing over it and looking at it. I asked them if I could

help them. Walt introduced himself, and he was all questions. They spent the whole

afternoon there just going over that airplane. I had one big complaint about the airplane

from a safety standpoint, and I’d mentioned it to Walt. Never thought anything more

about it. A short time later, the project ended, and the airplane was transferred to

NACA, and I decided to transfer, too. Went down there, and, right off the bat, Walt

strolled into Vensel’s office, and he said, “Explain your worry about the airplane.” I

said, “Well, the problem is the speed flaps on it. The lefts and rights are operated from

different hydraulic systems. If you lose one hydraulic system and you open that speed

brake, you’re going to tear the tail off. The chief structural engineers informed me of

that, and I worry about it.” He says, “All right, we’re going to fix that.” And, by golly,

before NACA ever flew the airplane, they tore it apart and replumbed it.

BAILEY: Sparky would probably take issue with me. Clyde Bailey. Sparky brought an

airplane over. And one of the engineers evidently preserved eggs. Because they had

leaks in the fuel tank, so what they did was put water glass in the wings and sloshed it

around. That worked fine for a while, but after a while, it kind of dried out and started

peeling off. It filled up all of the filters and everything else. We never did cure those

leaks.

SPARKS: Nope. And, today, that would have been a very simple repair. The way the

fuel system was set up in that airplane, the whole wing was a fuel tank. And they had a

number of different strobe pickups, almost what was the bottom of the airplane, just so

the fuel could fall in there and be sucked out. Or you’d get most of it out. You’d go in

and flood the wing with sealant would have plugged those up. But we never did

anything but try to do it from outside, and it never was right, never worked.

BAILEY: Let’s get away from overhauling the airplanes and get back to what you

want to talk about. We had none of my group leave due to the living conditions. Some

of the personnel in engineering did, and it was for different reasons. In our group, two

of them went to new jobs. As far as being on the base, we had full access to the O Club

and the NCO Club. I feel it was just a very pleasant association that we had. We had

use of the base swimming pool. There were also pools at Willow Springs. You won’t

find this today, but fresh water came in on one end and went out on the other end, so it
29

was always perfectly clean. We had picnic areas at Willow Springs, and we had

barbecues at the Duntley Ranch for the NACA personnel, which were very pleasant

and something to look forward to. There were many entertainment functions put on at

both of the clubs. One of them was the Stag Night that we had until we had some

nurses come out there and cut the whole thing off. Sunday dinners—we looked forward to going out to the O Club—by both the single people and the families that went

out there. We never observed or heard anyone complain that the conditions in either

kitchen were unclean. I never heard that. If it had been, I’m sure we wouldn’t have

gone out there. So, that was available to us.

We didn’t have to go to Vegas. At that time, we had slot machines out there on the

base, so if you wanted to strengthen up your right arm, you had plenty of opportunity.

The housing rents were reasonable at the Marine base. I think the basic rate was

$45.00, and then whatever functions, the base took care of; they added a certain

amount. So it ran about $51.00 or $55.00 a month. What was peculiar was, if you used

the wash house at the base—which were for all the washing machines—that was

included in your rent. But if you brought your own washing machine in, they increased

the rent. Well, we had ours flown in from Langley Field on the old C-47. Don got one

of the deluxe apartments, because he had an electric refrigerator. Ours had an ice box.

And if you think it’s not a problem, we would buy the ice out at the base, put it in the

car and run like hell 17 miles, and we would have maybe three-quarters of that thing

left when we got there. That was something we weren’t use to. Transportation was no

problem. I think most of us had our own vehicles. And since we were out here on

government orders—and if you’re familiar with government orders—you got transferred for one year at the convenience of the government. Well, in our case, the government never thought it convenient to send us back, so we were out here. But we

thought we were only going to be here a year. After De E. Beeler and I came out here,

we went down to Tijuana; we went up north, we went all over the country.

And when I went back and brought my wife out— Like I said, my uncle was a

Ford dealer, so I got the first, new 1947 Ford off the Campatella Ford Ranch in Virginia and drove it out. And it was quite a deal because no one had seen a new automobile in four years during the war. So it was like some guy flying a wing on me. He’d

pull up alongside and look the car over and everything. Drove down to Los Angeles.

Figueroa was the big automobile street at that time. And these guys would run out

from the dealership: “Hey, would you like to be a rich pedestrian?” All that stuff. It

was quite a deal. Like I say, we went down to Mexico. The base theater had pretty

much up-to-the-minute movies. And, also, there was a movie house in Mojave.

GORN: Excuse me. About what year did the theater open?

BAILEY: It was there when we got there, November of ’46.

COX: One of the first things the military put in was the theater.

SPARKS: I know it was there in ’43. I don’t know how long before that.

BAILEY: Well, in addition to eating out at the base, Mojave had good restaurants. We

had French’s and—

BORCHERS: White’s [Motel].

BAILEY: Yeah. In fact, I stayed the first week in White’s Motel when I brought my

wife out. They were fixing up the housing over there at the Marine base. Got there on

the seventh of April, 1947, at White’s Motel. I went in and took a shower, and I won-
30

dered why I was bouncing back and forth; everything was unsteady. I came out and

looked, and you know what? She said, “I was doing something on the bed,” and she

said, “I thought I pushed the whole thing up against the wall.” She said, “And I opened

the door, and people were hollering, ‘earthquake!’” So, that was our indoctrination to it.

BORCHERS: Welcome to California.

BAILEY: We had night clubs and all that stuff. And right behind the Marine base, there

we lived we had a rodeo every year.

BORCHERS: Oh, yeah.

BAILEY: Every year. People came from all over to do that. There was a lot more there

than what we left behind us.

BORCHERS: We had a thing called “Gold Rush Days”; open gambling, prostitution

[laughter]. Now, I just want you to know that everything wasn’t peaches and cream. I

remember that in 1948, Washington’s Birthday, the wind blew so damn hard for three

days you couldn’t even get out of the buildings. When it finally let up, the Highway

Patrol were leading people from Barstow all the way through. The people had to lean

out of their cars because they couldn’t see out of the windshields. [and] all the paint

was off of some of the cars. But during that storm, I had a knock on the door. I went

there, and here’s a guy with a gas mask on; he’s carrying a little burner. LeRoy Proctor

came to my house carrying a small gasoline burner. Our units were all electrical, so we

had no way of cooking. I was always grateful to Proctor for that. We could have

something to eat. But we did have to brush out about three inches of dust.

BAILEY: Well, that particular storm, I remember. It blew out one of the windows in

our bedroom. We didn’t have any electric, and we were happy to have the kerosene

space heater. What Millie did was take a bunch of coat hangers and put them on the

handle of the pot and lowered it down into the space heater so we could cook with it all

right. That was the same night Walt and Helen Williams were over at our house. When

that wind went across there, it sucked all of the light things out of the dump.

BORCHERS: That was the day that I had to go back to Buffalo with the X-1 in June.

That’s when we had that big storm.

GORN: A question here to Mr. Bailey about Mel Gough, what he was like as a person?

BAILEY: When I went to work for NACA back in 1941, Mel was the head of Flight

Test. He was our chief test pilot. Mel was probably one of the most careful pilots I

know of and probably one of the most knowledgeable test pilots in the country. I

remember, before the B-19 flew, they wouldn’t let it fly at Douglas until Mel came out

representing an insurance company. So he was very much thought of; he was known all

over the world. He would go back and forth to Europe periodically. He was very easy

to get along with but very meticulous about what he did and very careful about what he

was told. For example, he’d get a new airplane, and if you happened to be the crew

chief, before Mel would fly it, he might be sitting in the cockpit, and he’d question you

about different operations in that particular airplane. He would ask you things that you

knew that he knew, probably, so that he could weigh your knowledge about the things

that he didn’t know when he asked you a question about it. So, that way, he had a sense

of security. And he flew a lot of first flights on a lot of airplanes all over the country. He

was a good friend of ours; I spent time at his home after he came out here. I would give
31

Mel more responsibility for the improvements that the NACA group got out here

through his intercession than anybody else that was involved. And he did this all

through Langley Field and contacts through Headquarters, as well. Headquarters was

the very peak of the whole organization. So, most anybody just didn’t get up there and

complain or get favors.

GORN: Because he had the profile.

BAILEY: He had the profile to do that. And no one really crossed Mel Gough. When

Mel left NASA he’d been down at Kennedy. But his heart was not in shooting something up in the air and then waiting to see what happened. He was more of a[n] aviation, flight-type individual, right? He left that to go to work for CAA, the Civilian

Aviation Authority. He came out here on an investigation, something that happened out

here to one of the airplanes. So he called me up, and we went over to the Riverside Inn.

I met him over there. He said that he had this particular position with CAA, and he

wanted me to come back there with him, back to Washington, D.C. So I told him that I

would. I put my house up for sale. They would have started me at GS-15 back in

Washington, which was above what I had here. But they were very insistent that I get

back there right away, and I just didn’t want to leave Millie, and we had the kids in

school, and so forth.

GORN: Yeah.

BAILEY: So the opportunity passed me, but that was the only time I ever thought

seriously about leaving NASA. So after he retired, he moved down to Melbourne

Beach, Florida. And every couple of years or so, when Millie and I would drive back

there. We had relatives in South Carolina, North Carolina and all the way down through

the South. We spent time with Mel and his wife back in Florida. Mel was a good friend

of ours. Let me tell you something. Just before Mel died, we went down to Fort Lauderdale; he had friends in Lauderdale. And we stopped by to see Mel to spend some time

with him. Millie said she’d never seen him so upset. In Florida, your driver’s license is

automatically renewed; you have to just sign the paperwork, and so forth. But Mel let

his lapse, and as careful as he is, he went and took the examination and failed it.

GORN: Here’s more to follow on Mel Gough. Mr. Bailey, do you have more to add on

him?

BAILEY: No, I think I’ll let Dick go ahead and give you some of his impressions of

Mel. Then Ralph and Don can go.

COX: I had heard of Mel Gough and, obviously, it was all good words from everybody

I talked with. I had the experience of going back to Langley with the B-47 project. I

was only back there about, well, a short time, and I think it was about a year altogether

but off and on. But, anyway, one time, I was down on the hangar floor with a B-47, and

they were doing some instrumentation work. Mr. Gough came down, and it was the

first time I’d ever really talked with him face to face. He introduced himself, and I

introduced myself. He knew me because he knew I was coming out there with the

program. But, basically, the key to his attitude toward things, as Clyde pointed out,

was— He asked me a question that—a technical question that I really didn’t have the

answer to. And I said, “I don’t know, but I will find out.” He said, “That’s all I wanted

you to say.” That’s the way he operated. And I did find out. Boy, I spent about four

hours that night finding out, but I did find out. That’s the kind of person he was. He just

wanted to know—as Clyde pointed out, he wanted to know were you qualified to do
32

what you were doing and did you have the right attitude.

GORN: And maybe test you on it.

COX: Yeah. Right.

BORCHERS: I first met Mel when I got out of the Navy in 1946, and came back to

Langley. He called me up in his office, and we started talking about airplanes. And we

got along pretty famously because he was from Baltimore, Maryland, and so was I. But

I want to tell you one incident. I didn’t find a caste system like these other guys did, I

have to tell you. So, this one particular time, it was John Stack and a couple of other

bigwigs and Mel, flew up to Washington to the Headquarters. I flew along as crew

chief on the airplane. We landed at Washington National; they got out. Mel handed me

the keys; I locked the thing; and I said, “What time will you be back?” He said, “so and

so.” So I got in a taxi cab, and I went to meet a friend of mine. I came back, and I

waited until they came in. We got home; it was past time, everybody has gone, and I

didn’t know how I was going to get home. John Stack, the chief engineer, took me

home. See, so different people see different things. As far as a caste system. They

couldn’t have been any nicer to me.

GORN: I understand that in the very early days, Walt Williams worked for Mel Gough

and then later for Hartley Soule ́.

BORCHERS: Mmmm hmmm.

GORN: If you just choose a few words for Williams versus a few words for Gough.

Let’s say, some of the hot temper, some of the placid. You know, can you have some

words for what they were like, how to characterize them just a little bit?

BORCHERS: My impression— I don’t think they were that much different.

GORN: Okay.

BAILEY: I don’t remember Williams ever flailing his hands around or raising hell or

anything. And Mel was pretty even-tempered, as well. One thing, I was with NACA for

about two years, and I went to work for $1,800 a year. I was the first person hired in

Flight in seven years. And two of us went in— a fellow named Sullivan. We were hired

to go to Lewis Laboratories, the engine facility. I had an internal combustion engineering background, and they wanted to send us up to Lewis. By the time it came to go

there, Mel wouldn’t release us. So I got a hold of Mel one day; I said, “Mel, how about

a raise?” I said, “Geez, I’ve been here a year and a half and haven’t gotten a raise.” He

put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “Clyde, flying is fun.”

COX: That sounds right.

BAILEY: Also, Mel’s brother— I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him— Eddie

Gough—

GORN: Yeah.

BAILEY: Eddie was the last one out of Corregidor to carry a load of nurses with him.

He was a Navy pilot. After he got out of the service, he went to work up at Lewis

Laboratory. He was on foot. So Mel said, “Can you get Eddie a car?” Well, my uncle
33

was in the automobile business, so I went out and got a car for Eddie.

GORN: What was Hartley Soule ́ like?

BAILEY: Well, I can tell you what I thought of him, and I can tell you what Chuck

Yeager thought of him. It wasn’t too long ago when Chuck came to the O club at

Edwards. And we got talking about the early flight tests. And he said, “That damned

Soule ́. Do you remember him?” I said yeah. He said, “He cost me a year’s worth of

flying.” He said, “Geez, you couldn’t do anything.” And at the time—and you can

check this with [De] Beeler—the increment increase in mach number was such that, if

they had had their way, the flight increase would have been in the neighborhood of 18

miles per hour. Now, you know, they would have still been testing right now at that

rate. But, anyway, Soule ́ was very capable; he didn’t come from the flight end of the

Langley Field facility; he was more a tunnel-type individual. Tunnels were the big

things back at Langley, and it became that way at Ames Laboratory, also. But Hartley,

as far as I was concerned, from what I knew of him, did a real good job out here. And

like Don said, he was friendly. He was kind of the leveling force as far as flight test was

concerned. It was going to be done incrementally and not just gung-ho and lose another

airplane or something along those lines like we did over in Ames. So, that was my

impression.

BORCHERS: Borchers. My impression. I knew he was a very, very serious poker

player. But on the humanitarian side, I have to tell you this, though. I had to leave

NACA when I had a nervous breakdown. And when I was having problems, he did

come to me and talk to me. He really wanted for me to get back there.

SPARKS: Ralph Sparks. I really never knew Soule ́. I had the misfortune of meeting

him kind of the wrong way. He was flying into LAX one afternoon, and John Griffith

came down and asked me if I would get a vehicle. You know, he said, “Come on, be my

co-pilot, and we’ll go down in the C-45 and pick up the Great White Father. I didn’t

know who in the hell he was talking about. So we went down to get him, and he came

out and set his bag down. So I ran over and picked up his bag and was going to carry it

to the airplane. And, boy, he grabbed that out of my hand, and he says, “I carry my own

bags. They don’t have to do it for me.” So that was my introduction to the Great White

Father.

BORCHERS: There was no brown-nosing involved.

GORN: It sounds like the support back at Langley was very good. The set up by these

people, anyway. I think De Beeler was saying that, also. That he in particular said Mel

Gough and John Stack supported the effort out here very well.

BORCHERS: Well, I would think they would have to. Because, after all, it was their

project, their baby, so—

SPARKS: Well, they certainly made it grow. There was a lot of good men from back

there that made it a success.

BAILEY: Well, the reason it went so well is, we were pretty much on our own. We

didn’t have to get some engineer back in Washington to determine whether or not this is

the next step. And we didn’t have all of those problems, so it worked real well. Walt

had the initiative and the background and the ability to go ahead and make decisions

that were right. So it was great working that way.
34

COX: Going back to that same point—and I think I mentioned this once before. Since

I’ve retired, I’ve had occasion to talk to a number of young aeronautical engineers. And

there was one in particular who was really interested in those days. So, naturally, I

wound up telling him stories about things that we did in those days, and not with the

idea of glamorizing, just telling him that this is the way we were doing it. And he just

kept shaking his head. I finally said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “Do you know,”

he said, “if we were trying to do this today, we would start with a proposal, and we

would call in the weight and balance people; we would call in the stress people; we

would call in the hydraulics people, and so on, and so forth; and we would wind up

with a stack of documents this high. Then it would go through review. By the time we

got all through, we would have forgotten what we started to do to begin with.” And I

think that was the difference there. In those days—and I hate to live in the past like

this—but in those days, that’s why it was so much fun, I think. Because good people

were doing good jobs. I don’t know whether this is a true statement or not, but I think

Clyde or somebody told me that Neil Armstrong said one time that the people at

Edwards, the people at Muroc, do what they do, the best of any one in the world. And I

can’t think of a nicer compliment than that. And I think it’s true.

BAILEY: Bailey. Talking about drawings, and so forth, when we came out here, the

NACA people didn’t like the arrangements of the instruments in the X-1. So Don got

the privilege of going ahead and changing all of the instrumentation. And the only thing

that was given to him was just a drawing with a bunch of circles on it and the name of

the instrument and where they wanted it located. I think that’s all you had until the

thing was completed.

GORN: Basically, you had great latitude.

BORCHERS: Yeah. They just hand you something, and you do it, that’s all.

BAILEY: One of the funny ones we had. This was an engineer that came up from San

Diego, a big, tall guy. He was assistant to Joe Vensel. He sent a drawing down, and on

the bottom of it, it said, “Shape for beauty.” Sparky was in charge of our machine shop

then. Okay, we were talking about vehicles sometime ago. We had a Beech C-45

aircraft, and I don’t know where we got the old Dodge car from, do you? The girls had

that.

BORCHERS: Oh, the old grey ghost?

BAILEY: That was it, and then we had a Ford station wagon and a scooter, and that

was it. At the beginning, when we first came out here, they left the C-45 with us. I

guess Don was involved in this, too. We tried to fly it every morning to work as a

commuting thing. By the time we got the thing cranked up and warmed up and ready to

go, we could have been there in the automobile. We never got the gear up; we would be

over at Muroc before we had time for it. So we tried it for a while, but it just didn’t

work out at all. But where we were housed with the X-1 originally was in what they

call the big hangars. They moved over to what’s now the main base. Our crib was right

adjacent to Howard Hughes. Because he had the XF-11.

BORCHERS: Right. And the crib we took over from Bell.

BAILEY: Right. You know, it was a good association. Because, back in those days,

nobody had ever had everything they needed. You would just continually borrow from
35

this guy and that guy, and somebody was borrowing from you and— Howard Hughes

would came in. And, one time, he brought old [Congressman] — Oh, what the hell

was— A real short guy. Anyway, we all shook hands with him, you know? That was

before he was afraid of being contaminated there. Or else we contaminated him, so he

was more careful afterwards. So, anyway, it was a good association, and it was not too

bad working in there.

BORCHERS: Yeah, they used to come in the crib. I had a huge screwdriver about that

long. And I come back and went in the toolbox, and the damn thing was bent. I made

myself a sign— “Which son of a bitch broke my screwdriver?”—and put it up on the

cage. Frank Danis, the rep from Reaction Motors, told me he was. And he never

replaced the screwdriver.

COX: That XF-11 was a beautiful airplane. I remember the guys spent all their time

just polishing that thing, just polishing that.

BAILEY: That [Congressman] was named Pella. Yeah. That’s when Hughes was

promoting the “Spruce Goose.” Pella was out there. Also, that airplane that he had next

to us was the one that he went into Bel Air, wasn’t it, in the golf course.

COX: Yeah, he put it in there. Yeah. He put it in and took out a lot of golf-course real

estate.

BORCHERS: When Clyde was talking about the big hangar— For a while, we had

both these X-1s before the Air Force decided they’d take over.

BAILEY: Yeah, we proved both of them. Well, that would be— Then Jack Russell

came in. He was working for Bell—

BORCHERS: Jack didn’t come in until 1950, to us.

BAILEY: Not to us. But he went to work for the Air Force. Jack was here at the early

part on the P-59, but we didn’t know him then. Walt arranged for us to move from

where we were at the airport, the big hangar, to the Butler hangar. And what one of

these things says is that the personnel from Ames came down here, some of their

people, to put up the lean-tos or whatever you want to call them—the offices and the

shops, and so forth, on both ends of the hangar. That wasn’t the way it worked. We had

a contractor come out there, and he put up all this stuff. What was different about that,

and I don’t know if it was being done in the war or not, but instead of using gravel as

an aggregate in these walls that they put up and the roof, and so forth, they used

volcanic ash. They mixed that in, which made it very light. And if you look at them,

these pieces that they put across there, solid pieces of concrete, they would put a box

inside it, a cardboard box. So when you looked at this thing, actually, what you had

then was an I-beam, because they filled the void. And this was concrete around here. So

it looked like it was an I-beam. Worked real good. And the volcanic ash that they used

as the aggregate was a real good insulator. It made it cool in the summertime, and it

was easy to heat it in the wintertime. And in the summertime, of course, you had the

evaporative coolers in there.

There was something else that we had, we never mentioned. The C-47 would come

out here almost on schedule. And, generally, they would bring us out something. And

what we usually wanted or asked for was, “Bring us down a barrel of oysters.” So they

would bring out a great, big barrel of oysters. And over next to where we were living,

we would have these oyster roasts at night. See, we often thought that, somewhere
36

down the line, when people excavate this, they’re going

to say, “Well, this was one great, big sea at one time.

Look at all these oyster shells.”

COX: Yeah. Yeah, I remember sitting in the C-47 one

time. Geez, I don’t know where we were, but Walt was

on board, too. And somebody brought out these cartons

of chilled seafood. Walt said to me, “Did you ever eat

any oysters?” I said, “Gee—” And Clyde goes, “No, no,

no, that’s not the way.” He says, “Here,” and he pulled

one of these big, drippy oysters— He says, “You do it like this.” Down it went. Anyway, the middle of the night, eating oysters in a C-47.

BAILEY: Bailey. We had rattlesnakes out here just like they had back in Virginia.

However, the ones in Virginia were Timber Rattlers. Don can tell you about a rattlesnake. He had one on the front porch.

BORCHERS: Yeah, I’d like to tell you about it. We were sitting there eating our supper.

My son was three years old, and he didn’t want any dessert. He said he’d go out and sit

on the porch. So he opened up the screen door and closed that screen door, sat down,

got up, opened up the screen door and says, “Daddy, there’s a snake out there.” And

here was a little sidewinder, one button and a little rattle on it. I just smashed it, I’m

sorry, Rich.

BAILEY: One thing out here. When people thought about going back—that had

children,—they would go back to Virginia on a trip or something, and then they would

come back here and be really happy to be back. For the simple reason that we didn’t

have these little throw-away diapers and stuff like you have now. These were regular

diapers that you put out on the clothesline, and you had a whole string of them. They

would hang them on one end of the clothesline here, go all the way down to the end,

come back and pick them back off the clothesline because they’re dry and clean. Go

A mid-1950s street

scene in Lancaster.

Even with the

growth of both

Edwards AFB and

the High-Speed

Flight Station

during the 1950s,

Lancaster still

remained a small

desert town.

Despite this row of

storefronts, the

primary activity in

the Antelope Valley

continued to be

farming. (E-1787).

From the pages of

the X-Press.
37

back there, and you’re hanging them over the shower curtain and all that kind of stuff,

and they’re dripping there for three or four days.

COX: That is a quality of life issue.

BORCHERS: But to get back to his story of how you liked it out here, I was finally

able to buy a 1948 Dodge, and I took a trip back to Maryland. We got back there, and it

felt as if the streets were closing in on me, after being in the wide open at Mojave.

Here, my next neighbor was— Well, we had a pig farmer, he was about a mile and a

half [away]. But the next place out was Boron.

GORN: You get used to it?

BAILEY: Yeah, I had something. I insulted my sister-in-law. She came out, and I went

down the hall. I said, “Well, you can tell somebody is from back East is here. You can

smell it.” And, boy, she took off. The pillows were musty smelling, you know?—

particularly the pillows, and the bed clothes and everything. Here, you don’t sweat on

them; you don’t lay in, you know, perspiration, and so forth. So it’s quite attractive, in

that respect, isn’t it? You know, as far as sports are concerned, I think we all liked to

see the snow, but we liked to see it up there on top of the mountain. If we want to go up

there and play in it, we can. The kids liked it; we would take them up there, and so

forth; but you didn’t have to live in it.

BORCHERS: What got me one time— It snowed here about six or eight inches, and it

closed everything down!

BAILEY: Oh, yeah.

BORCHERS: I couldn’t understand it. Because back in Baltimore, you went to work

whether it was 10 or 12 inches of snow.

SPARKS: In fact, Joe Walker and I were going to work one morning, and it had been

snowing all night. It was probably four or five inches. We were going up Sierra Highway. And right where the old radio station is there’s a little hook in the Sierra Highway.

A car coming towards us spun out, and I swung off and got out on the curb. And, of

course, we get off the pavement. We went around it and came back onto the highway.

The hind wheels went around, and, so, I’m pointing the wrong way, and I said, “Well,

I’ll go down here and turn around.” He says, “No, you don’t.” He says, “We’re going

home.” We didn’t go to Muroc that day. We went over to my house, sat and drank

coffee and played Rummy or something. I don’t know.

BAILEY: Speaking of Mojave, I gave a speech at the Marriott Hotel over in Alexandria

on Davis Highway. I needed some background information. I was giving a speech to a

reunion of people from NACA, and they had about 400 people. What I wanted was

some factual information. So I called the library to find out the population in Mojave,

Lancaster and Palmdale back in 1946. The best they could come up with was [that

there] less than a thousand people in Palmdale; there was about 1,800 or 1,900 people

in Lancaster. And there was probably twice that many in Mojave. Mojave at that time

was larger, and I would say, half of them probably belonged to the railroad. Because

Mojave had the big roundhouse there and a lot of the trucking and industry, and so

forth, that went through there. So we weren’t dropped into the smallest part of the area

out here. At that time, Mojave was a pretty good size. Then, of course, the roundhouse

went to Barstow, so we lost that.
38

Everybody likes to know about Pancho’s. We went there occasionally. You could

get a good steak. A lot of people came out from Hollywood, the so-called Hollywood

starlets. A lot of the Army Air Forces people came out here, as well. You could go to

Pancho’s and get a good steak dinner. It could be a whole plate for a dollar. At least, at

that time. It’s probably equal to five or ten dollars now. They had a swimming pool

there. We would go over there between one and two in the afternoon; we could go

swimming. There was plenty of activities. She had horses that you could rent. That was

one of Chuck’s problems. He rented that horse and went into that fence before he flew

supersonically. They had a nice, little air strip. Beeler kept his airplane there. Dick flew

in and out of there. So that area was available to us. So we weren’t exactly stuck out in

the middle of nowhere with not anything to do.

COX: Well, let me check on that a little bit, the air strip. I flew in, in his airplane, a lot.

We flew together at the time. And one night, De and I— What was his other plane? A

Taylorcraft? But, anyway, a light aircraft-two-place. So we were up hanging around at

night. And her strip was a long, kind of a sloping strip. The night lights were these pots

that the strips used to use—

SPARKS: Smoke pots.

COX: Yeah, smoke pots. And she had them lined up along this [runway]. So De says,

“Why don’t you go ahead and shoot a landing?” And I said, “Okay. Fine.” It was

getting dark, and he said, “It’ll be a good experience— You shoot one, and I’ll shoot

one.” So I come in, and managed to get it on the ground without hurting myself or

anybody else. And, so, we roll on through. And it was dark down there. So he said,

“Well, let’s do it again. Go ahead.” I turned around and started taxiing back. And as I

taxied back, there were four cattle going across the runway. They were going home. It

was time to go home.

GORN: What timing.

COX: Yeah. They were some of Pancho’s animals, and they were crossing right in the

middle of the runway. And I guess, five seconds earlier, and we’d have a problem

running into them. I mean, it was an experience.

GORN: That would help to get a little visual picture of what the [housing] were like to

live in.

COX: This is Rich Cox. What little I remember about that Wherry was that when I

went to work, I was single. And that makes, obviously, a world of difference. So where

I went, I think, was called base housing. It was out of plywood, and as I remember—I

know for a fact that you roomed with somebody—another guy.

BAILEY: Wasn’t De with you?

COX: De and I roomed together. But this was a part of the military thing at that time.

And, the only reason I don’t remember much about it was because I ate and slept there

and went to work. On weekends, I went on down below. So I didn’t spend a lot of time

there. And that’s another point, too, that you might make of my situation. I was single,

and I was a local guy. So almost every weekend, I drove down below. I had reason for

going down below. And in the course of doing that, there were people who said could I

give them a ride to L.A., and then you’d go to L.A., and so forth. And, so, it wasn’t as if

we were completely isolated up here and we didn’t have anything to do. They didn’t
39

have the Freeway, and Sierra Highway could be a bear sometimes.

But, nonetheless, Roxie [Roxanah Yancey] and a couple of the woman [computers]

would want to go down shopping, do something down below, over the weekend. So I’d

drive them down, then pick them up on Sunday night, and we’d come back. So like I

say, we weren’t completely isolated. I wasn’t. I was a roamer before I got married. That

was a couple of years after I went to work for NACA. So, that was the difference with

me. But the accommodations I had was—I think they called it government housing. I

don’t really [know] the name.

The reason I know it wasn’t very well built was because my roommate and I had an

altercation one time, and we knocked down the plywood wall. The wall came down. I

got a new roommate, and we went from there.

SPARKS: You didn’t hurt him that bad.

COX: I know. It was just an accident. Sort of.

BAILEY: When I came out here, I lived in the BOQ [Bachelor Officers Quarters]. And

that was just to the west of the big hangars. They were two stories buildings. And

everybody that came on base, whether they were military or what have you— It was

the only BOQ that they [stayed]. Adjacent to that was a BOQ where the girls lived. It

was right next door. It was a long way from being palatial, but it was livable, let’s put it

that way.

But one thing you had to be careful about though, it faced to the south, so, obviously, longways, it was east and west. I was in an upstairs room. And I think the

partitions were about five or six feel high. You could look over them to the next one.

There was a window on each end of this second story. And you had to be doggone

careful that if a guy opened the window on the west end not to open the one on the east

end. Because it was just like a wind tunnel. I swear, it would take the sheets right off

the beds. So, that was the earliest of what they had—supervised living conditions.

Don mentioned the insect problem when we first came out here, that they had some

cockroaches. But we have no mosquitoes out here. We have a mosquito abatement

program, and that’s kind of a slush fund for people that they want to benefit. Because

The Antelope

Valley Fair and

Alfalfa Festival

reflected the area’s

rural nature. While

it had the displays

typical of county

fairs — such as

farm machinery,

livestock, and arts

and crafts — it also

featured the role of

aviation in the

area’s economy.

Here the X-4 and

D-558-I were on

shown at a fair in

the early 1950s. (E828)
40

there’s nothing for these guys to do at all, as far as I know.

We had no fleas. My daughter lives over in Newport Beach, and she has two cats,

and the cats would get fleas. So she would bring them here for a week, then take them

back, and they were completely deflea-ed. No problem at all. We have plenty of ants,

but we don’t have the mosquitoes. Oh, let me tell you how bad it was back at Langley

Field. Don knows this. You’d be working up in a wheel well; you were pulling the

airplane out, and you had to put the canopy down. You go to hit a mosquito on the back

of your head; your head goes back; and you’ve got a new, fresh-cut in it. Right? We

flew into Wallops Island about seven o’clock at night, and I ran into the Operations

Room and beat mosquitoes all the way. This is hard to believe, but we had to have the

windshield wiper on the station wagon because you couldn’t see through the mosquitoes on the windshield. That’s a fact. So those are things that we left behind. There was

mention, also, that Willow Springs was completely utilized by the Bell Aircraft people,

but that was not so. We had Dick Paine in there. Bud Rogers was there. Three or four of

them were there, and we would go to Willow Springs, Saturdays and Sundays, and the

gals would have a picnic and all that. But there was— The swimming pools were very

nice, and—

BORCHERS: Almost lost my son in this big system that they call the swimming pool,

about six, eight feet deep. Gilbert Sousa was the mechanic who was to watch my son. My

wife come back, and here was my boy down there and I had to dive in and rescue him.

BAILEY: I did the same thing to— You remember Walt Frazier?

BORCHERS: Yeah.

BAILEY: His kid. All these people sitting around this thing. This kid went in and went

down underneath and didn’t come back up. Nobody paid any attention to him. Like

Don says, about six or eight feet. I went down and picked this kid up and held him up

over my head, and I didn’t think anybody was going to take him out of my hands. It

looked like we were going to have to pull him down back up.

Did a lot of hunting. After we came out here a while, I had a lot of applications

from people from Langley Field that had heard about this that wanted to come out here.

But we were limited as to how many people we could have. So its reputation was not

such that these people weren’t willing to come on out here or even look at it as a better

opportunity than what they had back there at Langley Field.

I noted on here that the erroneous information that was submitted as factual regarding maximum temperatures at Muroc. I believe they said, in 1945, the temperature was

144 degrees out here. I called the library, and they did a research job for me. The

maximum temperature ever recorded was 134 degrees, at minus 168 feet sea level, in

Death Valley in 1913.

BORCHERS: I might have to disagree with him a little bit. I’d go into the instrument

shop, and I’d get a thermometer, and I’d go out and put it on top of my blue Dodge.

The thermometer always exploded about 140 degrees.

COX: That blue Dodge kept changing color all the time.

BORCHERS: Borchers. I’ll tell you how crazy we were in NACA. In 1950, Walt came

to me, and he said that the Fairgrounds wanted to have a couple of airplanes. So I

requisitioned a flatbed, and I had a D-558-I and a[n] X-4, brought them in. There was

three of us. So, here we had $4-million-worth of airplanes, didn’t have anybody in front

of us to clear them on the road.
41

SPARKS: No nothing!

BORCHERS: It was like another day at the races.

BAILEY: We take exception to the statement that our people were frequently drunk

here. We never had any problem with alcoholism—at all, that I know of.

BORCHERS: Even at the party times.

BAILEY: No. Mmmm mmmm.

BORCHERS: We were all a bunch of guys—28—20 years old, at the time, having a

family and—

COX: Yeah.

BAILEY: We sure don’t want a bunch of drunks.

COX: I think that point is certainly valid, and I go back to the business of, it’s like a

family. I don’t think anybody particularly wanted to embarrass themselves in front of

the family. We didn’t have a bunch of drinkers, anyway, as far as I knew. Unless we got

the people from Langley out there.

BORCHERS: Only one time. We were having a party in Clyde’s house, and somebody

proposed a strip poker game. We started playing, and Joe Vensel got all upset because

his wife had to take her top off or something. I went out and challenged everybody that

had gone out. But that’s the only rowdy thing we ever had.

COX: But it seems to me, when you’re dealing with sources, and particularly about

something that is in the past some, there’s a certain amount of flavoring involved in

these things whether it’s intentional or not. It just gets that way. Speaking for myself,

the older I get, the more those things grow in their intensity.

GORN: Sure.

COX: This has been good for me because it kind of made me stop and think about all

the good times.

BORCHERS: They talk about the wind and dust and all that. We would sweep the

hangar out, but it wasn’t bad.

BAILEY: We did that at Langley.

BORCHERS: I know. Well, I was just watching the new pictures they have at NASA,

the films, and they talk about the dust, how we used to sweep the dust off the airplanes

and all that. I don’t remember any of that stuff.

GORN: One or two people have said something about dust that would come in. In the

very early days, that would come in through cracks in the windows and would get into

the bed and that kind of stuff.

COX: When my wife and I moved into Lancaster [there] was something less than 4,000

people there. There was no build-up [areas] to the west of us, and I could look as far as
42

across the railroad tracks and as far as I could see, there were very few houses. In fact,

there were three houses available when we moved in, and one of them had just recently

been built. But the windows were all sash type. They were always a big run on masking

tape, because the ladies would seal around the windows. But that’s a part of living on

the desert. Everybody planted cottonwood trees and elm trees, and so on, because that

helped break the wind. Then ten years later or 15 years later, they were sorry because it

all got into the sewer system. Mr. Roto Rooter made his retirement, working around

here cleaning out the pipes. But, basically, there was a lot of dust blown. The wind

blows on the desert.

But, golly, no place you go is going to be perfect by any means. And, so, you—

Clyde was talking about—and Don—about the problems back on the East Coast. And

we have our earthquakes, and so on, and so forth. A lot of people just say, “I don’t see

how you can live there in the first place.” And then the other people that are saying that

cyclones and typhoons and—or whatever—hurricanes.

BORCHERS: Well, I want you to close this thing, Mike, by telling everybody that we

think it was the best years of our lives, the beginning of NACA at Muroc.

COX: Amen!

GORN: Well, I think one of the things that we can easily fit in is the sense of camaraderie. What I’m thinking now is, maybe because the camaraderie and the work was so

good, maybe, even if conditions were not the greatest sometimes, you’d say, “Well, so

what?” You’re working long hours with people you like; you’re doing work you love.

BORCHERS: Remember, I just came out of the Navy in the South Pacific. And to see

the stuff over there, this was luxury.

BAILEY: Well, Don Thompson said the same thing.

SPARKS: I don’t think you can go anyplace in the country and have perfect weather.

BAILEY: At Langley, it would snow—on the inside in the wintertime; no place to get

warm. And you don’t work with gloves on.

COX: There’s a compensation. And that’s the other part of this. Like I say, you’re naive

when you believe that any place is going to be perfect, obviously. And the other part of

it is that if you’re doing something you love, you overcome a lot of other things. Than

again, coming from the local area, I had it made in southern California. There were

other places I could have gone to work after I got out of school. I chose to come up

here, and I chose to stay here.

BAILEY: Speaking of long hours, when I went to work at Langley Field—and this was

true all over—we worked five-and-a-half days a week. We got off at noontime if we were

lucky. When we got off a noontime, I’ll tell you, we swept out the hangar before we left. I

had about 15 people working for me and responsible for one hangar there. So, long hours

were not anything new. When I came out here, they couldn’t pay you overtime, but they

would give you comp time. I brought 400 hours out here with me. I had enough time to

build a house in Lancaster without taking any annual leave at all.

Have you ever bitched because somebody said, “Well, you’re going to have to work

until this thing is finished”? Never happen. We spent many a night there, 24 hours a day,

that we didn’t even go home. Most of our work started at three o’clock in the morning

when we were flying the X-15 and the X-1. And everybody that you needed was out there.
43

GORN: Don Thompson was talking about Ma Greene, who you mentioned. And this is

just asking you a question to confirm it-[he] said that you could be working late into

the night; someone would call her up and rouse her out of her bed. She’d give him hell,

but she’d still open up [her café].

COX: She adopted people. I mean, the guys, the workers. She really did.

BAILEY: I was there one time when Bob Hope came out. He was going to do a thing

for the people out there. He stopped at Ma Greene’s for breakfast, and I was there. He

was real careful to explain to Ma that he wanted his eggs sunnyside up; he didn’t want

any of them broken. She took the damn egg, did like that; it splattered. She said, “If

you can fry them damn eggs without breaking them, come up and get behind the

counter.” We met a lot of people out here, Hollywood types. All of us worked on

pictures at Edwards, the X-15 story and the X-1 and all of those things.

BORCHERS: The story of Pancho using filthy language, I never ran into it when I was

there.

BAILEY: As far as Pancho running a “cathouse,” that was not the case.

GORN: She wasn’t a madam.

BAILEY: No.

BAILEY: The day that the X-1 broke the sound barrier, the 14th of October, [1947] I

had go back to Washington, so I wasn’t here. That night, Lewis called me, cryptically

told me that they had broken the sound barrier. This was not in the newspapers until

months later. But, anyway, our two pilots, Herbie Hoover and Howard Lilly were out

here. And, of course, Mildred was home alone with our daughter Sandra. Howard and

Herbie came over and said, “Mildred, we’re going to have a big party out at Pancho’s

tonight.” She said, “Well, I can’t go.” She said, “I can’t go up there alone.” They said,

“No, if you come with us, we’re going to protect you.” Mildred said, after about 11

o’clock, she didn’t see anything of Howard or Herbie, either one of them.

SPARKS: We always had a first-flight party at Pancho’s. Every time we had a new

airplane out of Northrop, if we flew it up here, why, we had a party over there. I was

kind of used to those things, and I didn’t think much of it. But after I went to work for

NACA, the first flight on the X-4, John Griffith flew it. Scotty Crossfield would then

fly the next one, and he was going to go over there to Pancho’s. Walt Williams says,

“Well, I’ll go, too.” Joe Vensel says, “Yeah, I’ll go, too.” So we all piled into my car

and went over to Pancho’s. Scotty and Griffith had a little bit too much to drink., and

they were picking on Walt. Well, Walt worked them out by the pool, and all of a

sudden, he picked both of them up and tossed them into the pool. Now, this was in

December. There was no ice on the pool, but I had to bring those guys to town with

stinking clothes. I had a new Ford that had a heater in it. So, I went out and got it

running and got it warmed up a little. They came out from setting in front of the oven

and jumped into the car and off we went. Vensel co-piloted for me.

BORCHERS: I’ll tell you a story about Scott [Crossfield] I always tell. We’d just

gotten the D-558-II with the rocket in it. And the CG [center of gravity] had changed

on it. I found it in the hangar and crew chief Dick Hanna put a 55-pound block of lead

right underneath the seat. The thing is, the nose used to come over, and it used to tip

out. And I said, “Well, I’m not going to let that airplane fly like that.” Scott came
44

around here, and he raised hell with me. He punched me in the chest. “You know

what’s wrong with this place?” I said no. He said, “Too damn many mechanics playing

engineers.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry, Scott.” He said, “I am going to talk with Walt.”

And Walt says, “If Borchers says that airplane’s not going to fly, it’s not going to fly.”

Well, he comes huffing back and he goes into the rocket room, and he took a

flexible hose and hooked it up to an oxygen tank, turned that sonofabitch on—and it’s

a hydraulic line—and it just about missed his head—just spun around like that—he

came out there white as a sheet. I punched him in the chest. “Too damn many engineers playing mechanics.” He didn’t talk to me for six months!

COX: You know, though, I had the same experience with him, too after we had had

quality operations going. One of the mechanics said he didn’t want to let the airplane

go. I said, “Okay. Fine.” Then Scott came down, and he yelled at me like he yelled at

you, and he didn’t really punch anybody. He does it to stir the pot, anyway. I think he

really was wrong—in my case, at least. So, he finally says, “Damn it, Cox,” he said,

“it’s my life!” And I said, “Damn it, Crossfield, it’s our airplane!” And that was the end

of it. He just kind of grinned, and he went away.

BAILEY: Joe Walker would get all upset, and he’d call my desk; I’d answer the phone

and start saying something. And he was so pumped up, he wouldn’t say anything. So if

nothing came over, I’d hang the phone up. Then he’d [come] down the stairs and into

the office. “You hung that phone up on me!”

BORCHERS: Oh, man, I had one day. Joe had come out, and we got talking. He’s

from Pennsylvania. He has a farm or something there. And he was talking about a

horse and a mare and how you hook the things up. And I was just leading him on. I

said, “Joe, you’re-out of your damn mind; it goes this way.” And everybody knew I

was just putting him on, but he was getting hotter and hotter. I never hooked up a team

of horses in my life.

BAILEY: He had a short fuse.

COX: Yeah. One of the funniest things, I think, about Joe Vensel— And he was such a

sweet guy, a really, really good guy. He lost his hearing flying open-cockpit airplanes.

But he had one of the old-fashioned-[hearing aids]....It was a big, big hearing-aid...a

big amplifier. And what was the name of the girl that spoke so softly and— His

secretary?

BAILEY: Dana?

COX: Yeah, Dana. And she was a little, sweet girl, but she spoke real softly. And she’d

go up and talk to the guys, and she was a little bit awed by it. And as she talked, she’d

look down. She’d look down like this, you know, And Joe was cranking up the volume.

He says, “You know,” he says, “there’s something wrong.” There was nothing wrong

with the thing. She just wasn’t saying anything. We laughed about that.

BAILEY: By the same token, we would have these long, drawn-out staff meetings, you

know? And Joe would get tired of that and turn that thing down.

SPARKS: I think the thing on that staff meeting was the time he’d been away for six

weeks or something, came back, and we’re having a staff meeting. And didn’t do anything that way. Come to find out, he had his hearing fixed. You know, he caught everything we were saying. And, before, unless you talked right to him, he didn’t hear you.
45

BORCHERS: We had a guy named Marion Kent in the procurement section of the

base. Norman Hayes and I and he would always flip a coin up against the wall and see

who bought the Coke. The odd man bought. So I went into the machine shop, and I

made two pennies with double heads. And we got [the Cokes] every day for months

and months and months, he never did find out.

GORN: Well, these are all examples of the kind of tapestry you’re talking about. Now,

when I talked to De Beeler, Mr. Bailey, he said I shouldn’t turn off the tape recorder

until you tell me a little bit about the P-51 tests.

BAILEY: Well, they were way, way back, when I

first went to work there, we put a glove on a B-17

and pumped air through it to get the laminar flow

going across it. Then the next project was trying to

get free flow. The tunnel couldn’t get two-percent

flow across it. So we put a small glove on a P-51 and

put a [model]. We took an X-1 [model] and sliced it

right down through the middle, put it down flat on

the wing, and then we got the flow across there. We

had a fifty cell manometer in the wing—which was

the largest and the only wing we had at the time—

and took readings from that. So it gave a pretty good

indication of what you could expect. Multiply it by

the size of that thing, which was about a oneeighteenth scale model. I think that Bill Gray did

most of the flights. Well, on a P-51, if you go for that

max speed, you can get control reversal on this

thing. Gray was flying it, and I think he started

around 10- or 12,000 feet, and dove it to get max

[speed] which is probably about 600 miles an hour

or in that neighborhood. And he got control reversal.

Before he got thing squared away again, he

was at about 600 feet from the ground. So the

guys stuck their necks out pretty far before

we ever had an X-1 airplane.

BORCHERS: Well, we were flying some of

them that didn’t have a glove on; it just had

the manometer on the wing. On the pitot.

BAILEY: But with a glove on it, you

wouldn’t have to fly the airplane quite that

fast in order to get the flow.

BORCHERS: That was something, we used

an eighth-inch copper tubing, drilled a hole

and ran it all the way into the manometer.

COX: Well, Mike, what kind of additional

questions do you have?

GORN: Well, I think you’ve pretty much

stopped me.

From the pages of

the X-Press.
46
47

JOHN GRIFFITH

Interview by Peter Merlin, February 2, 1998

Over the decades, research pilots always held an essential place in the history of the

NACA. They collaborated with engineers in all aspects of the experiments. As a result

of the increasing complexity of aircraft, more and more research pilots became engineers themselves. John Griffith was an example of this new type of pilot. He showed

his flying skills in the South Pacific during World War II. After the war, Griffith earned

an engineering degree with honors. He subsequently joined the NACA’s Lewis Flight

Propulsion Laboratory (now the Glenn Research Center) where he undertook icing

research and ramjet tests. Griffith arrived at Muroc in August 1949, and over the

following year and a half, flew a wide range of experimental aircraft. Griffith made

nine flights in the X-1, three in the X-4, fifteen flights in the D-558-I and nine in the D558-II. He left the NACA for Chance Vought in 1950, and subsequently worked for

United Airlines, Westinghouse, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Q: If you could possibly tell me a little bit about where you were born, and when you

were born — a bit about your background and education.

A: Okay. I was born in the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, May 19, 1921. I

grew up in Homewood, Illinois. The Depression was pretty tough in those days. My

father had a hard time making ends meet, and we lost our home in 1940. But I finished

junior college in 1941. I got into the Army Air Corps, and flew 189 missions in P-40s

in the beginning of 1942 and ’43. When the war was over, I finished up my last two

years of engineering at Purdue University in aeronautical engineering, where I graduated with honors in 1948.

Left to Right: Bob

Champine, John

Griffith, and Joe

Vensel.
48

Q: What spurred your interest in aviation? How did you decide to become a pilot?

A: Well, when I was growing up in Homewood, airway green three went near our

house. I could look up there and see the DC-3 flying along Goshen, and Toledo, and

Cleveland to New York, and I thought: Boy, that really must be a great thing to be up

there flying that airplane. I read in a magazine about a pilot that went through [pilot

training at] Randolph Field and flew P-12s in Panama. Thought that was interesting. So

I pretty much had an ambition to be a pilot.

Q: Can you briefly describe your World War II experience — where you served, what

airplanes you flew?

A: Well, I went to flying school at Corsicana in Randolph and Foster Field. And then I

got flight training in fighters in a P-43 at Spartanburg, in P-40 at Myrtle Beach. I had

45 hours in fighters when I went to New Guinea in September of 1942, and I flew the

P-40 there for 189 missions and 450 combat hours.

Q: What can you tell me about icing and power plant research that you did at Lewis

Aeronautical Laboratory in the late 1940’s?

A: Well, after I graduated from Purdue, the first people that came down to interview me

was Ed Gough and a couple other guys from Lewis Lab. After they gave me an offer, I

decided that I’d go to work there at the Lewis Lab. The main icing research was done

with the B-24, with the J-34 engine mounted under the wing. We flew through icing

conditions, and I remember one flight that the ice actually built up on the engine cowls

to the point where the propellers were rubbing the ice. In the B-24, the pitot is underneath the airplane, and the ice built out far enough on the mast that even though the

head was heated and kept the ice off of that, the ice went around in front of the pitot.

We flew the final approach on the ILS with pitch attitude rather than air speed.

Q: Was there any other research piloting that you did at Lewis and at Langley?

A: Well, they had a crash program at Ravenna, that they were going to crash C-46s, and

I think it was C-82s, there. I worked out taxiing a C-46 back and forth on the runway

the distance it would take to get to 100 miles an hour, and the trim position that you

would need for a level condition to go into the crash that they were simulating at

Ravenna there. We also did some work with a B-25, and had a Black Widow P-61 there

as well. Ed Gough was flying a P-75 with a double Allison engine, but I didn’t fly that

airplane.

Q: How was your research flying different from the flying you did for the Army Air

Forces?

A: Well, in the Army Air Forces, the mission was either to dive bomb, or for intercept

bombers, or have aerial combat with Zeros. Whereas in the research, we were out to try

to get answers that would enable people to fly in icing conditions. The B-24 had a

heated wing that prevented the ice from forming on the wing, and there was de-icing on

the propellers. So the airplane was pretty well protected. These were things that eventually came onto the commercial flying that enabled commercial flying to be conducted

with icing conditions.

Q: How did you happen to be transferred to Muroc?
49

A: Well, Mel Gough was Ed’s brother, and he was at the Lewis Lab one day. He said it

looked like there was going to a requirement for another pilot at the High Speed Flight

Research Station. I immediately said that I’d like to be that pilot, and so they evidently

gave me the chance.

Q: Well, what did you think when you got there? What were the conditions like?

A: Well, before I went to Muroc, I went to the Langley Lab to do a bunch of dive tests

with a P-51. I flew with Herb Hoover, who had flown the X-1, and flew a seaplane to

Wallops Island and back a few times. I actually flew a B-29, flew an F-80, F8F, and

quite a few different airplanes just to kind of get [experience], even though I had

already probably flown most of the World War II fighters. It was with Herb Hoover

helping me, and telling me about what the X-1 was like, and things that way. It was

good training for going to Edwards and flying the X-1.

Q: What did you think of the facilities when you got there?

A: Well, I guess most people say that they were fairly spartan. There’s a lot of wind,

and dust, and dirt, and there was just the hangar there. Of course, we all had offices and

desks. There was an adequate area where they did the data reduction, and writing the

reports, and turning out the technical papers. I thought it was an up-and-coming operation.

Q: Who were some of the people that you worked with then?

A: Well, Walt Williams was running the place, and De Beeler was helping him. We had

Sig Sjoberg and Hubert Drake as engineers. Joe Vensel was my immediate boss there,

and Bob Champine was already there flying the X-1 when I got there.

Q: Can you characterize the people who made the greatest impression on you?

Ground photo of

the Douglas D-558-

I Skystreak research aircraft. A

Navy-sponsored

project, the

Skystreak flew at

speeds approaching Mach 1. Its jet

engine allowed the

aircraft to sustain

these speeds for

prolonged periods,

increasing the

amount of data

collected per flight,

and adding immensely to the

understanding of

the transonic speed

range. (E49-0059)
50

A: Oh, everybody was friendly, and we got along well. I don’t think there was any

special — I did have quite a bit of respect for Walt Williams. I think he was working

quite hard to make the thing go.

Q: What sorts of equipment were available to support the research flying?

A: They had the X-1 and the D-558-I and -II, and the X-4 was coming along later. They

had quite a good cadre of people that were working on the instrumentation, and maintaining the airplanes, and all the rest. The oscillograph instrumentation was well

developed, and gave pretty good answers, and air speed, and altitude, and control

forces, and G forces and all the rest that went on in the airplane. And, of course, on the

X-1 we measured pressure distribution over the wing and the loads on the airplane

while it was going through the transonic and supersonic speeds. Did rolls and pull-ups

and things that way, and up to the indications of what was going on with the airplane

during these things. Then, of course, they analyzed the data and wrote the reports.

Q: What sort of aircraft did you get to fly while you were there?

A: Well, other than the X-1 and the D-558 research airplanes, we had an F-84. Then

later on we had a P-51, and we flew a C-45 and a DC-3.

Q: Did you have any interesting experiences in some of those?

A: Well, the D-558-II in a pull-up, the down wash from the wing would hit the horizontal tail and cause a sharp pitch up. I had done some lower speed pull-ups, and the pitch

up was not too severe. But I think I was about 280 knots or something like that. And on

that [faster] pull-up, why when the down wash hit the horizontal tail, the airplane

quickly pitched up to a stall and went into a spin, and [I] recovered from that and went

on. And on that same flight, they wanted a stall maneuver. It was getting late in the

flight, and I was only 14,000 feet. I would have preferred to have done a stall at at least

20,000 with this airplane, since I had never done a complete stall with it before. Sig

Sjoberg had said he wanted to get the last gasp of this stall. So I was sitting there at

14,000 feet with the gear and flaps down, and as I slowed down, why I could feel it

start loosening up quite a bit. I kept on pulling back on the stick, and suddenly the right

wing dropped, and it started yawing off into a spin. I knew that the [spin] recovery was

unsatisfactory with gear and flaps down. So I quickly retracted the gear and the flaps,

A Douglas D-558-II

Skyrocket taking off

from the lakebed.

Completely different from the jetpowered, straight

winged Skystreak,

the Skyrocket

featured swept

wings and a variety

of propulsion

systems. Flying a

Skyrocket, NACA

research pilot Scott

Crossfield became

the first to fly faster

than Mach 2.

(E49-219)
51

and I was pretty sure I was going to exceed the speed for those anyway in the recovery.

I believe I held the rudder against the yaw. It was the only chance to do a normal spin

recovery. The FAA used to say [to] hold it in full controls for two turns in the spin, and

then hit the opposite rudder, and pop the stick forward. That was supposed to recover

from the spin, but with this airplane, and the altitude I was at, I was sure there was no

chance to go through all of that maneuver. I just held the rudder against the yaw, and

first thing you know, I had the nose pointed down. I pulled it out and recovered.

I later did an analysis from the telemetering data. I had started at a 14,000 feet, and I

recovered at about 7,000 [feet], indicating about 300 or 320 knots. But got it out

alright. As I remember, Walt Williams and Joe Vensel were on the lake where I was

going to land, and they had some field glasses. I understand that Walt was watching

this stall, and when it started to go off into the spin, why he handed the field glasses to

Joe Vensel and said, “Here,” he says, “you look.” But anyway, that was a little excitement on that flight.

The instrumentation carried aboard

a D-558-II. The

complicated

research needed to

understand highspeed/high-altitude

flight required an

extensive package

of data recording

equipment. After

each research

flight, this data

underwent reduction and analysis.

(E52-872)

The Northrop X-4

on the parking

apron. One of

several research

aircraft built to test

different wing

configurations at

transonic speeds,

the X-4 project

concentrated on

swept wings

without horizontal

stabilizers. Although this design

proved unstable at

speeds near Mach

1, the aircraft was

useful in such

areas as low lift

over drag landing

training. (E50-360)
52

Q: Would you describe your fastest flight in the number two X-1.

A: Well, I don’t remember whether that was the flight that we did the pull-up or the

roll. I got to 1.2 Mach number according to [Richard] Hallion’s book. I really think that

some of the Mach numbers he’s got in that book were not right. I know that there were

several of the flights that he mentioned showed .98 or .99, and I’m sure that after the

first two or three flights, I was always up to 1.15 or something like that.

But we normally did a roll or a pitch up at the end of the speed run, at the maximum speed we could get when the fuel was getting low and you knew it was going to

run out before long. In the pull-up, the controls all were at the transonic and supersonic

speed. The cord on all the controls on the X-1 were pretty small, and the pitching rate

and the roll rate was much less. But I gave a full aft on the stick, and I probably gave

about a half a G. Then I did the stabilizer trim, and as I remember, I got up to almost

seven G’s before the airplane stalled. But after it stalled, the stabilizer was in a position

that wouldn’t allow any recovery. So I had to run the stabilizer back to the position that

the airplane would fly before I recovered. It was just kind of flopping around in a

stalled maneuver.

Q: And while you were out at Muroc, where were you living at that time?

A: We lived at 1012 Date Street here in Lancaster.

Q: Oh, right downtown.

A: Just drove by the house there today. I planted a tree in the front yard. It’s a big tree

now.

Q: I’ll bet it is. I’ll bet a lot has changed.

A: Oh, yes.

Q: What were the conditions like then? What was Lancaster like at that time?

A: It was a small town. I don’t think more than two or three thousand. Beyond [Avenue] J to the south and 10th Street to the west, there was mostly desert. But there’s

sure a lot of things here that weren’t there in the 1940’s. I might mention that a three

bedroom house with a detached garage was $11,000. Our principal, interest, taxes and

insurance were $69.00 a month.

Q: Wow. So, why did you decide to leave the NACA?

A: Well, in the fall of 1950, they were going to do this movie “Jet Pilot.” There were

people up there that were painting the airplane for the movie. They started talking

about their salaries, for some reason or other, while I was sitting there. I thought: These

guys painting this airplane are making more money than I am. It was just a few days

after that that J.R. Clark, Chief Engineer from Chance Vought came by, and offered me

this job flying the [F7U] Cutlass at Dallas, at Hensley Field, and the opportunity to

almost double my salary, and with the bonus program, maybe three or four times the

salary I was making. So I was influenced by the money, and left the NACA.

Q: Can you describe your test piloting after you left?

A: Well, I was Senior Experimental Pilot on the F7U, and I had some pretty exciting
53

experiences with that airplane. The first six F7Us that were built — the three X’s and the first three production F7U-1s — five crashed and three guys were killed in it. I had a wife and three little kids, and I thought:

Oh, I think I’d like to see these kids graduate from high school. So after a year with Chance Vought, I went

with United Airlines.

Q: You worked for United Airlines?

A: Yes. I initially went to work for United in 1952 from January until April. In April I went to work for

Westinghouse as a Chief Engineering Pilot for their Gas Turbine Division. But I worked for them for eight

years, and they went out of the gas turbine business. Then I worked for FAA from 1960 until 1966. United

was hiring flight instructors, so I put in an application. And they hired me in April 1966. I flew on the airline

out of Chicago for about seven years, from 1970 until 1977. Then I went back to Denver as a flight instructor.

At age 60, why it was mandatory retirement. So in 1981, I was retired as a flight instructor.

Q: What are the flying achievements that you would say you’re most proud of?

A: Oh, I’ve pretty well probably covered flying the X-1 and the D-558s. The X-4 I had more publicity than

any of the rest of it. They put my picture in the Los Angeles Times. Marvin Miles wrote an article on it. Well,

I just enjoyed all of the flying I did, and I was glad that I was a pilot and had the career in aviation.

There are some regrets that I have — that I made honor grades at Purdue in aeronautical engineering. I

feel like when I was with NACA I should have gotten into the report writing, and more into the technical

aerodynamics, etc. that was going on there. I probably wasted a fair amount of my time between flights, when

I could have been doing work with Sig Sjoberg and Hubert Drake. I really wish I had gotten more into the

technical part of it. I didn’t, and so hindsight is good.

But, I do really feel very fortunate to have survived my aviation career. I think that probably a third of the

pilots in my flying school class didn’t make it through World War II, and three of the pilots before me in the

F7U were killed. I had a fair number of close calls, and I really feel very fortunate to have gotten this far.

Q: Are there any other achievements in your life that stand out in your mind particularly — anything that

you’re proud of besides flying?

A: I did quite a bit of work in the Little League in the time when my kids were growing up. Cub Scouts and

Boy Scouts — things that way.

Q: Do you have any observations to add other than what I’ve already asked you about?

A: Well, one thing about the flying that was done at Edwards AFB. I was wondering why as many guys went

as high as they did and lost control of the airplanes. It would seem to me that somewhere along the way they

would have put a little more effort into stability augmentation, or some type of thrusters, or something like

that that you could mount on the airplane, and approach these speeds and altitudes in smaller increments.

Milburn Apt goes up on his first [X-2] flight and die because he really didn’t have the experience of approaching the problems in a slower and easier manner.

Q: Yes. They pretty much had him bite off the whole thing at once with the flight to Mach 3.

A: Right. He was the fastest man for a little while, but not very long.
54
55

BETTY LOVE

Autobiographical sketch June 2002

Betty Love started work at the NACA as

a “computer” in 1952, several years after

the initial influx of Muroc employees.

Two “computers” — Roxanah Yancey

and Isabell Martin — had been part of the

initial group who joined Walt Williams

when the NACA facility opened in late

1946. During the 1940s and early 1950s,

the term computer referred to a human

(usually female) who performed the

calculations to convert instrument readings into engineering data such as altitude, true airspeed, Mach number, and

control positions. Like the male employees, their numbers rose as the data

processing demands increased. Three

NACA computers worked at Muroc in

October 1947. By the end of 1948, the

number had grown to eight. Even so,

when Beverly Swanson (Cothren) arrived

in 1949, so much backlogged data existed

that she worked weekends for the first

month and a half on the job. Like the

male employees, the computers had to

deal with acute housing problems. Between December 1946 to the spring of 1949,

Yancey moved from Kerosene Flats, to the hospital area housing, to the Air Force

nurse’s quarters, and finally, to the NACA Women’s Dorm, where she spent five years.

The different social environment of a half century ago resulted in a high turnover

among the computers: some left due to the harsh conditions, others got married and

quit when they had children, some left when their husbands transferred or found new

jobs. The computers held a unique position in the history of aeronautics. Their work -

The entrance to the

NACA Women’s

Dorm at South

Base. To improve

the housing accommodations on

Muroc, new men’s

and women’s dorms

were completed in

the spring of 1949.

The Women’s Dorm

had ten single

rooms that rented

for $6.92 biweekly.

This included maid

service and use of a

washer and dryer. A

new computer

received a salary of

less than $100

every two weeks.

Each room also had

its own evaporative

cooler, but separate

kitchen and shower

facilities.

(E96 43403-8)
56

conducted in a man’s world of engineering — determined the overall quality of the

research of their day. Betty Love’s story illustrates not only her own life, but life in her era.

I was born in Pasadena, California and moved to the Antelope Valley in 1930 when

I was eight years old. The family consisted of a stay at home mom, a father who was a

finished carpenter and a younger sister. Dad built our home on 40 acres of farmland on

Avenue F, 1/4 mile west of 50th Street East. I graduated from Antelope Valley High

School in 1939. During those school years I had decided I wanted to be an airline

hostess. One of the requirements was to be a RN [registered nurse]. I attended Antelope

Valley Junior College taking science courses and some math so that upon graduation I

would be able to continue in the Nurses Program at Los Angeles General Hospital. At

the time that was one of the best nursing schools. Upon graduation in 1941 with an AA

with a science background. I was accepted into the nursing program for September

1941.

Well needless to say plans changed. I married, moved from the Valley, my husband

at that time was working for Lockheed in the experimental shops as a jig and fixture

builder. I raised two children, My husband and I returned to the valley after being gone

four years. I wasn’t employed, but became President for the PTA and did all the ‘mom’

things of those days. Both children were in school and we had friends that had coaxed

my husband into going to work for NACA at South Base in 1951. The next year the

friend said, “Betty they need computers, I think you would qualify why don’t you

apply” so in January 1952 I went to work for NACA as a computer. The pay was great,

I was all of a GS 1. It was several years before my two-week paycheck would equal

$100.00.

Working as a computer one would reduce the data from research flights and by

calculations convert the inches of deflection on a record (film) to engineering units. I

was never told what we were actually doing or how it associated with the X-planes.

Any one with any idea of math could have followed the instructions of: read the record

with a six-inch scale and write it in column 1. Add or subtract a given correction that

The side and

parking area of the

Women’s Dorm.

These vehicles

carried employees

around the NACA

facilities, and on

trips to and from

Los Angeles.

Located down the

flight line from the

NACA hanger, the

Women’s Dorm

stood near the

base cafeteria,

theater, and

chapel. In contrast,

the Men’s Dorm on

North Base was

some eight miles

away. Its distance

required the Men’s

Dorm to have its

own cook and

kitchen. (E96

43403-7)
57

came from pre and post flight calibrations and write in column 2. Take that figure and

go to a calibration chart for that airplane and flight and write that reading in column 3.

This would be the final engineering unit if it were an acceleration or a roll or angle-of

attack record. If it were airspeed-altitude record you would continue by calculated the

columns as the heading directed or looked up numbers to use from tables. Also, if one

paid attention to what the trace was doing, going up or down, then when the calculations were finished you could scan the sheet and tell if you had a wrong reading. Not at

first, but after a short time one could do this.

The computer room was at the end of a series of huts all strung together. Right next

to my desk was a steel rod that ran from floor to ceiling across and along the near wall.

There was a long hall way with the engineering offices on either side. This unit was

attached to the main hangar, the only hangar, where the coffee was, by an enclosed

breezeway. Further on down the hall and towards the front of the building were Walt

Williams’ and De Beelers’ offices and a secretary. The administration and financial

people were in another building just a short ways away. I had lived in the valley, so

Instrument measurements from

Maj. Charles E.

Yeager’s Mach

2.44 flight in the X1A on December

12, 1953. The X-1A

encountered

instability, and

tumbled completely

out of control. The

X-1A fell for about

50,000 feet,

entering an inverted spin. Yeager

recovered into an

upright spin,

regaining level

flight at low altitude, and finally

glided to a landing

on Rogers Dry

Lakebed. Betty

Love and some of

the other computers reduced the

data for this flight.

Among the data

shown are Mach

number and

altitude (the two

top graphs). The

speed and altitude

changes due to the

tumble are visible

as jagged lines.

The third graph

from the bottom

shows the G-forces

on the airplane.

During the tumble,

the aircraft twice

reached 8 Gs, or 8

times the normal

pull of gravity at

sea level.

(E-24911)
58

nothing surprised me about the conditions. The wind blew in the winter and it was cold

and dusty, the wind blew in the summer and it was hot and dusty. That was the valley.

There were those that didn’t like it and left and there were those that stayed for the job,

but would move on when something else looked better. Some just stayed and I guess

grew to like it. I lived in Littlerock at this time and the weather patterns in this valley

are very different from one area to another. Much later I would live in Lancaster with a

new husband.

The atmosphere in the room was like a library except for all the Friden calculators

humming away. No one spoke to any one, only in hushed tones. We checked each

other’s work and did so in a quiet manner. The engineers had a lot more fun in their

offices. We were allowed to leave the room two at a time for a trip to get coffee twice a

day. Most of us brought our lunch and ate at our desks, but it was still not noisy. Rest

room trips were allowed, but a computer did not take any data to an engineer but

instead it was returned to Roxie [Roxanah Yancey] and she in turn would see that the

engineer request was given back. Maybe some of the gals that were mathematicians

were given a little more leeway with the engineers, but most of us were not. I was lucky

in lots of ways. After only a short time I was asked to print some large posters. I wasn’t

told what for, just the words that would go on them. Later I found out there was to be a

meeting and these signs were placed on the displays. Don’t ask me how I was chosen, I

don’t know.

There was one lady, Joan Childs (Dahlen) that was an engineer when I came to

work. She was a computer and had the same restrictions. There were times when she

stretched those, but I guess, she knew how far she could go. After we moved to the new

building [in June 1954] there were several lady engineers, Harriet Smith being one of

the first. I respected those ladies and knew that their chosen profession wasn’t all

smooth sailing. In some ways I had more leeway than they did. Here again I was never

sure why.

The computer’s

office at South

Base, circa April

1949. In the left

foreground is a

Friden calculator.

The individuals are,

left side, front to

back, Mary (Tut)

Hedgepeth, John

Mayer, and Emily

Stephens. On the

right, front to back

are, Lilly Ann

Bajus, Roxanah

Yancey, Gertrude

(Trudy) Valentine

[behind Yancey],

and Ilene

Alexander. The

computers worked

under strict supervision. When an Xplane landed, they

could open the

window blinds to

watch, but could

not go outside, as

this violated the

rule prohibiting long

breaks.

(E49-0054)
59

Later, I noticed that I was getting data to reduce with special instructions. Rather

than read the trace from a reference line in the normal manner, I would read the amplitude of the trace or the width. Later [I would] count the frequency of certain peaks that

exceeded a measurement. It wasn’t long until I was working with the engineer. In 1954,

after our move to the new facility, I was removed from the computer office and placed

in with four engineers that were doing structures work. Buffet, vibration and flutter.

One of those engineers was the one I had been working for earlier. I still had my Friden

[calculator] and still did the same data reduction, but just for the office. Also I could

ask what was I doing, what was it going to be used for, and I did ask lots of ‘why’

questions. All were answered and lots of times I was shown the airplane and the parts

we were looking at. I said, I was lucky.

I don’t remember ever asking about a raise, but they came at regular intervals right

up until I retired. I was given a new title with the move. Aeronautical research engineering technician.

While working with the structures group I kept receiving more responsibility

always with instructions and a gentle push along with, “You can do it’’. If there wasn’t

enough work to keep me busy I was farmed out. To aid other engineers with their

project, to the flight operations branch to type transcriptions of the flights, to do

drawings, make films, I was always busy and enjoyed what ever I was doing. I enjoyed

working and learning from everyone. I worked on all the research airplanes from the X1 and the D-558-II to the X-15 and the XB-70. Monitoring the flights to listen for the

reports of the pilots of what they heard or felt from the aircraft. Noting times so I could

correlate it with the flight records later to find the problem.

Later when the telereaders came along I would read data [by putting crosshairs on

the trace and pushing a foot peddle] and punch the data into cards rather than writing it

in columns. Then take the cards to the card sorter and do statistical work in that fashion. I was working on the X-5 at this time. I was taught how to punch cards by hand,

how to write a short program to reduce the data from cards. It was done on the new big

frame [electronic] computers.

Another fun program was when Mr. Beeler asked me to work with Mr. [Tom]

Fisken the illustrator on a movie. Mr. Fisken wrote some of the shows for TV, Bonanza

The computers did

not just work hard

under strict rules.

Following a snowstorm in late 1948,

a group of them

pose with a

snowman. Back

row, left to right,

are: Mary (Tut)

Hedgepeth, Lilly

Ann Bajus,

Roxanah Yancey,

Emily Stephens,

Jane Collons,

Leona Corbett, and

Angel Dunn. In the

front row, kneeling

left to right are:

Dorothy Crawford

Roth, Dorothy Cliff

Hughes, and

Gertrude (Trudy)

Wilken Valentine.

On the right edge

of the picture,

looking out an

emergency exit, is

Walter Williams.

(E49-0212)
60

was his big one. He knew all about storyboards and timing a film and I got to look for

the film footage that he needed. We timed it, found the original film and made trips to

Lookout Mountain [Air Force Station] in Hollywood to process the film. A professional

narrated the film, “Pathway to the Stars.” It was about a day with Joe Walker, pilot, in a

flight of the X-15. Another time I edited and produced a silent movie that ran in a

continuous loop for a display in Washington D.C. on all of the X Planes; the X-1, D558-II, X-3, X-4, X-5, X-15.

In seemed like the engineers were always looking for a dimension on a plane or a

photo for their reports. Seeing a need for a storybook, I put together for each plane we

were flying a table of dimensions, a three view drawing, around the clock photos and

whatever else I found of interest during the search. Those books were used by anyone

needing the information.

I was given the first programmable desk computer. That was fun to learn and I

reduced data for several engineers. It used punched cards or preprogrammed data in

cards.

I was co-author on some publications, third author on others. I located the required

data to be presented, reduced, plotted the data and would do the figures for the reports. I

was given permission to do a buffet boundary once on the X-3. When the boss came

back, he checked it and said, he couldn’t do better and told me he knew I could. I was

afraid I would make a mistake that would cause trouble during a flight. Today I find my

name referenced in new reports and some of the data that I had been asked to compile

being used. Makes me feel a little special. Another project was to keep a flight log of

the research flights. Dates, pilot, and what was accomplished on the flight. Any pertinent information to that flight.

As far as advancement. Like I said before my boss gave me lots of encouragement

to go as far as I could with the education I had. I did return to the Antelope Valley

College and take two math classes, but without a degree I couldn’t go too far and I had

attained that goal. I was pleased and satisfied with my duties. I never felt I was restrained in any way. I know the gals weren’t allowed in the hangars to work on the

planes, but I felt free to go most anywhere and did with work orders and instructions for

a project to get on the road. I knew most everyone. I started in January 1952 and I

worked until June of 1973. My husband, Jim was ready for retirement, so I was told

that my position was going to be abolished and that I could return to data systems when

a position became available. I wasn’t thrilled at that prospect, so when the age factor

and the years added up for retirement I retired.

There never was a dress code. The women worked in the offices and dressed

accordingly. Skirts and blouses, suits, pretty shoes and hair always just so. That was the

period in time where that was expected. The fellows wore clothes appropriate to their

job. Engineers were usually in slacks, white shirts and ties, with a jacket always available to slip into when required to go to the front office or when company arrived. The

flight operations fellows (there were no girls), wore coveralls, nice work pants ( no

Levi’s) or on hot days one would find them shirtless, but no shorts. As I said, that was

the dress for everyone whether they worked at NACA/NASA or the Air Force, or

anywhere else.

It used to be there was a code of bells for the management. One for Williams, two

short ones for Mr. Beeler and so on. The Branch chiefs had one bell with a space and

then one or two bells however they were assigned. Now we have this public address

system that calls out names and numbers all day long. Also, it used to be that the chief

or director circulated among the employees. Always interested in what was going on.

Played cards during lunch with the various card-playing groups. They knew their

employees. Now that doesn’t happen. Could be because of other demands, I don’t

know. [Paul] Bikle [the director after Williams left in 1959] was always playing games

with the crews, whether they be mechanics or engineers, betting them they couldn’t get
61

two successful flights on two different X-15’s in the same day. More or less challenging everyone to do better, but I’m sure the safety factor was always in place.

I believe that when Williams or Bikle was the director, they were here to see that

research was done, and took pride in what they did. Some [later] directors, were here

for the experience to get to the next rung on the ladder.

I found that the whole process was enjoyable and challenging especially when you

knew what you were doing and why. I’ve tried to think of a time when I didn’t want to

go to work or was not ready when the bell rang at four o’clock. The car pool used to

give me fits, because I was the last to get there and they were in a hurry to get home.

That was, until Neil Armstrong joined the car pool, then they left me alone and got all

over him for not being ready at four o’clock. I just enjoyed doing what I thought was

expected of me. Some of the people I had on pedestals.

From the pages of

the X-Press.
62
63

Section II

A Second Wind

The move to the new NACA facility at the Edwards Main Base in 1954 not only

reflected a recognition of the permanence of NACA flight research at Edwards, but also

a shift in the research emphasis. The High-Speed Flight Station no longer existed solely

to fly faster. Both military necessity and research imperatives still pressed researchers

toward higher Mach numbers, but subjects such as high speed stability and control now

became critical as well. Aircraft design underwent fundamental changes as a consequence of supersonic flight. To reduce drag at high speeds, aircraft now had shorter

wings, while fuselages became larger and heavier to accommodate jet engines and their

large fuel supply. The North American Aviation F-100A embodied this new structure.

Called the “Super Saber,” the F-100 represented the first U.S. production aircraft

capable of reaching Mach 1 in level flight. This feat constituted a great performance

improvement over the F-86, then the standard Air Force fighter. But the new aircraft

designs, with their mass concentrated in the fuselages, began to encounter compressibility, turbulent flow, and shock patterns that resulted in reduced stability. Indeed,

routine operations at supersonic speeds constituted an unknown territory, and dangers

awaited both the experienced test pilot and the inexperienced second lieutenant.

Inertial coupling represented one such danger. This problem only became a serious

one with the development of post-war jet fighters. Under specific flight conditions, the

distribution of their mass, as well as their heavy fuselages caused movement in two

axes (roll and pitch) to result in an uncommanded movement in the third axes (yaw).

The possibility of inertial coupling in aircraft had first been identified theoretically as

early as 1948, and remained a potential problem for another six years.

Then, in 1954, several F-100As broke up in flight. In one instance, North

American’s chief test pilot, George Welch (former Army Air Corps pilot and a hero of

Completion of the

new buildings for

the High-Speed

Flight Station in

1954 signaled a

number of changes

for the NACA group

at Edwards AFB. It

marked the shift

from the makeshift

wartime facilities at

South Base to a

permanent presence. The new

building represented an expanded research

capability, required

for the new challenges aeronautics

faced in the mid1950s. (E54-1254)
64

Pearl Harbor), made a rolling pullout over Edwards, only to

have his F-100 yawed more than 15 degrees to one side and

disintegrated. There had been warnings of problems before the

crashes. Lt. Col. Pete Everest, an Air Force F-100 project pilot,

had argued that the aircraft needed to be modified to correct

poor supersonic directional stability, but U.S. Air Force Headquarters overruled him, and the F-100A entered production.

With the fleet grounded, and hundreds of F-100s on order, the

Air Force needed a quick fix, and turned to the NACA for help.

Gen. Albert Boyd asked Walt Williams to assist with the

effort. NACA engineers knew something about inertial coupling.

During a supersonic flight, the X-3 experienced violent roll,

pitch, and yaw motions. It had reached its maximum load limit,

but both aircraft and pilot survived. As a consequence, the HighSpeed Flight Station began an intensive series of stability tests

with the F-100, resulting in an unofficial program between the

Air Force and the NACA to evaluate a range of military aircraft

such as the F-102, F-104, F-105, and JF-107A. The NACA’s

research into inertial coupling discovered both the cause and the

solutions. Even so, inertial coupling still posed a threat to

aircraft and pilots. In September 1956, the X-2 went down on its

Mach 3 flight due to inertial coupling. Even with such aircraft

as the X-15 and the space shuttle inertial coupling remains a

concern.

Stability problems did not just concern inertial coupling,

however. The new swept and delta wing designs — especially

during low-speed/high angle of attack flight or in high-g turns -

sometimes fell prey to “pitch up.” This phenomenon occurred

because the downwash from the wings struck the horizontal

stabilizer, forcing the airplane’s nose upwards. The search for

an answer to the pitch up tendency resulted in extensive testing

of different designs of chord extensions and wing fences, and

finally required changes in the horizontal stabilizer position.

These and other improvements characterized the second phase

of flight research by the NACA at Edwards AFB, discussed in

the following pages.

From the pages of

the X-Press.
65

From the pages of

the X-Press.
66

From the pages of

the X-Press.
67

RICHARD E. DAY

Interview by Dr. J. D. Hunley, May 1, 1997

Richard E. Day began his career at the

High-Speed Flight Research Station in

1951, initially on the X-1 and XF-92A

aircraft. He was then assigned to support

the Air Force on the X-2 flight tests in

1953. During this period, Day programmed an Air Force analog computer

with the X-2’s flight characteristics.

Operating this primitive machine — the

first rudimentary flight simulator — he

predicted the aircraft’s stability at higher

speeds and altitudes. Day became involved with inertial coupling in 1954,

following the loss of two F-100s and a

near accident in the X-3. Understanding

the reasons for inertial coupling required

Day and the engineers at the High-Speed

Flight Station to apply theoretical studies

to the real world flight conditions.

Stability calculations had long been done

for aircraft, but to solve the problem of

inertial coupling required a fundamental change in procedures. Analog computers were

used to simulate the inertial conditions which led to the crashes. The switch from

human to analog (and eventually digital) computers had a profound impact on aeronautical engineering. The analog computers may have been slow and limited in their

capability to model an aircraft’s stability, but they were quickly adopted not only for

research proposes, but also for data analysis, simulations, and pilot training.

Q: First of all, I wanted to ask you about your date and place of birth and a little bit

about your family background and your education if you wouldn’t mind.

A: Okay. I was born in 1917 in a little town in Indiana, Windfall, Indiana. It was

named because a tornado had destroyed it at one time. I graduated from high school

there. Then after high school I had two years of college at Indiana University, and then

I dropped out to do some work. In 1938 I got my pilot’s license and [two years later]

went to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as a pilot. Is there anything

particular about education?

Q: Did you finish up at Indiana University?

A: Oh, yes. With a Bachelor’s degree majoring in physics and math. I started in

graduate work. And at that time I decided I really wanted to go to work. So I applied to

NACA.

Q: Right. Now, you say you came to Dryden in 1951?

A: Yeah, on Labor Day.
68

Q: I read your paper on inertial coupling, I don’t have a copy of the draft, so I don’t

have perfect recall of everything you discuss in there. But, as I recall, you discussed the

technical issues very thoroughly, but I don’t remember that you talked very much about

the design changes that resulted from the findings about coupling phenomena. So I

wonder if you could comment about some of the specific design changes for future

airplanes that resulted from the coupling work that was done on the X-2 and the X-3

and so forth.

A: Well, that coupling came about primarily because of inertial properties and poor

directional or longitudinal stability. If an airplane rolled at the same frequency as the

stability, well, then you’d have a resonant coupling. Now, there are several things that

can fix that. One of them is good damping, which you didn’t have at high altitude and

high speed, but they put automatic dampers in before they had the complex computer

systems to control them like they have today.

Q: These were dampers on the pilot’s control stick?

A: Yeah. Well, the dampers were mainly on the rudder. Say, as if you’d have yawing

angular velocity, the angular velocity would feed into the rudder and damp it. And

damping’s an angular velocity sort of thing. That cut down on coupling. And then, later

on, as the computers came in, you had powerful actuators, big control surfaces, and,

stability-wise, you could fly a bowling ball. With all the computers and control surfaces

from that point on inertial coupling didn’t become a problem. So the improvements that

took care of the inertial coupling were the control systems we have today that take care

of any type of instability, and powerful actuators, that is, to boot the control surfaces,

and make the control surfaces larger so they could get out of these coupling problems.

So the main thing was the computer and better control surfaces which overcame the

coupling.

Q: All right. Now, you mention [William H.] Bill Phillips’ theoretical discovery of

coupling phenomenon ahead of the actual experience, and you even blame him for it

occurring, facetiously. How much did his theoretical work help out in the actual flight

research that you were doing in the work with simulators?

A: It was almost essential. It was great, because nobody had any idea what had

happened, and until they read Bill’s old 1948 report, just purely theoretical, only a few

The sleek looking

Douglas X-3

lacked adequate

propulsion from its

twin jet engines.

Intended to reach

speeds of Mach 2,

it barely exceed

Mach 1. The X-3’s

long fuselage and

low aspect ratio

wings, however,

made it an ideal

vehicle for inertial

coupling research.

(E55-1996)
69

people in history had done that, like Newton or Einstein’s theoretical predictions and it

happens. So once the F-100 and X-3 got into roll coupling, somebody either at Edwards

or back at Langley said Bill Phillips has written a theoretical report on this. So Walt

Williams sent Hubert Drake and Joe Weil back to Langley to talk to Phillips, and they

had put this on their analog simulator. However, they didn’t have pilot control. It was

automatic input, program input. So they learned all they could from Bill and those

people and came back. Then the Air Force had bought this GEDA (Goodyear Electronic

Differential Analyzer), an analog computer. Joe Weil and I went over there and we

programmed it or mechanized it, as they called it, with five degrees of freedom. And we

used that from then on. That was absolutely essential. Phillips’ document [Effect of

Steady Rolling on Longitudinal and Directional Stability (NACA TN 627, 1948)], and

the analog computer, just essential in solving the problem.

Q: I want to ask you about the simulator and also about Joe Weil in a little bit. But

first, I think, just to follow up logically on something you said a moment ago and is in

this Air Force interview: You mentioned the fact that when the roll frequency and the

pitch or yaw frequency were resonant or the same, that you got into this coupling

phenomenon. But could you explain that a little bit?

A: Well, on an airplane if you put a rudder pulse in and stop it, it has sinusoidal, or

fishtailing, motion, and the frequency would be so many cycles per second. That’s the

frequency I’m talking about. It’s the stability frequency of the airplane.

Q: But it is a wave?

A: Sinusoidal wave, that type of thing.

Q: It’s an aerodynamic phenomenon?

A: Yeah. And it occurs in almost everything, automobiles. But it has quite a bit to do

with civil engineering or the structures of a building. Say [in] downtown LA, if this

building had a period or cycle, [of] one cycle per second in a strong wind. You had an

earthquake occur at the same cycle, one cycle per second, that would be resonance, and

knock the building down. But if it were not the same frequency, if it were higher

frequency or lower frequency, it would not resonate. So that’s what they were trying to

get rid of in buildings and airplanes and so forth.

Q: There was a famous incident with a bridge, I believe.

A: Yeah. I’ve got it on tape in there. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge at Tacoma, Washington — It’s remarkable. That thing just whipped around just like that and that was a

resonance frequency.

Q: That was the one that Theodore von Karman wrote about.

A: Yeah. And he didn’t solve it, he just told them what really happened.

Q: You mentioned both Joe Weil, who I guess was your supervisor much of the time

you were here, and Hubert Drake, who became - maybe was at that time, assistant

director of research under De E. Beeler, wasn’t he?

A: Yes. De was the first director of research, and when he left Joe Weil took over.

Drake was one of the smartest men I have ever met. Anything that would come up,
70

Drake would know about it. He told me about black holes many

years ago, 40 or so, and it wasn’t very well known. Any new thing

that came along, Drake knew what it was. So between him and Joe

Weil, they taught me what I knew, and I’m quite grateful to them.

Q: Did either of them work very much on the coupling phenomenon?

A: Joe Weil did. Joe and I both went down to the Air Force on this

analog computer and set it up, and we both worked with the airplanes, the X-3 and the

F-100. And in addition to that we did a survey of coupling of airplanes, [a] big, thick

report. Joe and I wrote that, and at that time Joe did most of the analytical work, and I

did the piloting of the thing, and gradually I got into the theoretical part of it.

Q: And your physics, I presume, served you well in that regard.

A: Yeah. I always thought physics was perhaps better than having an aeronautical

degree, because besides aeronautics, you could go into all aspects of it. This inertial roll

coupling came from physics.

Q: Couple of other questions about people before we go on with the simulator. You

worked under Walt Williams both at Dryden and later at Johnson Space Center?

A: Yeah.

Q: And you worked while Paul Bikle was the director for a while before you left for

Johnson in ’62, I guess it was. I wondered if you would comment on both of those men

and their management styles and how they both worked in terms of how their management styles worked in terms of ...the way that the station operated?

A: Well, Walt was a boss-type manager. I mean he just insisted on people carrying out

what he wanted to do, and they usually did or else. And besides that, he let his engineers do their work on their own, more or less, just didn’t bother us. So that way we

had a lot of freedom to do as we pleased, until we did something wrong. Bikle was also

the boss type. By that I mean they insisted on work being done and being done on time,

so forth. Bikle didn’t have much to do with Headquarters. They were supposed to have

a headquarters meeting back at Langley once a month or back in Washington. Bikle

seldom went at all. He would manage a lot of the program in such a way that he would

come in under cost or at cost. But anyway, he was very economical.

Q: Were there any other individuals that were at Muroc or whatever we should call it,

since it had different names at different times while you were there, whom you would

like to talk about, comment about? Any others that stand out in your mind as having

made outstanding contributions.

A: Yeah. I worked for Jack Fischel for a while. He was the branch chief He retired

many years ago. I learned quite a bit from Jack. He was a fundamentalist. He always

preached the fundamentals, which is a good thing to do in sports and everything else.

Q: I wanted to ask you a couple more questions about things we’ve already brought

up, or you already brought up. One, you mentioned the F-100s, and I know the solution

to some of the problems with the early F-100s was to lengthen and enlarge the tail, the

vertical tail. Now, did that have anything to do with roll coupling, or was that a separate

problem?

From the pages of

the X-Press.
71

A: That was because of roll coupling; the bigger the vertical tail, the more stable the

airplane is. That increases the stability, which increases the frequency and damping. So

after we went through the flight test, we took flight test data and put it on the analog

simulator and found that the damping would pretty much solve the problem.

So North American was to put on a larger tail — they had three of them — in three

increments. Well, they had the normal tail, then they had two larger tails, each being

larger, A, B and C, they called it. So Tail C, I think, increased the tail area by almost 50

percent. This was in my report.

Okay. So this was the solution. Also, they were going to extend the wing tips to

increase the rolling moment of inertia and also the aspect ratio. But anyway, the main

thing was the tail. North American was to have that finished and put on within 90 days.

Well, the problem was so bad that these F-100s were just having trouble out in the

field. They finally had to stop and quit flying them. So North American then put that

tail on in nine days instead of 90, and they flew it, found out that was the solution, and

then they made up kits for all the F-100As in service, and there was never any more

problem with roll coupling. Anyway, Phillips’ study was flight-test augmented and with

analog studies, gave that solution, and it was truly a solution and it worked.

Q: And you would call that damping, to have a larger tail?

A: Yes.

Q: And the damping worked on the frequency.

A: Yeah. It increases the frequency.

Q: Now, the simulator that you mentioned that you and Joe Weil programmed with

five degrees of freedom, you say in the Air Force interview here that that really was the

first simulator?

A: Yeah. I put a lot of qualifiers in front of it. There had been simulators. Well, 50

years ago there was one built, but those were made primarily with servos. You could

In-flight photo of

the Bell X-2

research aircraft.

Built as a follow-on

to the X-1, it tested

swept wings at

speeds of Mach 3.

The program

suffered delays, in

part due to engine

problems and the

loss of one aircraft

during a captive

test. Despite its

problems, the X-2

set a world altitude

record of 126,200

feet. As the deadline approached to

turn the X-2 over to

the NACA for

further research,

the Air Force

planned a final

flight to reach Mach

3. The pilot, Capt.

Milburn Apt, had

never flown the X-2

before, but did fly

inertial coupling

tests in the F-100.

The flight, made on

September 27,

1956, ended in a

crash in which Apt

perished. (E-6909)
72

put a navigation track on an X-Y plotter

and drive the cockpit flight instruments.

These simulators were primarily navigational and blind-flying trainers. They

weren’t adaptable for research purposes

where you could go in and change the

airplane characteristics electrically. So

this was the very first one where we did

flight research, got data from flight, that

is an airplane — a pilot would do a pulse

and we’d get the record back and we’d

do a match of that on the analog and get

the derivatives (characteristics).

And we also used it as a pilot trainer. I

spent a lot of time with Capt. [Milburn

G.] Mel Apt and Lt. Col. Pete Everest

before their flight in the X-2. And

[Capt. Iven C.] Kincheloe, have you

heard of Kincheloe?

Q: Yeah. I’ve heard of Kincheloe.

A: He was four-star material if there

ever was one. But anyway, he did the

altitude flight on the X-2. And in those three flights, Pete Everest’s flight, Kincheloe’s

flight and the one that Apt got killed in, I wrote a report, TMX 137 covering the three

flights. So did I answer that question?

Q: Yes, I think you did. I have a follow-on: Do you know if the people who designed

the later simulators profited from the work that you did on the X-2 simulator?

A: I know North American did, because the X-15 simulator was still an analog, it

wasn’t digital. But it was six degrees of freedom, which was forward. See, we always

held speed constant, but when you brought in the forward speed, boy, that made the

problem ten times more difficult. But North American Aviation built the X-15 sixdegrees-of-freedom simulator. I think they learned a lot from what we did on the X-2.

At this same time all the big companies, Lockheed and Boeing and all the other companies were building simulators. Now, I don’t know whether they got anything from what

The wreckage of

the X-2 following its

crash. Captain Apt

flew the mission as

planned, although

the engine burned

15 seconds longer

than expected. As a

result, the X-2

reached a speed of

Mach 3.2. Within

seconds, Apt turned

back toward the

lakebed, and the

aircraft fell victim to

inertial coupling. It

rolled to the left

uncontrollably, and

the sideslip increased. The rolling

motion in the

supersonic spin

became violent,

subjecting Apt to

about +6 Gs. Then,

within a second, the

spin became

inverted, and the G

forces went from

about + 6 to -6 Gs,

causing Apt to be

thrown around

violently inside the

cockpit. The

negative G forces

slowly decreased,

and he attempted

standard spin

recovery maneuvers, which were

unsuccessful. Apt

then jettisoned the

escape capsule,

the drogue chute

opened, and he

attempted to climb

out of the capsule.

Apt lacked sufficient altitude,

however, and he

died on impact.

(E56-2685)

From the pages of the X-Press.
73

we did or not, but once you get into it, it doesn’t take a rocket

scientist to make this into a good pilot simulator, research simulator. So it’s just like many things, once the technology’s there, just a

bunch of interest in all industries; and Air Force and government

took it up and developed it.

Somebody told me, and I don’t [know who, that] NACA

suggested that the Air Force buy this analog computer, and for what

reason, I don’t know. But anyway, they didn’t have flight engineers

down there to make the analog computer into a flight simulator.

They had electronic technicians who could only set it up for acceptance of the equations of motion of flight. So it wasn’t until Joe and

I went down there that they set up an airplane on it with five

degrees of freedom. An airplane can go forward and backward,

that’s one degree. Go up and down, that’s two. Sideways, that’s three. You also have

angular freedom, one, two, three. That’s six degrees of freedom. We held the forward

speed degree of freedom constant. So it was five degrees of freedom we put into it. The

five degrees of freedom are pitch, roll and yaw angular acceleration and forward angleof-attack side slip, that is side motion, and increased angle of attack. That is the body

line with respect to the relative wind. So P-dot is rolling acceleration. Q-dot is pitch

acceleration, R-dot is yaw acceleration. What a computer does is it integrates the acceleration to give an angular velocity, and it integrates the angular velocity to give it

position. So you can pick off any of these quantities to feed back into other parts of the

equation. I don’t know what else to say about that.

Q: I think we’ve gotten through the questions I had on the simulator. Now, I take it that

most of your work at the High-Speed Flight Station was with dynamic stability and analysis.

But were there other areas in which you worked as well before you left in 1962?

A: Well, most of it was stability and control. You know, we did some space work. First

of all, the Center used the GEDA we were talking about, to simulate reaction controls on

a nominal airplane to determine what the rocket forces should be to give good handling An early analog

computer used to

predict aircraft

stability and control

behavior. This

machine represented a major

breakthrough, as it

enabled the

research pilot to

gain experience on

the ground, and

gave advance

warning of dangerous flight conditions. Day recalled

later that the

computer predictions of the X-2’s

behavior at Mach 3

exactly matched

the actual flight

characteristics from

Apt’s flight.

(E57-2946)

From the pages of

the X-Press.
74

quality. And what it turned out to be is a certain acceleration in pitch, yaw and roll. So

some of the people at Edwards and I helped, but I wasn’t the main one; we did determine the handling qualities for a reaction control system.

Q: Now, was this done before the X-1B did its little bit of flight research or after?

A: I’m not sure, because I wasn’t the main investigator, but probably about the same

time.

Q: I know that they did do a little bit of reaction control work on the X-1B, but the

airplane developed some cracks in the LOX tank, and they had to stop, and then they

did some work with the F-104 before they actually installed it on the X-15 and did the

reaction control [tests] with that.

A: Yeah. I think their best work was on the F-104.

Q: Now you indicated that you were GS-14 when you left the Flight Research Center,

as it was called by 1962. Do you mind saying what your grade was when you arrived at

Muroc?

A: Oh, that was a GS-5, at $3,100 per year.

Q: So were you on an accelerated promotion schedule from the GS-5?

A: Normally, if you didn’t get in trouble, you went from a [GS-] 5 to a 7 to a 9 to an

11 and then to 12, 13, 14 and so forth. So I got them all when I should. You know, in

six months you get this, and I had gotten up to the 14 in the prescribed time, that is if

you didn’t screw up somewhere along the line. I guess I was what you call branch chief

at the time and Walt wanted me to go down to Houston.

Q: I forgot about asking you about early housing when you came to Muroc in 1951.

A: Well, we had been in the Air Force for many years and had some pretty weird

housing. But anyway, when we got to Edwards they assigned us the officers’ quarters

on the [Marine] air base at Mojave, and these were small apartments all in line like

military apartments are, and they were quite sufficient, the stove and all that sort of

thing. However, the wind was something new to us, and the dust storms. The children

would wake up in the morning and raise their heads, and there would be a white spot

outlined by the dust that had blown in through the cracks. So in the desert you get used

to this. But anyway, the housing, to us, was okay, because we had never lived in

palaces before.

Q: How many bedrooms did you have in the housing you had?

A: I think at that time we only had one. This was rather small. I expect it was 500

square feet, or something like that. Had a bedroom and a front room, which was

kitchen and everything else, and the bathroom, the three rooms.

Q: Did you have any children at that point?

A: Yes. We had two, a 3 [years old] and a 7 [years old].

Q: Now, how long did you stay at the [Marine] housing before you moved?
75

A: Not very long. We were there, I believe, six months, and we had the opportunity to buy a new house in

Lancaster at the exorbitant price of $7,850. It was a two-bedroom, kitchen, bath, living room. This was a very

nice house, then from there, why, it wasn’t quite as bad as the early days.

Q: You were able, obviously, to afford the payments on that with your $3,000 plus dollars.

A: Yeah, I think it was all of $50 a month in payments.
76
77

A. SCOTT CROSSFIELD

Interview by Peter Merlin, February 3,

1998

The ground-based analysis of inertial

coupling represented only a step in

correcting its ill-effects. Once the problem

underwent analysis and project personnel

formulated a solution, it still had to be

tested in flight. This became the role of

NACA research pilot Scott Crossfield. He

flew the F-100A inertial coupling tests

between October and December 1954 to

define the coupling boundary of the

aircraft. The risks of these flights manifested itself during an abrupt aileron roll

at Mach 0.7 in a short tail F-100A. The

aircraft reached a -4.4 g load and a

sideslip angle of 26 degrees. Walt Williams observed that a sideslip of this

magnitude occurring at supersonic speed

would probably have destroyed the

aircraft. Of course, inertial coupling

constituted only a part of Scott

Crossfield’s career with the NACA. He

made ten rocket flights in the X-1 #2,

fifty-three rocket flights in the D-558-II #2 (NACA 144) and eighteen rocket/jet flights

in the D-558 #3 (NACA 145). He flew twelve flights aboard NACA 145 using only jet

power. Crossfield also piloted the X-4, the X-5, and the XF-92 research aircraft. In

1955, he left the NACA to join North American Aviation, where he contributed to the

X-15’s design, and made ten test flights as the contractor pilot.

Q: Okay, Mr. Crossfield. If you could just give me a little background. Tell me where

you were born, when you were born, and a little bit about your education.

A: Well, I was born in Berkeley, California in 1921, October 2nd. Raised in southern

California until 1935. Then moved to the state of Washington with my family who, as a

result of the Depression, went to the farm. Raised as a farm boy until graduating from

high school in ’39. Soloed in 1936. Got my license in 1941 with the — whatever that

pilot program was at that time. I can’t think of the name of it. I went to the University

of Washington in 1941. And in the end of ’41 when the war started, I joined the Navy. I

was a Navy fighter and gunnery instructor and a fighter pilot for the four years of the

war. Returned to the University of Washington after that. Got a B.S. Degree in 1949,

and a Master’s Degree in 1950, and joined NACA at that time as an Aeronautical

Research Pilot.

Q: How did you become interested in aviation? What were your inspirations?

A: My generation was interested in aviation. That was it. As computers are today,

aviation was in those days. I first flew in an airplane the year that Lindbergh flew the
78

Atlantic. I was a model airplane builder. In fact, I held several records of model airplanes, and just kept very active in model building until I went to college. In fact, I

developed one of the first radio controlled airplanes back in those days.

Q: How did you come to be a test pilot at the NACA High Speed Flight Station at

Muroc?

A: Well, that’s kind of a lengthy thing. I stayed at the University. Because at that time,

in 1949, I could make more money working at the University as a part time student as I

could going out and getting into a job as an engineer. I was trying to negotiate with

Boeing to get a job to go back to flying, mainly because there just wasn’t really any

money in engineering at that time. I was already raising a family after the war. And

through a set of very fortuitous circumstances, I got to Edwards before the other

applicants for a job that Bob Champine had vacated. So he had done me a great favor

by deciding he wanted to go back to Virginia. John Griffith and Walt Williams hired

me. And from then on, I think probably the records are there or here at Edwards.

Q: What can you tell me about Walt Williams who was Head of the High Speed Flight

Station at that time?

A: Walt Williams is the most unheralded hero of our move into high speed aeronautics

and space that there ever was in the world. There has not been, since World War II, a

manned advance in aeronautics and space that Walt Williams hasn’t been the primary

decision maker on go/no go on the things. Of course we know his record at Edwards.

And he brought the crew out here, and developed the research airplane programs all

through to the point that we now have at Dryden Center.

Williams went to Mercury, and he literally saved it from a national disaster. He was

involved in Gemini. And he was certainly involved deeply in Apollo. He certainly was

involved deeply in the situation with the [shuttle] tiles, and the operational decisions on

the space shuttle. I think probably no man in history, any several men in history, have

contributed as much to our ability to go to the Moon and everything else as Walt

Williams, in an operational sense. For some reason or other, he never was given the

recognition I felt he should.

Q: What was his style of management like?

A: Walt Williams was a Louisiana boy. He was brusk. He had his own opinions. But he

reserved arguing. Walt Williams was an ideal boss for me as a pilot. Because he always

gave me the prerogative to question what we were going to do on the next flight. And

either I had to come up with a reason why, or fly it. Or else they’d get somebody else to

do it. But he always gave me that latitude and room to maneuver in. So I never really

had to do anything that I was uncomfortable with, flying for Walt Williams. He wasn’t

a pilot, but he understood pilots.

Q: And at the time you were there, John Griffith was the Chief Pilot?

A: I guess you’d call him the Chief Pilot. He was the only one here when I got here.

Bob Champine was the Senior Pilot, and he had gone back to Virginia. John was here,

and he wasn’t my boss, but he was my mentor, let me put it that way. Because he had

been here, and he taught me the way around the system. At that time it was a very small

organization — probably 60 or 70 people total, including the janitors — and an old

hangar and some Butler buildings on the South Base. So it was a small, tight organization — very productive.
79

Q: What can you tell me about Joe Vensel, who was the Chief of Flight Operations?

A: Joe Vensel was an old NACA pilot. Had a remarkable record. He also was an exNavy man. He was deaf as a post — had sinus problems, and he was a good boss. He

defended and kept his pilots going pretty well. If I ever had any criticism of Joe Vensel,

it would only be that I thought he was super cautious. I understand he didn’t have the

“gung ho” attitude, because he was more mature.

Q: So what were some of the first aircraft you flew for NACA?

A: Oh, they had a C-45, and then I checked out in the YF-84. Then I flew the D-558-I

and then the X-1 — probably in that order, and all within a few months of getting here.

Q: And what sort of work did you do with the X-4?

A: Oh, the X-4 was a whole buildup of stability and handling, stability and control, and

handling qualities of a tailless airplane. With the X-4, we pretty much found out why

we may not have solved the problem. They were having the troubles with the Chance

Vought Cutlass [F7U], and they [the British] had one Swallow crash that killed

Geoffrey deHavilland. The X-4 was a very productive program. We did a lot of things

with the X-4 that weren’t only involved in it’s being a tailless airplane. It was a good

test bed for other purposes, as we did thickened trailing edges on the X-4. We did

variable Lift over Drag (L over D) landings from probably an L over D of two to an L

over D of nine with the airplane, which gave us good insight into pilots preferences,

which were useful in coming up with new airplanes like the X-15 and some of the other

low L over D airplanes [like] the lifting bodies. But the X-4 was a very good research

airplane, for purposes of looking into a tailless configuration, and for other reasons.

Q: Now it seems like a lot of your first flights in different aircraft were a little exciting.

Can you tell me a little bit about your first flight in the D-558-II?

The X-4 undergoing maintenance in

the South Base

hangar. The X-4

was one of the

smallest manned

research aircraft

ever built, but its

design allowed

easy access to its

engines and

internal systems.

Scott Crossfield

flew thirty-three of

the sixty X-4 flights

made by NACA

pilots. (E-1000A)
80

The D-558-I on the

lakebed at the

High-Speed Flight

Research Station.

Crossfield made

the first of his

fourteen D-558-I

flights on November 27, 1950, and

flew the last on

June 10, 1953. The

Skystreak was the

workhorse of early

transonic research,

due to its ability to

cruise at speeds

close to Mach 1 for

prolonged periods.

(E-226)

A: The first air launch in a D-558-II was with the jet and rocket combination airplane.

And on that flight I lost the [jet] engine at altitude, and the windshields iced over. I had

no instruments, no electrical power. And that was due to a problem we had with a

reverse current relay that would not cut in the battery, even thought the engine had

spooled down to where the generator was putting out a very low voltage. So an iced

over windshield and no radio for a period of time. So all I could do was put the Sun in

one place on that windshield and pray that I was right-side up. I could just see a bright

spot where the sun was. Then John Conrad, who was with the Air Force as our chase,

got on my wing. By then I managed to get the radio going on the battery, everything

else shut down. He flew me home, and landed me on the lakebed. Yes. That was an

interesting flight.

Q: I seem to recall that on your first X-1 flight, the X-1 dropped out of the carrier

aircraft and went inverted. Is that right?

A: Well, I launched into a spin. It was kind of a ludicrous kind of thing. The only

engineer was setting the stabilizer. He was putting the level on it, and putting the level

on the wing. I said, “How do you remember plus and minus signs in doing this?”

Because I had worked in the wind tunnel for years where we were always making

errors — plus and minus. A minus angle of attack on the stabilizer is a plus in the

airplane equations. He looked at me and he said, “What the hell do you know about it,

you dumb pilot?” Well anyway, he had set it one degree stabilizer nose down or

airplane pitch up rather than one degree up.

So on this, my first launch, I launched out of the B-29, and it immediately pitched

up and went into a spin. Pete Everest was chase, and he thought that was kind of a

unique way to launch. But the X-1 was a very good flying airplane. And even that

heavy, I managed to recover right away, and then went on with the rest of the flight —

lit the engines. Did what we were going to do.

Q: I read that on approach to landing, the windshield iced up.
81

A: That was probably not on that flight. On one of the X-1 flights, Jack Ridley was

chasing, and when you came back down, there was a lot of outside air was ingested in

the cockpit. That moisture often would ice up the windshield. So on that day, I was

turning final to land, and I was blind as a bat. I told Jack Ridley, “Hey. You’ve got to

help me land. I can’t see what I’m doing.” He just laughed, and said, “Yeah — That

happened to me last week.”

But I was wearing loafers, and I got my shoe off, and used one of my socks to wipe

a hole in the windshield so I could see the flare to land. That was not comical at the

time. I had a little bit of a problem. I couldn’t get out of the cockpit, because my foot

froze to the rudder bar. Clyde Bailey came up, and I told him what the problem was. So

he put his hands down on the rudder bar between my foot. His hand warmed it up, and

I could get off of it.

Q: Could you tell me a little bit about your work with the X-5?

A: The X-5 — I don’t remember how many times I flew the airplane. [Ten flights

between 1952 and 1954.] But Walker did most of the work on the X-5. We just did

handling quality, stability and control, analysis maneuvers over the speed range and

over the wing sweep range. The X-5 was not a comfortable airplane to fly. It had a lowslung engine. So there was a misalignment of the drag axis, and the principal axis, and

the thrust axis, and all of that. So it could get into some interesting maneuvers and

motions, and that sort of thing. And it was a terrible airplane in a spin. It took a long

time to get that airplane out of a spin. Walker and I found out that it took about 10,000

feet. As it turned out, [Maj. Ray] Popson got into a spin lower than that and he went in

with one of the X-5’s. But it was an airplane that served it’s purpose though. It was

unique aerodynamically. So it couldn’t be used generically. When the wing swept, the

tips no longer were the same, and a lot of things like that.

The Bell X-5 on the

South Base ramp

in 1952, with its

slats, flaps, and

speed brakes

open, and with its

wings at a 20

degree sweep

angle. The aircraft

served as a

technology demonstrator for a variable sweep wing

system. Although

this particular wing

system proved

impractical, the F111, F-14, and B-1

all successfully

used variable

sweep wings.

Crossfield flew the

X-5 ten times, out

of a total of 122

NACA research

flights. (E-661)
82

Q: And could you tell me a little about your first flight in the XF-92A?

A: That was another first flight. And it wasn’t really a flight. Everest was going to fly

it. Pretty high winds came up. And for some reason or other, he decided he didn’t want

to fly it. So we were meeting in Walt Williams office. And he said, “Scott, you’re going

to fly it next flight. Why don’t you go out and taxi it home, make a lift off, and that sort

of thing.” So I said, “Hey, I’d like to do that.” Nobody wanted to fly the XF-92. There

was no lineup of pilots for that airplane. It was a miserable flying beast. But anyway, so

I made the liftoff. He told me, “Keep the nose up so it will slow down. Because it will

roll a long ways.” Well, I let the nose come down and on the nose wheel. I couldn’t get

it back up. It didn’t have enough tail power to do it. So that airplane was rolling like

mad towards the edge of the lakebed. So I was getting ready to pull the gear handle and

the fire extinguisher just as I hit the bluff. There was about a three foot rise at the edge

of the lake — when I saw a county road off to the left. And I managed to get that thing

turned and head up that country road. Burned out the brakes. Just melted them right

there. Rolled up that county road about 100 yards. And fortunately no damage to the

airplane. Came out pretty well, except the brakes were all burned out. I knew the tires

were going to blow. I was sitting in the cockpit. When they went off, I jumped two feet

— each one of them — even though I knew it was coming.

Q: Yes. I’ve seen a picture of that one sitting on the road there. I was trying to figure

out which road that was. I haven’t found that yet.

A: You know where the Navajo trail was on the lakebed? It was a runway that was laid

out to do the Navajo program in those days.

Q: Okay. I know where that is — on the south end.

A: Well, it’s kind of at the west end of the Navajo trail. It’s just a dirt county road going

up there. About a week later, somebody put a sign up there — Crossfield Pike.

The XF-92A

undergoing check

outs in the South

Base hangar. The

aircraft, built as a

prototype of a delta

wing interceptor,

never entered

production. Once

the Air Force test

program ended,

the NACA took

possession of it for

a brief period.

Crossfield made all

25 NACA flights,

between April and

October 1953. The

aircraft proved

instrumental in the

adoption of delta

wings on the F102, F-106, B-58,

and Space Shuttle.

(E52-0697)
83

Q: That’s great. Tell me a little bit about your first flight in the F-100. That was on

September 8, 1954 — the famous hangar wall incident.

A: Well, we had just instrumented a small tail F-100 for the purposes of looking into

what was then an unknown problem that had been trapping pilots. It was going into a

divergent maneuver that was breaking up the airplanes. We got this one bailed from

North American to us. We had just instrumented it. On the first flight, I was supposed

to have radar. But the radar guys weren’t cranked up. So I went out anyway. What the

heck — it was just another Air Force fighter. I got up to altitude, and was just going

through the familiarity maneuvers. And I got a compressor forward sectional fire

warning light. Well, we all knew that probably if you saw a fire warning light and it

was true, you should have blown up by then. Because all the accessories were mounted

on the center of the engine.

Well anyway, I believed the light. So I idled the engine, and it flickered out. Then it

came back on. And that kind of told me: Hey, maybe there really is a fire in there. So I

stop-cocked the engine. That airplane had never been landed dead stick, and I thought:

Now I’ve got a problem. So I opened up the RAT, which is the ram air turbine, which

supplied the hydraulics to get control to come down to land. And actually, as it turned

out, I made one of the best landings I ever made in the F-100, and got on the ground.

Now [North American Aviation test pilot Bob] Hoover had had trouble at the

company landing the F-100, using the ram air turbine. But Hoover was what we call a

churner. He liked to feel the controls, and he was moving them all the time. As a test

pilot, I never moved a control unless I wanted to move the airplane. There’s nothing

wrong with the other technique. A lot of pilots use it. Except that he was bleeding the

ram air turbine hydraulics down. So he didn’t have enough to flare, and he landed very

hard in the two times he tried it, and damaged the airplane.

Well, I landed on my spot on the lakebed. With the rocket airplanes, I had eventually found where I could put it down. I’d roll out, turn up the ramp, coast up to the

hangar door, and park it. Well, if I’d have been smart, I’d have left the F-100 out on the

lakebed to be towed in. So I coasted up the ramp, and was in perfect position. Just was

going to tap the brakes to stop it. The handbook says there are only three cycles on the

brakes without engine hydraulics. I knew that. So I applied a little brake, but I didn’t

cycle back. And I thought: That’s not a cycle yet. I applied a little more, and applied a

little more.

If you go back and study the system, each one of those motions is a cycle. I used up

all the hydraulics. So the last application, right in front of the hangar door — there

were no brakes. So it went in the hangar door, and stuck it’s nose out through the

hangar wall. It’s always been kind of a humorous incident. People thought I was

injured, because I sat in the cockpit. What I was trying to do was to control my anger at

being such a stupid jerk. Yeager always said, “The sonic wall was mine. The hangar

wall was Crossfield’s.”

Q: We had a safety training class recently in that hangar, right near that corner of the

hangar wall.

A: Everybody shows me that patch every time I go there. There’s a little incidental

thing that’s funny there. I always make a joke. I hit right between the stanchion that

held that 25 ton door balance weight and the controls for the 50,000 gallon water

deluge system. That would have been a disaster to hit either one of those other stanchions.

Q: What led to your decision to leave the NACA?
84

A: The X-15. We had worked on the X-15 since about 1951. I was incidental in inventing the airplane, along with Walt [Williams] and Jake Drake. By the time we got a

contract in 1955, I had made up my mind that unlike the X-2, that we needed an

airplane to come in on time and to do what it was supposed to do. So I went to North

American and worked in the design room on the X-15 for three years, took it into flight

test in 1959, and did the company demonstration it would fly, and the systems would

work, and that sort of thing.

Q: What were some of your contributions to the X-15 design?

A: Oh, golly. I worked in every area. Stability and control, power plants, propulsions.

In fact, I even worked with the guy that designed that joint that broke in two. I knew

where it was going to break. I didn’t know why it was going to break. But I did an

awful lot of work on the development of the cockpit and the pressure suit. There was a

lot of firsts on the X-15. Worked a lot on the wind screens. Because we didn’t know

how we were going to get one that could stand the heat and we could see through.

I worked for a long time on getting rid of an Air Force edict that we have an encapsulated escape system, which nobody believed in. But General [Thomas S.] Power had

issued an edict that all future Air Force airplanes would have encapsulated escape

systems, which would have sunk the X-15 to have to go to all of that. We had encapsulated escape in the D-558-II, and the D-558-I, and the X-2. And to my mind, and [Capt.

Milburn] Apt pretty much proved it, this is the way to commit suicide to keep from

getting killed. They never did have the development on them that they should have had,

and they weren’t any good anyway. If you could make a capsule that was good enough

to live through the emergency, you might as well fly it and throw away the airplane.

“...the hangar wall

was Crossfield’s.”

Three views of the

mishap on

Crossfield’s first F100A flight on

September 8,

1954. Workmen

repaired both the

hangar wall and

the F-100. (The

weld marks on the

replacement sheet

metal are still

visible on the

outside hangar

wall, nearly 50

years later.)

Crossfield went on

to play a major role

in solving the

problem of inertial

coupling in the F100. (E54-1369,

E54-1367 (inset),

and E54-1366)

(next page).
85

Q: So on June 8, 1960— Is that when you did the test of the XLR-99 engine in Ship 3

where it exploded?

A: Yes. We were running on the test stand, the last engine run before the first flight.

Interesting enough, nobody had ever gotten ten minutes of un-incidental time on that

engine, on the ground or anywhere, up until that time. We were going to go flat. The

engine did not explode. It was our North American propulsion system that failed. And

it was due to a long chain of events that we don’t have time to do here. But it was a

very explainable— The way that the emergency relief valve boot strapped itself up, my

gauge pressure looked normal. So I didn’t know anything was happening, even though

the tanks were heading for a burst in pressure. And they did. It always kind of tickles

me that I get in the cockpit, and everybody else gets in a block house. That’s called

building the confidence of the pilot. I understand that they never made a ground run

with a pilot sitting in the cockpit after that. That amazed me. To be afraid of a manned

airplane. I just can’t understand that mind-set.

Q: So what did you do after the X-15 program?

A: I stayed with North American as Chief Pilot. I did the first flights on the T-39 for

North American. At that time it was becoming abundantly obvious that aeronautics, as

we had known it up to date, were heading for the doldrums. There was just nothing

coming along behind it. All of the interest was in space, and that sort of thing. So I

went over to Downey and worked on the Apollo program for Harrison Storms. Over

there I owned all of the systems tests, reliability engineering, and quality assurance. It

was a big organization. And while NASA got me fired off of that, I was convinced that

I did my duty. We went to the Moon. And I had set up the disciplines that worked.

Q: And what are some of your thoughts on the value of the pilot in flight test? [There

is] a real trend towards unmanned vehicles now.

A: If something is unmanned, I say, “The hell with it.” This is a human endeavor we’re

living in. And unmanned systems — they’re alright. They serve a purpose. We have

automatic typewriters, and automatic transmissions, and that sort of thing. But I’m a

pilot and an aviator. I think if we’re going to do anything like go into space, or fly fast

and that, it’s pretty much an experience that a man wants to do. We’re a human race,

not made of machinery.
86

From the pages of

the X-Press.
87

JACK FISCHEL

Telephonic interview by Dr. J. D. Hunley,

September 20, 2000

Jack Fischel came to the High-Speed

Flight Research Station in August of

1950, after nearly a decade at Langley. He

participated in the inertial coupling

research, following an incident involving

the X-3 in October 1954. Of course, as

Fischel recounts, inertial coupling was

only one of the many unknowns explored

during the 1950s. For instance, under

certain conditions, the swept wings

adopted for super-sonic flight also caused

aerodynamic problems such as pitch up.

If this phenomenon occurred during high

speed flight, the aircraft could go out of

control; if it happened during landing, the

aircraft might stall and crash. The D-558-

II (best known for high-speed research,

including the first Mach 2 flight) played a

key role in efforts to understand the

mystery of pitch up.

Q: Jack, could you tell us a little bit about your family background and education and

how you came to work for what is today called the NASA Dryden Flight Research

Center.

A: Well, I grew up in a family of five, which includes my parents and a brother and

sister. I was the youngest of the family (born July 1918), attended public school in New

York City—this was the Borough of Bronx—and somewhere about the third or fourth

grade my folks, who had been in the grocery business, purchased a store in Washington

Heights, which is the northern part of Manhattan, at which time I transferred to a

school there (P.S. 115), which provided education to the fourth grade. For the fifth and

sixth grade I attended another school (P.S. 169). I felt I accomplished something in the

way of improving my education— By the way, my family background is such that my

parents were immigrants to this country. They had immigrated from Europe in the

period of about 1905 to 1910, met in New York, and were married about 1912.

At any rate, going back to the schooling—I was a diligent scholar. And when I

went to junior high school (which was seventh, eighth and ninth grades), starting at the

seventh grade, I was placed in a rapid group, so that I accomplished the seventh grade

in one-half year and the eighth grade in one-half year. And then the ninth grade, of

course, was the first year of high school. I attended the seventh to ninth grades in a

public school called P.S. 115 in Manhattan (the same school as in earlier fourth grade).

Subsequently, I elected to go to George Washington High School. By the way, while I

was in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades, there were a bunch of other advanced

students in the classes with me, some of whom elected to go to Townsend Harris High

School in New York City, which was a three-year type high school rather than four

years. But since that was downtown, required spending money for car fare, etc, and my
88

folks were not that affluent, I elected to go to George Washington High School in

Washington Heights. I completed my education at George Washington High School in

January 1935, taking the usual courses leading to a college education. And I earned

good grades—without boasting, I think it was on the better side of good grades—and

earned entrance to City College of New York, which was of generally high scholastic

standing. At City College of New York I took some of the usual pre-engineering

courses. Incidentally, they did have some engineering courses, but not in aeronautics or

aerospace.

I attended City College full-time for a while—I think it was about one year plus—

at which time my brother, who had been helping my folks in the family grocery store

elected to go out and find a paying job because he also was a student and required

funds. He was a chemical engineering student at New York University. So I worked in

the family store and continued my education at CCNY at night. After about two years, I

decided this was not getting me anywhere toward an aeronautical engineering degree.

So, with the approval of the family—because this cost additional funds attending New

York University—I attended New York University at night and continued my aero

engineering course. I transferred to New York University in 1938, and by attending

night course I took as many credits as I could. I was married in June of ’41 and my wife

and I decided that I should complete my education in one more year by going to day

school rather than taking two years to continue at night.

Meanwhile, in 1939, I had taken an examination for the City of New York Police

Department, mainly because jobs were scarce at that time. I had qualified by passing

written and physical tests, and went on the appointment-waiting list. I continued

attending night classes at NYU and working with my family in the grocery store. In the

beginning of 1941, I received a call for an appointment as a patrolman with New York

City and elected to accept that job, meantime continuing my education, attending

evening classes. After the summer of 1941 I took a leave of absence from my patrolman position and signed up for the full year in day school at New York University.

Meantime, my wife was working, helping me get through college. And in December

1941, of course, we were attacked by Japan. Classes after December 1941 were accelerated to the point that we graduated in April of 1942.

Now why did I elect aeronautical engineering? It had appeal to me. I can’t say I

had always wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. In my early days I thought, well, I

would like to be a doctor. But, very frankly, I saw my folks could not afford that

particular route so I elected to go with aeronautical engineering, which was my second

best choice. Then about December ’41 or maybe January of ’42 recruiters from NACA

visited the college. and tried to see if they could induce any of the qualified students to

sign up. I signed up with NACA. I was intrigued with the work they did in aeronautical

research. And in April of ’42, soon after graduation, my wife and I moved down to

Hampton, Virginia. Well, in Virginia it was really a new environment for me, as was

getting acquainted with my colleagues at NACA. I was initially assigned to what was

then called the Atmospheric Wind Tunnel, which had a seven-by-ten foot (testing area)

tunnel that tested aircraft models. At that time, with the acceleration of effort caused by

the war, we were operating around the clock. As one of the newest recruits, I took my

turn at working night shift, day shift, any shift at all. My wife and I finally moved into

a government housing unit called Langley View. We resided there for several years—

this was from 1942 till 1946, at which time we purchased a house elsewhere in Hampton, Virginia.

Well, getting back to my work at the laboratory. I really enjoyed it no matter what

shift I was on. One of the strange things for my wife and I, was we were without our

own transportation for quite awhile. And since where we lived at Langley View was

way back in the woods, it was about a mile to the main highway leading to town or
89

Langley Field. There was no transportation there, except early in the morning and late

in the evening there was a bus that traveled back and forth, maybe a couple of times,

from our housing project down to the main highway, which was the main road going

between Hampton and the base—Langley Field. I did not have transportation to my

work place, so we purchased a bicycle and a flashlight to mount on the bicycle. That’s

the way I wended my way to work in the dark hours. And it continued that way for

about one year, until we saved to purchase a car.

Somewhere about mid-1946, we purchased our own house and moved into Hampton. But prior to that, it seemed to me that there was a new testing work section opening up in the west end of Langley Field. It was called the Seven-by-Ten-Foot Tunnel

Section, having two new wind tunnels. They were higher speed, and essentially

eclipsed the work that was done at the Atmospheric Wind Tunnel where I had been

previously assigned. So I was reassigned and worked in that particular section and

really enjoyed it—doing the work, designing models and equipment, testing military

and research models, analyzing the data, writing the reports and reviewing reports of

others, of course.

The engineering work involved the testing of models of current and planned

aircraft, to ascertain their characteristics and to modify such models to improve their

stability and controllability. Analysis of the data provided charts, graphs, and discussions which were included in classified and unclassified reports provided to “industry,”

as appropriate. In these research studies, we worked in “teams,” initially supporting a

group leader and later as the team leader. In the testing of research models — including

semi-span wings or tail surfaces—we researched the effectiveness of various flaps,

slats, aileron controls, wing fences, wing-tip extensions, etc—possibly applicable to a

variety of aircraft. Also, we prepared a summary report on the characteristics/effectiveness of full-span flaps with various lateral control devices.

In the winter of ’49, my wife became ill, could not be treated locally, and had to go

to New York for treatment. She was in New York for about six months—had several

surgeries—and I was home with the kids. (By that time we’d had two children - in ’43

and ’46.) My mother came south to Virginia to help take care of the kids. Also, my

mother-in-law, who was in New York, looked after my wife in New York. During that

period, I made several trips to New York to visit my wife in-and-out of her hospital

stays. Well, when my wife came out of the hospital, about June of 1950, we were told

by her doctors that we should get to a dry climate. The Hampton climate was not

conducive to good health for my wife.

So we went looking to see what we could do to move to a dry climate. Shortly

before that time, we heard quite a bit about the new NACA flight-test group starting out

at Muroc. And I decided well, let’s see what we can do about possibly going out there.

Also there was a gentleman by the name of Robert Swanson, who was a former NACA

employee, and had transferred to the Naval Research facility at Point Mugu some time

before 1950. So I contacted this Robert Swanson to find out what was available on the

west coast. He wrote back and offered me a job there. But I thought well, I’m not so

sure I wanted to go there. I approached Hartley Soulé, who we used to call our “great

white father”—he was Head of our Research Division at NACA, and he was also head

of the Muroc group that was out at Edwards. I approached Hartley Soulé and asked,

“Hartley, what do you know about Edwards (Muroc)? What can I do to get to Edwards?

Tell me what it’s all about.” He explained to me what it was. He didn’t paint any great

pictures. He indicated it was kind of primitive, but if I really wanted to get out there,

he’d see about that.

Sure enough, I guess he contacted Walt Williams to see if I could get transferred

there. Well, I had previously known Williams at Langley. He worked in the Flight

Division at Langley and our paths had crossed on several occasions, one of which was
90

when I was testing an F6F airplane model in the wind tunnel and making an analysis

and report on it. Meantime, Walt was the engineer in charge of testing an early version

of the F6F airplane in flight. We’d seen the data that each other had from these tests. So

I decided to accept this offer to go out to Edwards Air Force Base. (At that time it was

just called Muroc.) And we moved west in August of 1950. It was quite a move,

because we moved out west in the middle of the summer heat, and we drove cross

country. Before leaving Virginia, we left our house in the care of a realtor, and purchased a car. We also decided to purchase one of these fandangled automobile air

scoops that had a water reservoir, to see if we could keep cool during the trip. And we

did. We trekked cross country in the car. When we arrived at Las Vegas, we decided it

was so doggoned hot—we’ve got to do something better. So we decided we’re going to

awake in the middle of the night and travel in the cool hours, which we did, and we

made our last-lap dash to Muroc—actually, to Mojave. We had been told that we would

have “officer’s quarters” at the Mojave Air Base. When we arrived at the Mojave Air

Base, we reported in to the office that was in charge of the housing. And sure enough,

they gave us what they called “officer’s quarters.” Well, I don’t have to go into too

much detail to tell you that was pretty awful. It was an apartment on a concrete platform with about three other apartments adjacent to it. They were built in groups of four.

And the housing itself—the walls were made pretty thin, they were made of some prefabs of a sort. I wouldn’t say it was wood. It may have been a combination of wood and

cardboard. Anyway, it was not the most delightful place, not even marginal. At any rate,

soon after that, I reported to work at Edwards and I met Walt Williams, De Beeler, a

number of other people—Jake Drake. Jake, we used to call him—that was his nickname—but his name was Hubert M. Drake.

Q: Yes. He goes by Hubert now.

A: Right. Okay. He was known as Hubert then too, but we used to call him by his

nickname, Jake. After some orientation and introductions, I was assigned initially as the

engineer for one of the D-558-II [Skyrocket] airplanes. These were swept-wing airplanes which were sponsored by the Navy. There [were three different configurations]

— one was an all-jet airplane, there was one that was a combination rocket and jet, and

the third one was an all-rocket airplane. At any rate, I was assigned to [a D-558-II] with

A desert landscape

near Lancaster. For

Fischel and his

wife, who had both

been from New

York City, life in the

desert represented

a major change.

(E60-5342)
91

a combination rocket and jet. The D-558-II with the rocket-jet was taken aloft in the

“belly” of a B-29. And then the research pilot, who was taken aloft inside the B-29,

crawled into the D-558-II cockpit, closed the canopy—and after that when the B-29

arrived at the release point in time and location, the B-29 crew released the research

craft. In the case of the rocket airplane, of course, it expended all its fuel in achieving

whatever speed/altitude and maneuvers were necessary or called for, and then it became a glider, gradually descending. In the case of the rocket-jet airplane, the rocket

part of the operation was much the same—after launch from the B-29, operate the

airplane at as high a speed and altitude as you possibly could attain depending on the

flight plan, performing various maneuvers on the way down. Of course, it was able to

land under power because it had a jet engine. It was interesting.

The work was a little different, of course, than the wind tunnel research. The job

was broader in scope in that we had to see that the airplane was properly instrumented

for the research program at hand. Of course, there were technicians there who performed the instrumentation installation. Then we had the airplane and instrumentation

checkout. There was also the flight crew who handled the preparation of the airplane

for flight—made sure everything was working operationally. When we first arrived at

Edwards, I believe they had about 50 employees at the NACA facility, which included

technicians, mechanics in the shops, engineers, and computers. By “computers” I mean

human-type who reduced the flight data. I liked the work. Oh, the base environment

was kind of raw. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down to South Base, but it was very

primitive. We didn’t complain because the research work was what was going on, and

was important and enjoyable.

My family was not very comfortable living at the Mojave Air Base, and after many

months of diligent search, we found a rental place in Lancaster to which we were able

to move. About January or February of 1951 we moved into Lancaster, which made our

surroundings much more habitable and more comfortable. Of course, that made it

easier for us also. It was about 30-33 miles from our abode to the air base, which we

High-Speed Flight

Station employees

leaving work at the

end of the day. As

had been the case

earlier at Langley,

car pools became

(and still are) a

common practice in

the remote terrain.

This allowed the

members to spilt

the cost of gas,

share the long

drive, and enable

their families to use

the car for most of

the week.

(E54-1356)
92

had to drive initially every day. Subsequently, we formed a car pool and drove one day

out of three or four or five, whatever it might be. And that, too, made it easier for us.

That way, we could leave transportation most days for our family. Our work was very

good, and about 1954, the NACA facilities expanded with the opening of a new building on “Main Base.” More employees came. Of course, some left. One of the factors

that we noticed during that period of time was that some of the engineers, as well as

some technicians, didn’t stay very long. The nature of the area (the environs) was such

that it was just too raw for their families. Their families could not tolerate it for long.

And I’ll say this—I have to give my wife a medal and much commendation for putting

up for all the period that we were there, because it was anything but excitable or

appealing for anyone who was raised in the environments of New York City.

Well, about 1954 I believe it was, we were told that more employees were moving

into the new NACA building. The construction had been going about a year or more.

We moved to the new building, and it was much more comfortable—much more

conducive to satisfactory operation. Also, we were closer to our work in the sense that

the aircraft hangar was in the same building with all employees and the flight line was

pretty close too.

Q: You had been in the separate Butler building before?

A: Oh, yes. I should have mentioned that. We had been in the separate Butler building

at South Base. It was, you might say, the large, rounded-top building. Actually, our

office portion was just on one side of the Butler building. And so we got along, of

course. (We had to during those years.) During the period of 1950 to 1954, the scope of

our work expanded. We were flight testing at that time the D-558’s, the X-1’s and the

X-2’s. Oh, yes, the X-5 was in our hangar too, at that time, and the X-4 too. Then after

various phases of the D-558-II project, I recall writing a number of technical reports

based on the results of the research flights. One of the things that we encountered was

something called “pitch up.” Pitch up was an uncontrollable response of the airplane

when it attained a certain point with a high angle of attack (which varied with the Mach

number). The pilot would not be able to control it properly, as the airplane would pitch

up and the pilot would have to push forward on the control stick to get control again.

We tried various devices on the D-558-II, such as wing “fences,” leading edge slats,

some changes in the flaps, different things in order to correct the situation. There was

some degree of improvement resulting from some modifications, but not quite as much

as we wished. We finally resolved that the location of the horizontal tail relative to the

wing on the D-558-II made a great difference because of the “downwash” from the

wing. Anyway, this goes into some technical areas of the work. Subsequently, we got

into a new project on the X-3 airplane, which was a needle-nose airplane. I don’t know

if you’ve seen a photograph of it.

Q: Oh, sure.

A: Okay. It’s a forerunner of the F-104 as it had a thin, very small wing of very small

span, and the leading edge was swept back. The X-3 proved to be somewhat of a dud in

the sense that I’d understood that it was originally designed to be higher-powered than

it actually was. But it never did receive the engines that were supposed to be installed

into it. It was a twin-engine airplane with rather low-powered engines which attained

trans-sonic speeds (to about Mach 1.2)—not very high. At any rate, we evaluated that

airplane with its different characteristics. We made some slight modifications to it—ran

into another phenomena called roll-coupling.
93

Q: Oh, yes.

A: Okay. At first we (my colleague, Dick Day, pilot Joe Walker) didn’t know what the

heck hit us—when the pilot performed a roll maneuver and suddenly seemed to lose

control of the craft. We had by that time set up simulators and computers to simulate

the action on the X-3 airplane and to evaluate the characteristics of the airplane. We

found that the airplane was subject to roll coupling at very high angles of attack. And

we noticed that some other airplanes were also subject to roll coupling. I believe the F100 ran into that same phenomenon. And one of the things that was done, I recollect,

was to increase the size of the [F-100] vertical tail (to improve directional stability).

I believe that was the phenomena that some other airplanes experienced somewhere

around the same time. We soon understood what was going on for some of those high

performance aircraft.

I think I was involved with some other aircraft soon after the X-3. I believe it was

an JF-107A. One of the things we were interested in investigating on the JF-107A was

the X-15’s side controller. There were things that we tried to foresee for the X-15 when

we performed our research flights—anticipate the possibility that the pilot of the X-15

Views of some of

the fences and slat

designs tested on

the D-558-II #3

(NACA 145) to

investigate the

problem of pitch

ups on swept wing

aircraft. Some of

the concepts

proved effective;

others actually

made the pitch up

worse. Although

fences and /or slats

eventually appeared on production aircraft, the

ultimate solution to

pitch up involved

changing the

position of the

horizontal stabilizer. In the case of

the D-558-II, this

was mounted half

way up the tail. On

later aircraft, such

as the F-100 and

F-8, engineers

repositioned the

horizontal stabilizer

low on the aft

fuselage, below the

wing and out of its

downwash. (E51-

0578, E51-582,

E52-816, E52-817)
94

would not be able to properly control the airplane at all times with a center stick. So we

thought well, we should investigate the use of a side stick in another airplane. So, I

believe it was a JF-107A North American airplane, which was made available to us;

and we were working on installing a side stick in the airplane. If I recall correctly, that

was the first project that we had with pilot Bill Dana. He came in as a new pilot, and

was assigned to oversee the installation of the side stick in the JF-107A and then try it

out in flight. Well, I can’t recall if that job was too successful. For some reason I can’t

remember how far we got into the actual research. (Perhaps Bill Dana can.) But anyway, the X-15 eventually did have a side stick. 1

Oh, yes. There was one more thing too. One of the big questions that came up

during those years was—this was when the jets were being developed by Boeing and

Douglas. They were all developing commercial jets. One of the big questions that arose

within the industry was how would you integrate them into the present system of air

traffic control? In other words, we’re still going to be flying these propeller airplanes

for awhile until these jets take over. But how do you integrate this in that system?

Where the jets are flying so much faster and also require more runway for takeoff and

landing, how can you handle this sort of thing? So about 1958, I believe it was, the

center obtained the loan of a KC-135 tanker from the Air Force. General LeMay

relinquished that tanker to us for a three-month period. During that three-month period

we evaluated the performance of a large jet aircraft in an operational status so that we

could report to industry just what was going on. We received numerous requests from

Eastern Airlines, American Airlines and other airlines with regard to what to expect

from these aircraft.

So I prepared a program for testing the aircraft, submitted it and it was accepted.

When the airplane arrived at the NASA facility, we spent about the first month or more

instrumenting the airplane. We got our instrumentation people out there in a hurry and

said this must be done rapidly, so that we could get the flight tests done within the three

months and then return the airplane. Well, we got this aircraft instrumented. Then we

started following the flight plan. Now some of the work that we did was on our own

base (Edwards) for takeoff and landing and various other things. Other things that we

wanted to do was go to a place like Los Angeles (LAX) or go to some other airports

A classic image of

the X-3 in flight

above Edwards

AFB. Like the early

F-100A, it also

experienced inertial

coupling. On

October 27, 1954,

at about the same

time the NACA F100 inertial coupling tests began,

Joe Walker made a

flight in the X-3.

The test called for

an abrupt left roll at

Mach 0.92. As the

aircraft rolled, it

also pitched up 20

degrees and

yawed to the side

16 degrees. The X3 gyrated for five

seconds before

Walker got it back

under control. He

then decided to try

the maneuver at

Mach 1. When he

made the abrupt

left roll at supersonic speed, the

nose yawed 21

degrees, which

imposed a load of 2

Gs. At the same

time, the aircraft

pitched down

(reaching a -6.7 G

load), then pitched

up violently to a +7

G measurement.

Walker again

brought the X-3

back under control

and landed immediately. Post flight

analysis of the data

indicated the

aircraft’s fuselage

had reached its

maximum load

limit. (E67-17348)

1

 Fischel recalled the aircraft used in the side stick tests as being an F-106. Richard P. Hallion’s On The

Frontier indicates it was an JF-107A.
95

and see how you can work-in the takeoff or landing along with the propeller-driven

airplanes that were being used at the time, to see how the ground crews and the ground

control could accept us and just how they’d operate. So this was part of our plan and

we did just that. Within the two months remaining for flying, we had 17 flights or more

that we performed on the airplane. These were long flights—three hours or more with

the airplane. And we had the airplane in heavyweight condition, lightweight condition—all kinds—in order to see what the pilot and airplane could do when they got to

takeoff, landing approach, aborted takeoff, wave-off, etc. Now we went to places like

LAX and we did some landings and takeoffs, etc, there.

We also went to some other places including Oxnard Air Force Base, which is of

course controlled by the military. And then we went to some other places also to do

some takeoffs and landings. Oh, some of the things we measured were the takeoff and

landing distances under various weight conditions. In addition to this sort of thing we

asked our co-pilot to perform some tricks on the pilots, unbeknownst to the pilot, to see

how the pilot could respond—such as cutting power abruptly during a takeoff and see

how the airplane could be handled. Also doing something to the flaps so that the pilot

wouldn’t have full use of flaps during landing. Incidentally, Stan Butchart was the pilot

and Jack McKay was the co-pilot for these tests. It was quite a successful program in

the fact that we accomplished a good deal over quite a bit of time operationally. The

other thing we did, too, was once the airplane got in the air, we asked the pilots to

Jack Fischel also

worked on the

North American JF107A, shown here.

This aircraft began

as a modified

version of the F100, but evolved

into a completely

new design. The

JF-107 featured a

distinctive topmounted engine

inlet. Once the Air

Force selected the

F-105 for production, the service

transferred the first

and third F-107s to

the NACA. The first

aircraft proved

mechanically

unreliable, and

made only four

flights. The third

JF-107A tested the

X-15 side stick

controller, designed

to allow the pilot to

fly the hypersonic

aircraft during the

high G-loads of reentry. (E-4384)

A Boeing KC-135

military tanker used

to test air traffic

control procedures

for the first generation of jet airliners

that entered

service in the late

1950s. The NACA

borrowed the KC135 to simulate the

tanker’s civilian

equivalent, the

Boeing 707 airliner,

for a short but

intensive series of

flights which

Fischel oversaw.

(E-4123)
96

perform various maneuvers such that we could evaluate the performance and controllability of the airplane, such as its rolling performance, its side slip and maneuverability.

This was quite a successful program, I felt. And when it came down to reporting the

results, we had to whip them into shape because a NASA conference was planned (at

Langley) in which various members of the aircraft industry as well as people in the

airline business were invited to discuss the results. Well, I had some help, of course. I

was not the lone engineer on the job. There were several others, and Butchart was the

main pilot. So, between us, we wrote and reported to the conference two reports

(papers) which reported on the characteristics of the airplane at high speed and also at

low speed as well as takeoff and landing distances—that sort of thing. We presented

them at this conference, and also they became NASA reports. I think the industry was

relatively satisfied, and some of their uncertainties were laid to rest, although there

were many questions at the time by industry representatives. Fortunately, the pilot

could address most of those because they were the sort of questions that were aimed

directly at the pilot. For example: how could the pilots handle this? What did they run

into? And that type of thing. It was a good conference.

Q: Let me ask you—since our time is running out for this afternoon—about a couple of

the people you worked with and for. I wonder, first of all, if you could characterize

Walt Williams as the Head of the Center for the first nine years that you were there.

What kind of a boss was he? How were your working relations with him?

A: Pretty good. Matter of fact, you know, he was unique in this sense. He had been

through this before. He had known about flight testing before coming to Edwards. He

had done this back at Langley. So he knew what had to be done and he depended a lot

on the people under him, of course. They were people like Joe Vensel, who was in

charge of Operations. Joe Vensel had been a test pilot years ago. But his ears, of course,

had been “shot out” I guess by some of the work he had done. There was Gerry

Truszyski, who had previously worked at Langley and who was in charge of Instrumentation. I recall being at various meetings at which we got together to discuss the problems and what to do about them, and so on. Beeler, of course, represented the Research

Division in those early days. Then later on, that changed. But we got along pretty well.

Q: Well, good. Let me ask. When did you retire?

A: The end of June in ’73.

Q: So you worked under Bikle actually longer than under Walt Williams.

A: Yes, I did.

Q: What did you think of Bikle as a leader and a manager?

A: Not quite the same as Walt Williams. Although he was a pilot, and so on, and he

understood pilot things, I don’t think he had the background of NACA-NASA. He had

the Air Force background. I recall one time I had a little run-in with him, not because of

him, himself, but because of something else. We had on base (Dryden) a Captain

(medical) who was involved in pilot measurements and pilot response, during flight

maneuvers and that type of thing. Anyway, he had made measurements on all the pilots

as they flew their various maneuvers, and so on, and he was putting out reports. One of

the things I did at that time was review reports, and I took exception to some of the

things the way he was reporting in a report. One of the things we did, and I think we
97

still do, is to have an editorial committee on every report. I don’t know if that’s still

done.

Q: I think so.

A: Okay. I’d try to see about having certain people on each editorial committee who

would be, let’s say, more familiar with the specific type of work being done in that

report, as well as some other diverse research engineers. That way I felt I could give

some fair criticism. Well, one of the things I found in some of the reports that this

Captain tried to publish was something I felt was not as clear as it could be. Maybe it

was clear for him, being in that special field. He had a medical background. But I felt

that to someone who was about to read it, it was not that clear. So I critiqued it that

way. He wasn’t happy with me. One time he brought it up to Bikle, and Bikle had me

on the carpet about that and said “Do you have to review these reports?” I said “Well,

it’s been the custom over here at NACA for years and years before my time.” I pointedout the reasons and advantages of doing so. Apparently, in the Air Force the author

would turn out his report without getting a review by a committee, so to speak.

So Bikle thought about it for awhile. I felt kind of lame facing him about this sort

of thing, as though I had obstructed justice—obstructed the preparation of the report,

you know. But Bikle said “Okay. Do what you want to.” But to that extent I felt I was

on the carpet there defending myself. But otherwise I had no run-ins with him or

anything. He was pretty fair.

Q: Well, he was famous for what was called the Bikle barrel, and that was exactly the

sort of thing you’re describing.

A: Yes.

Q: What about Joe Weil—since you worked for him for awhile too?

A: Oh, not only did I work for Joe Weil—we graduated together.

Q: Is that right?

A: Yes. Since I was, you might say, older because I had gone to night school so much, I

joined him my final year at New York University in day school. He had been a day

school student all along. We both graduated together—we both went to NACA—

though he reported for work one week ahead of me.

Q: Down at Langley.

A: Down at Langley, right. I transferred to Edwards well before he did. And we worked

in the same division back at Langley too. Let’s see. He was in a different section, but

we were both in the same division. Anyway, he came to Edwards a couple of years I

guess after I did—at least that.

Q: You mean the flight—

A: To Edwards. He went to Edwards a couple of years after I did. And so we got along

very well. In fact, Joe would often turn to me about some questions about personnel—

what did I think, and so on. And I’d give him my opinion for what it was. And we

worked very well together. During the years after Weil arrived at Edwards, we worked
98

together in the Research Division, sometimes competing with planned programs for

research; and for several years, we each headed different research groups (sections) in

the Research Division, prior to his appointment as Director of Research and my appointment as Assistant Director of Research.

Q: Was he still Director of Research when you retired?

A: That’s right.

Q: Well, that’s an interesting lifelong—well, not lifelong—but since student days

relationship.

A: But looking back I’ll say this. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my working there, and I’ve

always said my motto has been—I enjoyed my work and I got paid for it. What could

be better.

Q: Dr. J.D. Hunley. We are continuing an interview that was done with Jack Fischel a

few days ago. He had some afterthoughts that he wanted to add to his interview. So,

Mr. Fischel, if you want to go ahead and start.

A: Okay. With regard to some of the work we did on the D-558-II airplane—we used

the airplane as a test bed for various means of alleviating an instability at the higher

angles of attack. We tried various things such as fences, slats, wing extensions going

forward and other things in order to improve the stability. And we had minor results,

you might say, minor improvements. Now all of these tests were really based initially

on tests that had been done in wind tunnels on other models. So we tried to apply it in

flight and see what effect it would have. But as I mentioned previously, we found that

they did not have too much effect. Matter of fact, we found out that one of the things

that was wrong with their plane at these high angles of attack where we had instability

was the fact that the horizontal tail was located in the wrong place.

I think I mentioned previously that the work on the KC-135 was a very short

period. But it was a very intense period and we accomplished quite a bit during that

period. One of the things that I did, too, was in order to get the feel for how the passengers on a airliner would react to the flying of a jet airplane as opposed to the preceding

propeller airplanes, I climbed aboard. I went aboard one of the flights with our pilots

for about a three to three hour plus flights, and we went to various airports to get my

evaluation as a passenger on the plane. And, of course, my comments to the pilots were

a result of that.

Now speaking of pilots, there’s one thing I wanted to make clear—that a good deal

of the work that we did there was involved with the pilots too. We would have preflight meetings, post-flight meetings to get an idea what the pilots encountered, what

they felt in the way of the behavior of the aircraft. This applies to all aircraft that we

tested. I think the pilots added significantly to our remarks regarding the handling

qualities of the various airplanes we tested.

Q: Well, you had wanted to say something about the technicians and the people in the

shops as well.

A: Oh, yes. Yes. They were quite helpful, too, in the sense that they made inputs to us,

particularly the instrumentation technicians, to improve characteristics that we didn’t

quite plan for. And as we went along, during the course of the flight programs, they

made some valuable inputs there. In particular, I do recall some of the people there. We
99

had a gentleman by the name of Rebel—that was his nickname—who was the head of

the shop.

Q: Harwell was his last name.

A: That’s it—Rebel Harwell. He was quite a character and a lovable guy. He produced

from his shop things which we thought would never be possible. So I do want to

acknowledge that. Plus, also, the instrumentation technicians and, of course, the flight

crews. The flight crews I thought were superb—everyone cooperative, working all

kinds of hours—particularly the crew in preparation for a flight in the early days when

we had the B-29 as the mother ship for the D-558-II and later on when we had the B-52

as the mother ship for the X-15. I have to say that these crews were terrific. They

worked overtime as necessary, came in early, as necessary, in order to get off an early

flight. So it was a tremendous esprit de corps there among our crew. I hope it still exists

today, though I don’t know. I just want to emphasize that. I thought it was an ideal

place to work. Despite the fact that many people came and

left because of the fact maybe their families were unhappy

being in the desert, I’d say those who stayed were grateful

they did and benefitted in the long run by the experiences

they had. I think that’s about it.

Walter “Rebel”

Harwell, the highly

skilled chief of

instrumentation,

made many

important contributions to a wide

range of flight

research projects.

(E55-2137)

From the pages of

the X-Press.
100
101

STANLEY P. BUTCHART

Interview by Curt Asher, September 15,

1997

As the 1950s drew to a close, the hard

won advances in aviation technology

found their way into production aircraft.

Speeds which only a few years before

had been world records now became

routine in operational military aircraft. At

the same time, new jet powered airlines

had speeds and altitudes nearly double

those of propeller airliners. Many of the

unknowns of the late 1940s and early

1950s had become understood. NACA

research pilot Stanley P. Butchart had

been a participant in much of this activity.

He served in the Navy as a torpedo plane

pilot, then went to the University of

Washington (the same school attended by

research pilots Scott Crossfield and Milt

Thompson) for his B.S. degrees in

aeronautical and mechanical engineering. Butchart then worked as a Boeing engineer

on the B-47, an airplane he would later fly as a research pilot, before joining the

NACA in 1951. He flew the D-558-I and X-4, undertook pitch up studies in the X-5,

served as the B-29 drop pilot for both the X-1 and D-558-II, and made flights in a KC135 tanker (the Air Force version of the Boeing 707 airliner) to develop air traffic

control procedures for jet airliners.

Q: I’d like to start by asking you a little about your personal history. When and where

were you born?

A: Well, I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 11, 1922.

Q: Did you grow up there?

A: No, the folks left there when I was about just past a year. They moved to Chicago,

and then eventually out to Spokane where I spent the next 20 years.

Q: Do you recall what initially inspired your interest in aviation?

A: Well, I don’t know. I think kids at that age were kind of thrilled with aviation. You

know just going out to the airport and watching people fly and airplanes fly and what

not. But I think my real interest came after I graduated from high school. I found out

that they were giving that civilian pilot training (CPT) to the young folks at that time

through the colleges. So I went to the Spokane Junior College and signed up for that.

Q: Did you pursue any aviation-related interests in your youth outside of the things

you just mentioned?

A: Do you mean like model airplane building and that sort of thing?
102

Q: Yes.

A: Yes, very much so.

Q: Could you describe your Navy career for me? When and where did you enlist?

A: Well, I went to junior college to get that CPT training. Also I think about the same

time I had a real desire to go in the Navy, which required two years of college. So I was

going to get my two years at the junior college and enlist in the Navy. But the war

came along and kind of speeded things up. It was kind of interesting. A buddy of mine

who was also very much interested in aviation wanted to follow the same path. We

were going out to college one morning on the bus and I read in the paper that the Navy

had dropped their two-year college requirement. So we got off the bus, went back

home and got a few things, and hitchhiked over to Seattle to enlist in the Navy. I grew

up in Spokane, so we went over there to enlist. That was about May, I think. I had

trouble with my birth certificate because they didn’t like the looks of the piece of paper

I had from New Orleans. It didn’t look like a birth certificate. So they sent me home

and had me write back to New Orleans and get a proper birth certificate, [and] they

sent the same thing back. So finally I enlisted in July I think — July 8th. But I kind of

sat around the rest of the summer waiting for this friend of mine to get his CPT training. He hadn’t had the training. I had gone through primary and secondary CPT when I

was going to the junior college.

Q: I see. What was your friend’s name?

A: Les Jones.

Q: Les Jones.

A: Yes. Then they sent him over to Montana to get his primary CPT training. Then we

both left October 1, 1942 to pre-flight school up at St. Mary’s College there in California, it’s right there near Oakland.

Q: So that was your military flight training?

A: Yes, it was. And it was kind of fortunate the way we did it. I kind of knew what was

going to happen. When they dropped the two-year college requirement, there were

thousands of people running to enlist. I kind of got in on the front wave of the thing. So

I went through the Navy flight training in about nine months, with ten weeks of preflight school, and three months of basic, and three months of advanced.

Q: What was the flight training like? What was the daily routine?

A: Well, then the Navy had what they called the Yellow Perils, the N3Ns or the N2S

trainer biplanes that we flew. The primary part of it was first just checking out in the

airplane and then a lot of acrobatics, a lot of training for precision flying, some formation flying, some night flying. That lasted just about three months, I think, at primary.

Then we went down to Corpus Christi, Texas for advanced training.

Q: So where were you stationed after you completed training?

A: Well, in the Navy, when you get your wings, you’re sent off to an operational

squadron. In my case I was sent to Opa-Locka, Florida for what they call operational
103

training. Then you’re training in a specific mission that you’re going to be in — either

fighters, dive bombers or torpedo bombers. I had been assigned torpedo bombers when

I was back at Corpus. It wasn’t my first choice, but you get to love it. So we went to

Opa-Locka for our operational training and that lasted about six, seven weeks. And

then from there, Navy pilots were sent mostly to the Great Lakes area— the Glenview

Naval Air Station. The Navy actually had two carriers on the Great Lakes. They were

converted coalers [with] side wheels. All they had was a flat deck on top, no superstructure above the [deck], and there was no facilities to live on them or stay on them.

You just went out during the day and made your eight landings. You’d land, they’d roll

you back, you’d take off and come around the pattern to do it again. Once you made

your eight carrier landings you were qualified, then traditionally everybody got 30 days

leave after that.

Q: So after your leave were you stationed on a carrier then or -

A: Well, yes. My orders when I left Glenview were to report to Norfolk in September

of ’43. After a few days there I was assigned to a torpedo squadron that was just being

commissioned. It was actually a composite squadron. When it first started it had nine

torpedo planes and nine dive bombers.

Q: What was the squadron number?

A: VT-51. We trained at Chincoteague, Virginia to start with.

Q: When you went overseas, how many combat missions did you fly?

A: Well, the Navy didn’t really list them as combat missions like the Air Force did. I

had some 30 different strikes against enemy installations, mostly island installations.

Q: In the South Pacific?

A: Yes, in the South Pacific. I had about 80 or 90 different anti-sub patrols — which

we flew almost daily off the carrier.

Q: What decorations did you earn?

A: I got a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] for an operation on the 25th of October

’44 when they hit the Japanese fleet that had come down from the Sea of Japan. In fact

I dropped two torpedoes in one day, the first one on the carrier Zuikaku and later in the

afternoon on the carrier Hosho. I got hit in the afternoon. Just after I dropped a torpedo

I got hit in my right wing and knocked about four or five feet off the end of the wing.

But I was able to get the thing back to the carrier.

Q: Could you tell me about some other combat incidents that you were involved in

during the war?

A: Well, yes, there’s a lot of interesting ones. But I think actually torpedo bombers —

the guys that were trained in torpedo bombing — probably less than ten percent of

them ever dropped a torpedo in anger. They all had dropped them in practice. Torpedoes were mostly saved for battleships, carriers and cruisers. The Japanese held their

fleet back to home port for so many years that there was not much opportunity. But I

had the opportunity of dropping four different torpedoes, one when we went to

Okinawa on October 10th of ’44. Reports were that there was a part of the Japanese
104

fleet was there. When we got there, there was nothing but cargo ships. And so I

dropped a torpedo on an old cargo ship and then the two I dropped on October 25th.

Then later that month, we were up at the northern end of the Philippines into the

Manila area. We went in there expecting to find a lot of shipping. And I had to wind up

dropping the torpedo on a dry-dock, which isn’t much of a target.

Q: No.

A: October was probably the most hectic month I’ve ever had in flying off the carrier. I

flew 82 and a half hours in one month, which is a lot of flying, even off of land. We

were busy the whole month supporting MacArthur’s landing on Leyte on the 20th of

October, and then the big battle with the Japanese fleet on the 25th, and then back

down to Leyte supporting the landing some more.

Q: Can you think of anything else about your military career you might want to mention?

A: Oh I don’t know. It was interesting. After the war was over, I was admitted to the

University of Washington. I saw an article in the paper where they were forming Naval

Reserve squadrons. So I hustled out to Sand Point and signed up to spend the next four

or five years flying with the Naval Reserve group in Seattle.

Q: So you said you went to the University of Washington.

A: Yes, after the war.

Q: What degrees did you earn there?

A: Interestingly enough, I wound up at school with Scott Crossfield. He had been in the

squadron with me. Our second tour — after we came back from overseas the first time,

we got home on the 23rd of December to San Diego. They hustled us through all the

checkpoints to get us out of there so we could get home for Christmas, which I didn’t

quite make. But then the squadron re-formed the second time in Seattle. Scott showed

up there as a fighter pilot, having come from an instructor pilot down at Corpus. So we

spent the next six, seven, eight months together in the squadron. Then when I started at

the University of Washington he was in my class, and spent the next four years with

me. We got our degrees in aeronautical engineering in June of ’49. And then I went

back to school that fall and got a degree in mechanical engineering.

Q: A Master’s Degree?

A: No, just another B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Scott went on to get his Master’s.

Q: Let me just ask you another personal question. Are you married? And was meeting

your wife related in any way to your career?

A: Yes, it sure was.

Q: What’s her name?

A: Miriam. I met her on October 15th of 1943 right after the squadron was stationed at

Chincoteague. The closest town to Chincoteague where we could go in for liberty was

Salisbury, Maryland. And I met her in Salisbury. She worked for a jeweler in Salisbury.
105

We dated all that fall, and then the following spring, just before I went overseas, I

asked her to marry me and gave her a ring. Then we were married after I got back from

overseas. In fact, four of us were all married within a week or two when we got back.

We were married on January 5th of ’45, George and Barbara Bush were married on the

6th, Lou and Connie Grab was on the 20th, Jack and Eve Raquepaw was on the 13th.

So the whole bunch of us got married, and Jack Guy later that spring.

Q: Were you a friend of George Bush?

A: Yes. He was in the squadron with us.

Q: What kind of a person was he?

A: Well, I’m asked that a lot. My recollection is that he was a very quiet fellow, very

quiet. I was surprised years later to read some history about him and find out that he

had a pretty large family of brothers and sisters. He really never talked much about his

family, although I had met his mother when we were up in Charlestown, Rhode Island

during January of ’44. They lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. She came over and spent

the entire day with us while we were training. He was a very quiet, very unassuming

fellow at that time.

Q: You didn’t have any indication that he would go into politics?

A: No, heavens no.

Q: Do you have any children?

A: I have four. The oldest one is Debbie. She was born in Seattle before we came down

here in ’49. Then a boy, Dean was born right after we moved to Lancaster in ’51.

Dierdre was born in ’55 and Dale in ’56.

Q: Okay. Have you maintained a cordial relationship with George Bush over the years?

A: Yes, indeed. I have a letter from him here. A couple of months ago where he was

thanking Jack Guy and I for coming to his aid about the time he made that parachute

jump back in April. There was an article written in the “Washington Times” by some

lady that had never gone back and bothered to check the facts of a previous report that

had been in the papers, in I think it was in ’88 or ’89 when he was running for President, about a comment about him. It was made by one of the guys in the squadron, a

crewman who wasn’t a regular assigned crewman to the airplane. But he flew with him

that day. His comment was that George never should have jumped out — that he

should have stayed with the airplane and he could have saved the other two fellows.

But that isn’t so. He wasn’t close enough to see or know anything about it. George told

us he stayed in there as long as he could, but it was just too hot — he had to climb out.

Yes, and then we got an invitation just last week to the dedication of the Presidential

Library which is taking place in Texas in College Station in November.

Q: That’s great. After graduating from college, did you immediately go to work for the

NACA?

A: No. I really had thought I was going to go to work for Boeing. I wanted to get into

Boeing’s flight test. But it’s kind of a closed club and pretty hard to get your foot in the

door. So I was assigned as a junior design engineer to the B-47 body group.
106

Q: At Boeing?

A: At Boeing. And after about six, seven months of that, I knew I didn’t want to spend

the rest of my life over a drawing board. I had kept in touch with Crossfield. He came

down to NACA in the summer of ’50. He told me then, “Hey, there’s a lot of engineering jobs down there.” I said, “No, I won’t go down to the desert and be an engineer.” I

said, “But if a flying job opens, give me a call.” Well, the following January I got a call

from him one night and he said, “Hey, we’ve got an opening.” So I re-filed my form

57, and by March I was invited down for an interview and had a job.

Q: So that was January 1951?

A: Well, I came to work here on May 10th of ’51.

Q: Was it an extremely competitive process getting a job as a NACA research pilot?

A: No, I don’t think it was competitive. I don’t know how many applications they had

before them to look at. But like so many other things, if you know somebody on the

inside it helps.

Q: So was there testing?

A: No, no. I just got a phone call one day at work asking if I could come down for an

interview. I grabbed a TBM out of the reserve squadron and flew down to L.A. and

stopped. [Joe] Vensel picked me up down there. I spent the day out at NACA, and

when I left I had a job.

Q: So you were working for the NACA before it expanded to the present location in

1954. Could you describe what it was like working on the South Base in the early

Butchart began

flights in the D558-I on October

19, 1951. He made

twelve flights in all,

the last one on

February 20, 1953.

The flights shed

light on lateral

stability and

dynamic longitudinal stability. (E51-

713)
107

‘50’s? What were the working conditions like?

A: Well, it was far from what we have now. In fact, the old hangar and the buildings are

still sitting down there. But the pilots were — four of us — I made the fourth one when

I showed up. We were all in a very small office. I think there were two operations

engineers in the same office with us. But the nice thing about it — it was almost like

family. The majority of the people lived in Lancaster and you knew each other. You

played softball together, you bowled together, just the whole thing. I think there were

only 185 people when I started there. It was a real nice congenial outfit to work with.

Q: So what was your day to day routine like there? Do you remember?

A: Well, it surely wasn’t structured at all. Other than the days that you were assigned

flights, you could go out and do proficiency flying any time and as much as you

wanted to. And that was really all the activities there were in those days.

Q: And where did you live? Did you live in Lancaster?

A: I’ve lived in this house 46 years.

Q: Oh okay. In 1954 after the Dryden facility construction was complete, how did your

day to day work routine change?

A: Not a whole lot. I think we were getting busier in those days with more airplanes

coming in. Early on we had just two or three of the X airplanes. We had the X-4, the X5, and the [D-558-I] Skystreak and the [D-558-II] Skyrocket. That was about the extent

of the research airplanes that we had when we were down at South Base. We had a

couple of proficiency airplanes. We had an old F-84 — one of the earlier airplanes —

number seven I think. I lost a canopy on the third day I flew it.

Q: Is that right? How did that happen?

A: Well, it didn’t lock properly. The canopy was not a clam shell. It was the kind that

slid forward, and it had electric switch. When I held the switch, it looked like it was

closed. As I started my takeoff roll, it started to open a little bit. I could feel the air

blowing in on my face. I reached up and hit the switch again and it seemed to close.

Remains of

Butchart’s F-84

canopy. A faulty

latch caused it to

separate while

Butchart took off on

a familiarization

flight in the aircraft.

This was only the

third time he had

flown an F-84.

(E51-0496)
108

After I got airborne it backed off a little bit again and more air

was coming through and hitting me in the face. So I was leaning

down to try to see what was wrong with the latches. And fortunately I was leaning down, I think, because they had a history of

those canopies swiping like that as they came off. I had my head

down looking to see what was wrong with the latching mechanism, and boom, it was gone.

Q: Would you consider yourself one of the second wave of research pilots that was

hired then?

A: No, I’d say the first wave. Because early on when they first came out to Langley

and they were still part of Langley, they would bring a pilot out from Langley and

they would be here for a year. Bob Champine spent a year, and I don’t know who

else. Champine was just going back to Langley when Scott came down in ’50.

Herbert Hoover, who was kind of a senior pilot at Langley, did some of the early

flying on the X-1. In fact, he was the first civilian to fly supersonic after Yeager. But

he would not stay out here. He’d come out on a C-45, stay a few days, make a flight

and go back. And the next month he’d come out and do it again. So when they were

starting to expand, there was Crossfield, and then they hired Walt Jones that fall. The

next spring Joe Walker and I came on and made the four. That was about the minimum they needed to operate with. Because we inherited the B-29 drop airplane from

Douglas that summer, and it took at least three of us, two in the B-29 and one in the

research airplane, to carry on those operations.

Q: Did you work with Neil Armstrong?

A: Yes, in fact, I met Neil in a chow line back at Langley. I was back there for some

meeting in the spring of ’55. There were pilots down from Cleveland. They had four

or five pilots. Ed Gough, as I remember, said, “Hey, I want you to meet this young

fellow.” He introduced me to Neil, and later on in the day he got me aside and he

says, “Hey, you got any openings out there at Edwards?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll

have to ask Joe.” He told me, “We hired Neil knowing we didn’t really have an

opening for him. But his scholastic record was so high we didn’t want to pass him

up.” So after I got home, I talked to Joe Vensel and Walker and told them that this

guy was out at Cleveland and was interested in coming out. Some paperwork transpired, and Neil showed up out at our place in May, I think, of ’55. He flew with me

as co-pilot on the B-29 on some flights, and co-pilot on the B-47, and I dropped him

a few times too in some of the research airplanes.

Q: What was he like? What can you tell me about his personality?

A: Well, Neil was a very quiet fellow. He kept to himself an awful lot. A lot of

people really never did get to know him. He was a bachelor when he first came to

work out there. I’ve forgotten just where he was living. But he would come over to

the house here and spend time with us. My daughter remembers him helping her

with her math when she was going down here to Parkview School. He was kind of

interesting too. Because when he was getting ready to get married or think about it,

he asked me about how Miriam had felt about moving out to the west, coming from

the east coast, because he was going to go back east and marry Jan and bring her out

here. We talked it over and you know if she wants to make the move, why, she will.

Q: Who were some of the other people you worked with that you could tell some

From the pages of

the X-Press.
109

stories about? Maybe you could give me some sense of their personalities. For example, Scott Crossfield. I know you worked with him.

A: Lots of people didn’t get along with Scott, He kind of rubbed them the wrong way.

He had a different personality. He wasn’t arrogant, but he was very positive. He said

what he thought. And sometimes he was on the outside of the envelope with his

thinking which is good. But he didn’t get along with a some of the other pilots.

Q: I see.

A: Scott and I always had a real nice close relationship. He still comes by here maybe

once a year and stops and visits, and we have dinner together. There was kind of a

conflict between Joe Walker and Scott. I think part of the problem — my opinion again

— was that Joe Vensel never was a division boss at that time. He did not appoint a

chief pilot per se. He didn’t say, you know, on paper or say that you’re going to be the

chief pilot. Scott rather assumed he was because he had been at Edwards before Joe

Walker showed up. Joe Walker came out nine months after Scott. But he’d been with

NASA at Lewis in Cleveland for four or five years. So he felt senior, and there was

kind of a competition between the two of them.

Q: What about some of the other people that you came across?

A: Well, the four of us were together for just a year or two. And then again because of

Scott, Walt Jones left. He went over to work for Northrop and he later got killed in an

F-89. But he just could not get along with Scott that well. So he left, and we hired Jack

McKay. Jack McKay had been an engineer. He did what Scott wanted me to do — be

an engineer. Then a year later, after he had the opening, he hired him. So then there was

four of us. We were together about three or four years and did nearly all of the flying

on the rocket airplanes, which was our main operation at that time. Because we had

pretty much finished up with the [D-558] Phase I and the X-4. I still had a program on

the X-5 that ran for another year. Then after that, I guess Neil was the next one that

came on board. He then made our fifth pilot. Then Bill Dana joined us. Milt Thompson

may have been in between there, I can’t remember. Milt was a University of Washington graduate also. He was a year or two behind Scott and I.

Q: Did you know Chuck Yeager pretty well?

A: Oh, commenting on Chuck. I don’t know — we were never very close at all. I just

didn’t care for his attitude.

Q: Okay. Would you say that it takes a certain kind of personality to do the kind of

work you do? How would you describe that personality? And how did that personality

manifest itself in some of the people you worked with?

A: Well, I think any job in test flying — whether it be NASA, or the Air Force, or the

company pilots — I think one of the main things is dedication. You’ve got to believe in

what you’re doing, and be dedicated to it, and love to fly if you’re going to do that sort

of work.

Q: So can you recall how that dedication manifested itself in some of the other people

you worked with? Can you give me an example?

A: Well, I think just in the work that we did, and knowing what the risk involved. We
110

never really thought of it as much of a risk. But you know that those early airplanes

like the X-1’s, the Skyrocket, Skystreak — none of those had ejection seats. They had a

piece of paper showing us the speed and altitude envelope where you would be safe to

get out. You got out of those things [the D-558 aircraft] by pulling one handle which

dropped the nose of the machine off — then another handle that would release your

little back rest and you kind of crawled out the back. That’s not much of a way to get

out of an airplane when you’re in trouble. The envelope was rather restricted too as far

as speed and altitude. When you stop to think of it, [at] the higher speeds, and you drop

the nose off, you’re going to get a very big negative G as you come out of there. So

that restricts you as to how fast you can be going and still use that escape method. We

would look at that and kind of throw it in the back of the desk and go on about our

work.

Q: So what did you do then to ease the stress and tension of where you worked? For

example, maybe you could just describe what you did for entertainment in the early

years out there.

A: Well, I bowled with the NASA bowling team for five or six years. Bill, Walt and I

were on it, one of the painters was on it, a couple of mechanics were on it, an inspector

was on it. It was just made up of the family. We would play softball and had a couple of

softball teams. Somehow if you’d drive clear back to Edwards in the evening you could

play softball. Small groups would get together for picnics on their own besides the

NASA picnic. It was that sort of thing. It was more of a family life for the whole group.

Q: People must have dropped by quite a bit and visited and that kind of thing.

A: Somewhat. I can’t even remember what the activities were. But I remember my

wife and Kleinknecht, who was in our operation here, would swap baby sitting when

the Kleinknechts wanted to go down below, which was a big event in those days. They

would sit for us when we would be out.

The High-Speed

Flight Station

softball team on

the front steps of

the main building.

In the front row, left

to right: Ed

Holleman, Tom

Cooney, Gene

Kenner, George

Miller, Dick Music,

Bob Lyda; back

row: Terry Larson,

Jim Huffman,

Chuck Lewis, Al

Grieshaber, Tom

Finch, Jack

Russell, Al Brown.

NACA personnel

organized many

sports teams,

including basketball and bowling.

(E56-2297)
111

Q: So heavy drinking and that kind of thing, was that part of the —

A: No, no. It was more of just a big family life. There wasn’t any big parties or anything like that. Later on, after the X-15 program [started], they would usually have

some celebrations for the guy who made the first flight. Like I remember when Neil

did and when Pete did and McKay and different ones like that. But that was about the

extent of it.

Q: So, Dryden is said to have unique decentralized and unstructured management

methods. Do you think it deserves its reputation? And, if so, can you give me some

examples of ways in which management at Dryden was unique?

A: Well, I guess I never thought of it as being like that at the time, but it was. Again, I

think it stemmed from the history of the people that came out here in the beginning.

Walt Williams came out with just that small group. So many of them had known each

other for a long time back at Langley. He brought Vensel out from Cleveland. But

Vensel had been a test pilot at Langley back in

’39, ’40, through the war period. So they knew

each other so well I think they just let them do

their thing.

Q: I see. Do you think that it takes a certain

kind of personality to find satisfaction working

in a management capacity out there?

A: Well, it depends on how it works from the

top down. Under Paul Bikle I found it very

enjoyable to work there and Walt Williams

before that. The thing I found with Paul — and

I think this is a mark of a good manager too — if you went to him to ask him for a

decision, or you had a question on something and you wanted him to make a decision,

you’d better have all the answers when you went in there. If you did, and he could ask

you questions and he was satisfied, you got the decision right then. But if you didn’t

have all the answers, you’d go back and do some more homework. But once you

caught on to how he operated like that, it was real easy. And he’d pretty much let you

do your thing.

Q: Was there ever any tension between the Air Force and the NASA flight test programs?

A: Maybe just a little bit. It’s always irked me too that — I hate air shows and I hate

setting records for records sake alone. You know if you get it in the step by step process

of advancing an airplane — fine. But too many times out there, the streets are named

for the guys that were doing this — you know Mel Apt and the rest of them. The Air

Force was strictly trying to set a speed record., and they lost the X-2 for that very

reason. Joe Weil I remember was head of our research group at that time. And he and

another fellow that worked with him sat with the Air Force and told them on that last

X-2 flight, “Don’t do it. We’re running out of directional control.” But the Air Force

knew that was going to be their last flight. They were going to have to turn the airplane

over to the NACA. And they were going to go all out, and they did.

Q: Could you trace out your career at the Flight Research Center for me? I mean just

kind of go through it chronologically. After being brought on board, what project were

From the pages of

the X-Press.
112

you first assigned to, and how long did you work on that one?

A: Well, quite often you had two or three different things you were working on at the

same time. When I came there I had always been a single engine pilot. I remember

Crossfield took me out after I had been there a few weeks to check me out on the C-45.

And that was kind of like the blind leading the blind, because he had never been much

of a multi-engine guy either. So I checked out in the P-51, which was my first fighter

plane to fly, and then the C-45 which we had as a transport. Then that F-84 was the first

jet that I flew. Then from there on you just kind of had to wait your turn. Joe Walker

was flying the [D-558] Phase I when I got there — he and Walt Jones. When they got a

few flights in it and were moving on to something else, then I inherited the Phase I

Skystreak. I had it for about a year or two with different programs on it. But in those

days, sometimes the airplane would be down five or six months while they re-instrumented or reconfigured it for some other future flights they were going to do. I remember the Phase I — I flew it a couple of times in the fall of ’51 and I didn’t fly it again

until the following summer. So they were few and far between.

But NACA was getting the [D-558-II] Skyrocket assigned to them. And that was

the reason they needed another pilot, because the B-29 was going to come with it.

That’s kind of interesting when you think now how many months and months that

pilots go to ground school to get checked out in a new airplane. We inherited the B-29

one afternoon when George Jensen, who was the Douglas pilot that had been flying it,

called up Joe Walker and I and said, “Hey come on down and I’ll give you a flight.”

They were right next door to us, actually. We went out flew the thing for about an hour

or so, and made a couple of landings in the lakebed. And it was our airplane, and we

were multi-engine airplane drivers. Joe was in the left seat when the first couple of

drops were made and I was the co-pilot. Then within a few months he kind of turned

the B-29’s over to me. And for the next five years the biggest workload I had was

flying the 29’s. Then from there I got some flights in the X-4, and then after I had the

X-5 program.

Q: You flew that plane [the X-5] thirteen times between 1952 and 1955.

A: Yes.

Like Crossfield,

Butchart also made

research flights in

the Bell X-5, but

Joe Walker was the

primary project

pilot in the aircraft.

Here, the X-5 is

shown in front of

an NACA hangar.

(E53-1025)
113

Q: What was it like to fly that?

A: Well, they were all interesting. They all had their little idiosyncrasies that you had to

be aware of. If somebody else had flown first, why you could get this stuff from him.

Otherwise you found out by yourself. But they all had some funny things. The speed

brakes on the X-5 were up front [on the nose]. When you opened the speed brakes, you

got quite a nose down pitch. Well, now it would be very unacceptable. But in a research airplane you put up with it because it’s all you’ve got.

Q: But it had some design flaws.

A: Yes, it did.

Q: It had stall speed instability?

A: It had a bad spin characteristic too. Walker got into a spin accidentally. I don’t

remember what he was doing though — early in the program. And he fell about, I don’t

know, 25,000 feet or something before he got out of the [spin]. Then, this is another

example of Crossfield. He went up. He was flying it and knowing that it had this bad

spin, he poked into the same area and got into a spin — which was uncalled for. You

just had to know that and stay away from it. That’s what killed [Maj. Ray] Popson in

the other X-5 that the Air Force was using.

Q: What kind of research were you doing with the X-5?

A: We were still doing some of the stability control with it. But I think one of the main

things that I got into — it had this nasty pitch up that nearly all our swept-wing airplanes in those days had. A lot of the work that we did was investigating the pitch up,

and learning how to live with it, and try to use it even in some of the later airplanes.

But the wing had a kind of glove. When it swept, this glove covered part of the inside

of the wing where the hinge was. They wondered if that was causing a lot of the

airflow that was contributing to the pitch up problem. So they modified it and fixed the

wings at 45 degrees, and then filled in with balsa wood to make a smooth transition

over the wing. And that’s why I flew quite a number of times just with the wings fixed

at 45 [degrees] going through the same investigation for pitch up areas.

Q: What other X planes were you involved with?

A: Well, the only other ones were the X-4, and then the Skystreak and the Skyrocket. I

flew the Skystreak about a total of twelve times.

Q: Do you remember what the focus of that research was?

A: Yes. Part of it was doing a lot of high speed rolls. I don’t remember exactly what we

were looking for then. Tom Sisk was the engineer on some of the later flights. He had a

program where he was trying to look at aileron reversal. Aileron reversal on an airplane

can be predicted by certain parameters that you look at I guess. So you have to get out

to a pretty high speed to investigate the aileron reversal. It was difficult to do it,

because it took most of the gas. It only had 202 gallons in the thing. Nowadays they

call all that pounds. But that one had gallons. It took you quite a bit of the tankage just

to get the altitude. And you’d get just as high as you could, and then milk it over to try

to get speed by dropping your nose, without getting down so far that you were getting

into denser air early on. So it was kind of a game to play. Once you’d get out to speed,
114

then the only maneuver you had to do was just to crank the wheel over just as hard as

you could. And from the measurements of the data they could tell whether there was

any aileron reversal apparent.

Q: I see.

A: Aileron reversal was more apparent in some of the earlier planes like the B-47. It

had a bad case of aileron reversal. It killed [Capt.] Joe Wolfe [and his crew] out there in

’51. But that was another interesting program. I had that one for quite a few years. Joe

Walker and I went to ground school on the B-47 in Wichita, Kansas in the spring of

’52. It was kind of ironic, because a year earlier I was working at Boeing on the

drawing board with the B-47, and a year later I’m flying the thing. We were there about

two or three months. They put us through a T-33 instruments school first, and then the

B-47. We had our choice of the 47 we were going to get. We could either pick one of

the early models that they had there at Wichita, or wait for a B model. After talking it

over, we decided to stick with the A model. In fact we had the number one A model —

1900. Because they had ejection seats in them. Later on the B-47’s did not have

ejection seats in them. We thought for our test work that was better. So it was flown

back to Langley and was there about nine months I guess, before Joe and I brought it

out here in March of ’53. Then we flew it for another four or five years.

Q: Can you describe what happened on August 8th of 1955?

A: Did you ever read that article in “Reader’s Digest?”

Q: I’ve read a few things about that.

A: Yes, I think that’s a pretty factual article. Because I was kind of surprised. I have

always shied away from newspaper reporters or anything like that, because they’re

going to structure the thing to make it sound exciting and wild and wooly when it’s

down to earth work. But Vensel talked to us about it — did we want to talk to these

“Reader’s Digest” people. We said yes. And after the guy came out and he interviewed

us and talked to all of us he wrote his article. Then the people from “Reader’s Digest”

called and went through it with you.

Q: Oh.

A: Did he say this? Did you say that? Then what happened — they were verifying

every line almost in the thing, which I thought was pretty good because it gave you a

chance to make some corrections. But I thought it was a pretty interesting day. It was

our second flight on the X-1A. We just had inherited it from the Air Force, and we also

inherited the other B-29. The B-29’s were cut a little differently to carry the different

research airplanes. The X-1 B-29 did not carry the Skyrockets and vice versa. But that

was a pretty routine flight up until one minute to [launch]. The engineers wanted each

of the different rocket airplanes dropped in a different place. I don’t really remember

why. I remember that the Skyrocket #145 they wanted dropped somewhere west of

Rosamond. And the #144 was back out over Lake Elizabeth. The X-1 they wanted

dropped clear over by Victorville. So we went out somewhere over Big Bear Lake, in

that area. In those days it was interesting. Because in the B-29, I called all the shots.

Fire trucks would not go out onto the lake until I called them because we spent the first

hour climbing. So after about 20 or 30 minutes of climbing I’d call for the fire trucks to

come out. A few minutes later I’d call for the chase airplanes to come on up and join

us. I’d set the timing and the whole thing. We didn’t have a control room like we have
115

now. We had nothing really, just a radio that you listened to. I would pick a six minute

point out where I wanted to drop. I’d fly two minutes out, and two minutes in the turn,

and two minutes back. Somewhere from about ten minutes on down the checklist stuff

got pretty busy. I’d call the minutes and Joe would go through what was there for ten

minutes, and six minutes, and on down. The procedure was that at one minute Joe’s job

on his checklist was to pressurize the tanks. And it built pretty good sized pressure.

When he flipped the switch it opens the valve and boom — the pressure hits right now

in the tanks. For years we’d been doing it like this. But when he flipped the switch it

went bang — and there was a tremendous explosion.

I’d usually let the co-pilot do the flying, and I’d kind of turn around and wonder

what was going on with the flight engineer and with the co-pilot and the people working with the rocket airplane in the back. When it exploded, I really thought we’d hit

another airplane because the B-29 lurched so. But almost immediately I had a call from

the F-86 pilot, and he says, “Hey, you’ve had a fire. There’s a fire.” Then almost

immediately after that he said, “Well, the fire’s gone out.” Well, you can imagine at

31,000-32,000 feet there’s not enough oxygen to support much of a fire, so whatever

was burning was just a few seconds. But there’s a closeout hole on the back of the

liquid oxygen tank — maybe 12-15 inches wide — where they can get in and inspect

that it’s the closeout after they’ve manufactured the thing. That is fastened to the tank

The TCP test stand.

During the 1950s,

four rocket powered

aircraft suffered

explosions - the X1D, the X-1 #3, the

X-2 #2, and the X1A. Although

possible causes for

the explosions were

suggested, not until

the loss of the X-1A

did the actual

reason surface.

Examination of the

wreckage revealed

traces of tricresyl

phosphate (TCP) in

the liquid oxygen

(lox) tank. All of the

rocket aircraft that

exploded used

leather gaskets

treated with TCP.

The TCP separated

from the leather and

pooled in the tanks.

At low temperatures

TCP exploded under

relatively low impact

forces, such as

when the LOX tank

was pressurized.

The test stand

shown here –

designed by NACA

engineer Donald

Bellman – dropped

a five-pound weight

ten feet, onto a loxsoaked leather

gasket and frozen

TCP. In 30 tries, the

TCP exploded 30

times. Reexamination of the other

explosions supported the leather

gasket theory. The

accident board

concluded that the

X-1A had been

destroyed by the

exploding gaskets,

and surmised that

this also caused the

other three explosions. The gaskets

were removed from

the remaining rocket

aircraft, and no

other explosions

occurred.

(E55-1985)
116

From the pages of

the X-Press.
117

with a whole series of bolts, and in between there’s a gasket. We always referred to it

as an Ulmer gasket. The gasket felt kind of waxy — and you can’t use any oils around

oxygen at all. So it had to be something that did not have oil in it.

It turned out that this was the fourth accident that happened in a similar way. They

lost the X-1D in August of ’51 with an explosion after they had aborted the flight and

were down at low altitude. The pilot was pressurizing the tanks so he could jettison the

fuels and it blew. Anyway, the pilot jumped up and got back into the B-29, and then

they dropped it onto the desert right over there by 120th Street. They went through a

full lengthy investigation on that and came to some conclusion. A few months later the

X-1 number three went through a similar thing where they had aborted a flight, came

back down on the ground, to the east end of the field to sit there and go through the

jettison process. When he switched to pressurize it blew. Then the X-2 back at Lake

Ontario a few years later was in a similar process. All of them had big investigations,

and they thought they had come to some conclusion of what was causing it. There was

the nitrogen that you carried. In one of the airplanes there was a lot of small tubes, a

whole rack of them. They were right behind the pilot, and they were right in front of

the liquid oxygen tanks. They were cold. And they felt that the metal got extra brittle

and caused the blowing. It wasn’t until after the X-1A that Don Bellman, who was one

of the instrumental people, did a chemical analysis and found out there were small

traces of TCP [tricresyl phosphate] in the cylinder gasket.

Q: What’s TCP?

A: It was a chemical, in those days you used to hear of them adding it to Shell gasoline.

That would give it more zip....I remember that Shell used to advertise they had TCP in

their gas. Bellman found out that small traces of TCP in the presence of oxygen was

impact sensitive. So when you pressurized the tank you had quite a jar to it and it blew.

Now why it didn’t the other few hundred times that they did this process I don’t know.

But it did on a few occasions. He took us out there on the ramp and showed us a little

cup with a steel rod going to it. And in the cup he would put some liquid oxygen and a

couple of drops of TCP and then slide a weight down that rod so it would hit there and

boom — it just — bang.

Q: So when that explosion occurred on the X-1A, what did you do at that time?

A: Well, things happened pretty fast, and it takes a second or two to assess what in the

world has happened. Then when the chase plane calls and you know they have fire —

and a lot of people knew that — we had three guys right behind me that helped put Joe

in the cockpit and get him out and all. I think they went out there immediately and they

were able to get the canopy off. Joe was kind of stunned, I think, when it first happened. Because it was a pretty hard bang in the X-1A itself. It sheared the bolts on a

side structure that has pins that go into the X-1A wing. So you knew there was a pretty

good load in there. They got into the bomb bay and got the canopy off, and got Joe out.

And of course he was unhooked from his oxygen mask the moment he came out. He

crawled up forward on the floor beside me. I looked around real quick to try to find an

oxygen hose. So I think I used mine momentarily to let him get a couple of breaths of

oxygen. Then we located another oxygen hose and got it on him. But he looked like a

little lost puppy dog when he came crawling up front there.

Q: So did you have trouble taking the plane in?

A: No, no trouble with it. The thing flew alright. It takes you about, I don’t know, 30

minutes or so to get down from altitude. It isn’t like a fighter that you can dive down.
118

So we were circling the base and discussing with the ground people. I wanted to land

the B-29. It blew the landing gear of the X-1A down also. It unlatched them and they

came down. Since they’re just a one shot deal when you get ready to land, there’s no

way to retract them. I thought if we land gently the gears are going to retract some

anyway when we land. I thought we could work it that way. But they convinced me

that it wasn’t a good idea. So the Air Force told me to take it out over PB-6 [bombing

range] and drop the X-1A, which was a sad way to get rid of an airplane.

Q: Were you involved in the testing of the F-100A?

A: Yes, I did a lot of work on the A.

Q: Do you remember what year that was?

A: It started in — let’s see, we got the F-100 in ’54 after we moved up to the new

hangars. And it was down for about a year getting instrumented. I guess we started

flying it in ’55 and I got on it, a few months after it got going. That was probably ’55

or ’56.

Q: I see. So they were coming up with some kind of redesign because of some accidents?

A: Yes. George Welch was killed in one of the early F-100s. He was a North American

pilot, and he was demonstrating the corner of the envelope, a high speed, high-G

pullout. When he did, the airplane lost directional control and went sideways. I think

the nose broke off. But anyway I don’t believe he ejected. But his parachute did open.

We had the only instrumented airplane at the time. So North American built a larger tail

— I think it was a 10% larger tail vertical — and put it on our airplane and we did the

testing of that. It proved that was what they needed. All of them after that had a larger

tail vertical.

Q: So what was it like to fly this plane? What were you trying to understand from your

work with it?

A: An awful lot of the work that I did in the F-100 was aileron rolls. I did three or four

hundred of them. The thing we were trying to hone in on at that time was the early

An F-100 with the

modified taller tail

on the Rogers dry

lakebed. Butchart

and Crossfield

both made important contributions

to the inertial

coupling tests.

(This is the same

aircraft that

Crossfield put into

the hangar wall.)

(E55-2097)
119

airplane had a very sensitive lateral [throw]. As I remember, the lateral throw was only

something like two inches each way and with 30 degrees of aileron. So later on the

throw was, I think, four inches each way. But we went through the whole program

where we had a pin fastened to the stick. Then a strap was fastened to the side of the

cockpit with a piece of metal that had holes in it that gave you two, four, six, eight

degrees of aileron. You’d go through a whole series of maneuvers where you’d put it in

pin for ten degrees and pop the stick over and get the rolls. You had to do this at two or

three different altitudes, then six degrees, and two degrees and on down, trying to see

how much they could lower the 30 degrees and still have a moveable airplane.

Q: Were you involved in the large aircraft studies at Dryden with the KC-135?

A: Yes. I did nearly all of the big airplane work at NASA — the B-29’s, the B-47 —

then I got the KC-135 program in ’58. We only had the airplane for three months and

we really had to do some fast work. We went two or three times a week with that.

Q: Why were you chosen to fly the big planes?

 A: I liked them. After I got into the B-29’s and I was kind of the sole driver of them for

four or five years. Then I had the B-47 for about four years. I just kind of fell to it. I

liked the big airplanes. Some of the guys thought they were nothing but fighter pilots

and wanted to stick with the little ones.

But I had an interesting flight in the KC-135 back on December 11 of ’57. It was

my [third] checkout flight in the Air Force. There was an Air Force Captain named Bill

Lake. He and I were getting checked out in the thing. We took off at about 2:00 in the

afternoon. There was a T-33 that took off either right ahead of us or right behind us — I

don’t remember. And an hour later we met him over Rosamond Lake head on. We

weren’t at high speed or that at all. We were just moseying along. At the particular time

I was not flying. I had gotten out and was standing between the two pilots. I was going

A photo of the KC135 and its crew.

Butchart served as

the project pilot,

and conducted

tests of new air

traffic procedures

for the faster and

higher flying jet

airliners. Left to

right: Jack McKay,

Stan Butchart,

Cecil Dome, Wilber

McClenaghan,

unknown, Milt

Thompson, Bill

Betts, Larry

Barnett, Don Hall,

Captain Bill Lake

(USAF) (E58-3914)
120

through some emergency procedures orally with the Major that was checking us out.

He was asking, “What would you do if you lost your fuel pump in that number four

tank over there?” I said, “Well, you go from that valve and gravity feed the fuel into the

fuselage tank, and you resort to things like that.” I was kind of leaning on the two seats

looking out the window casually, and all of a sudden I saw this dot out in front of me.

The dot got big fast, and all I had time to do was point and open my mouth. I never had

time to yell. Fortunately, the Captain that was flying the left seat saw it about the same

time I did, and he just jerked on the wheel and all it did was lift our nose up. He hit us

in the belly, and he slid through the belly of the tanker for about 40 feet.

It was fortunate the way he hit. Because if he had been off one side or the other,

he’d have probably stuck a tip tank down one of our engines. He was only — as I

remember — something like nine degrees off our opposite heading, and 14 inches off

the center line. He was that close to being in line. It looked like he was coming right

into the windshield when I saw him. The Major that was talking to me was looking at

me at the time. He said, “What the hell is that?” I said, “We hit another airplane.” And

he said, “What?” He couldn’t believe it. He said, “What was it?” I said, “I think it was

a T-33.” Well, things got interesting then because we lost cabin pressurization and

ruptured some of the structure in the back of the airplane. But being at 20,000 [feet] it

isn’t as critical as being like 30,000 or 40,000 feet. But I reached down and grabbed the

hard hats for the other two guys and my own and put them on.

I turned around and looked in the back. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a KC-135,

but there’s nothing in there. It’s just like a big tube all the way to the back. There’s no

seats or anything. I looked at the back and it looked like smoke back at the very rear

end, and I thought, “boy, we’ve got something going.” So I went on back to the rear

end, and there was a couple of Air Force young fellows that had just bummed a ride

with us. They were sitting on the jump seat along the side, and they were white as that

cat’s white fur. They asked what happened, so I told them the best I knew. I went back

and looked and it wasn’t smoke. It was JP-4 fumes. The fumes was fogging and filling

the thing. And what had happened — I found out later — there was a big hole in the

back of the fuselage where this big fuselage tank is that the KC has. We were dumping

fuel into it from the wing tank, and it was running out. It went along the fuselage and it

also cracked open the refueler dome, where the crewman lays down for the refueling.

The JP-4 was seeping in there and foaming as it did. So up front they started to pull the

circuit breakers to kill everything in the back of the airplane. Because there was oxygen

masks and hoses and everything laying down in there.

But it got interesting, because [the collision] knocked out all our hydraulics. The

KC-135 had just two hydraulic pumps on the number two and three engine, and it was

a crossover system that was mounted on the forward bulkhead of the wheel well. The

T-33 went right through there, and took all that out. So we lost all hydraulics. But

fortunately the KC-135, like the 707, had a little feeler aileron that was cable-connected

to the wheel just to give the pilot the feel for aileron loading.

That worked alright for us. But it took us about an hour to get down. We had to

come down real slow. We had to eventually crank the gear down, and crank the flaps

down, and lock out all our radios also. So we couldn’t communicate with anybody. But

we did turn on the emergency IFF switch. Edwards had a radar in those days that was

located out north of Boron, I think. They called Edwards and said, “Hey, we see an

emergency IFF out over Rosamond.” They got a call about the same time that there was

a crash out on Rosamond Dry Lake. So they sent the fire trucks and everything out to

Rosamond, thinking that that was where the IFF was coming from, and found that that

was a burning heap. Then they called back and said, “Hey, we still see that IFF.”

So they sent up an F-100 as a chase plane. He couldn’t stay with us — he went by

it pretty fast and couldn’t slow down because we were getting down pretty low in speed

at that time going down. Then they sent up a T-33, and he could sit alongside of us
121

pretty good. I was writing notes to him on a piece of paper — “no hydraulics” — he

nodded his head, and I wrote “no brakes” — and he nodded his head. Then when we

got down low we saw they had the fire trucks lined up on the main concrete runway —

the big one. We couldn’t land on that, we wanted the lakebed. So I wrote to him, “the

south lakebed.” So all the fire trucks moved out to the south lakebed. When we got

ready to lower the gear and the flaps, I went back and got these two young Air Force

guys to do the cranking. One of them was a six foot something kid — great big feet.

When we went to put the gear down, I remembered the emergency instructions, well,

they were written on the side of the fuselage in there anyway. He turned the cranks

three turns one direction to release the up locks. Then the gear supposedly free fall, and

then you could turn it six turns the other way to lock it. The next morning when I

looked at the airplane, I wondered why it came down at all because of the shambles

through there. But it came down just like the book said. They locked and got a green

light, and then we started the flaps down. We really needed to get the flaps at least to 30

degrees. Because when you got past 30 degrees, it brought some outboard ailerons into

play.

So I put these young kids to work. The kid put the crank in the hole for the flaps.

He started turning and I went to both sides of the airplane to make certain that both

flaps were coming down, and nothing happened. I looked back and I told him to try

that again, and still nothing happened. Finally, he stood up, and he took his foot and

went boom — and he popped that crank down into the hole a little further and away it

went. But you had to turn that thing 400 times, I think it was, to get the flaps all the

way down. We never did get them all the way down. The air load got too much and you

just didn’t achieve it. But we got them down far enough to get the ailerons into play.

We just landed on the lakebed and we had no nose wheel steering, no brakes, just let

her roll.

Q: Wow.

A: And we rolled about three miles I think.

Q: Were you involved in any other accident situations that you recall?

A: Yes. There was another one with a B-29. Neil was my co-pilot that day.

Q: Neil Armstrong?

A: Yes. That was on March 22 of 1956, and it was in the B-29 (modified and designated P2B-1S) and the Skyrocket. Jack McKay was in the Skyrocket. Again, I had gone

through the routine of calling for the fire trucks to come onto the lake and then the

chase plane. We just about got to our altitude, and I usually worked to get to 31,000-

32,000 feet, whichever came easy that day. Sometimes you could get to 34,000, I

remember. We just got to altitude and the flight engineer called me and he said, “Hey,

number four quit.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “It just quit.” And I said,

“Have you tried cross-feeding the fuel from another tank?” “Yes.” “Have you tried...”

— I asked him two or three other things. “Yes.” He had tried everything. So I wasn’t

too concerned about it. B-29 engines are not all that dependable anyway. We pushed

them hard, you know.

We went at max flying power for about an hour and maybe an hour and a half

sometimes to get up there. So I thought — well, no problem — we’ll feather the thing.

We’ve done that before. And then go about our business. I pushed the feathering button

and it went down to what looked like a feather position and the RPM looked like it had

gone to zero. All of a sudden, it started to unfeather from the air loads on it. It hadn’t
122

gone quite far enough, so that the

air loads on the blade was pushing

it to unfeather. As it unfeathered,

the RPM’s started up. And I

thought — boy, we’ve got it now.

I thought about it a minute and

then I decided well — maybe if I

push that button and hold it real

hard it will get it feathered all the

way.

Well, all it did was get to the

end of the button top with my

finger still on it, so I pushed it

and then it was in the unfeather

position for the second time I

pushed it. So I gave up on that.

I could just to this day picture

in the handbook one page in

there where it told about if you

had a runaway propeller, and you were

above 20,000 feet, and you couldn’t get it

slowed down below, I think, 120 [knots],

that you were going to have a centrifugal disintegration. Just put it at a slower speed

and go. I could see that page real clear. So about that time, Jack called because we were

already into our six minute pattern. All this was going on, Neil was doing the flying,

and I was directing where we wanted to go. Jack calls and says, “Hey, Butch — you

can’t drop me. My Grover loader valve just broke.” It was a valve that was down by

the side that you used to build up the pressure on one of his systems. I don’t remember

which one.

Stan Butchart had

many close calls

during his years as

a research pilot.

One of these

involved the near

loss of the P2B

drop plane (the

Navy designation

for the B-29) in

March 1956. After

an in flight engine

failure, Butchart

tried to feather the

number four

propeller. But due

to the airplane’s

high speed, the

propeller rotated so

fast that it broke

apart, throwing

debris into the

number 3 engine

and fuselage. Pilot

John McKay and

the D-558-II were

dropped from the

P2B only moments

before the propeller

disintegrated.

McKay jettisoned

the Skyrocket’s

propellant and

glided it to a

successful landing

on the lakebed.

The P2B required

extensive repairs,

and it did not make

another launch until

August 24, 1956.

From the pages of the X-Press.
123

But he said he felt the valve pop in his hand on the shaft. I guess he couldn’t go up

any higher on the pressure. Well, the other thing is, our B-29’s had only enough oil for

three feather cycles. For practice you could feather and unfeather and then you had one

more for real. I had already gone through two of them. So I knew I had one more. I

thought well, I’ll give it one more try.

So I pushed it again. It went down and almost fully feathered again, and looked like

it was going to stop. Then it started unwinding and away it went. I knew at that time

that we were in deep trouble. So I told Neil, and I called Jack and I said, “Jack, I’ve got

to drop you.” I motioned to Neil to nose over because you usually had to put the B-29

in a slight dive to get up to the drop speed so that the Skyrocket wouldn’t come out in a

stall. Get him up over 200, so Neil did. And when he got up to 200, the speed we were

looking for, I reached up and grabbed the emergency release which I had never used.

But I knew it was there all the time. I gave that a pull and nothing happened. I pulled it

two or three times real quick. Then I reached up and you have two switches you have to

throw on the dash, plus the pickle button. I threw those two switches and pickled Jack

off, and he dropped.

It seemed like it was only about 10-15 seconds after that that the engine went

kaboom. It was a centrifugal disintegration, and parts just went in all four directions. In

fact, Neil said that the big nose bullet on the propeller went by him. We were probably

doing 300 or 400 [knots] true air speed. One of the air blades came off through the air

induction scoop on the bottom of the number three engine, went through the bomb bay,

and hit my number two engine. So it was going at a good clip.

After it was over with, everything is quiet. I thought — whew, we’re home free.

Then I turned around, and I went to take over control again. And the wheel was completely loose on my side — nothing. The aileron was gone. I looked over and Neil was

still hanging on. And I said, “Do you have lateral control?” He said, “Yes, a little bit.”

He had some slop in the wheel but he picked up the catch. So between the two of us we

got the thing down. Of course we were at 30,000 feet, so we just kind of made a long

glide out past Boron, back in, and made it straight in on the north lakebed. But once we

got down we saw what the problem was. It had cut my aileron cables completely, and it

had slashed his aileron cable down to where he had about one or two strands left. When

you cut a cable under tension like that it frays out, and that fraying was catching in one

of the fairleads. That was what was catching every once in awhile.

Q: Of all the planes you’ve flown, which is your best memory? In other words, what

project did you most enjoy taking part in?

A: Oh, I’ve been asked that before. And I think I keep coming back to the B-47. It was

a fun airplane and it was pretty advanced for its day. I just enjoyed flying it. It’s also

interesting that when Scott and I were going to the University of Washington, we had a

professor that had come from Boeing in ’47 I think. We took aircraft structures from

him. But he had worked for Boeing, and he had been the design engineer on the B-47

wing. So you felt like he had some personal knowledge of how the whole thing developed back in the early days. But it was a nice airplane to fly. It was tricky too, you

know, with the little bicycle landing gear. You had to be down to just the right speed so

you touched front and rear at the same time. If you were shooting touch and go’s, your

co-pilot would keep checking your weight. And maybe every time you’d have to reduce

your air speed a little bit. You had to keep it low. If you get too fast and you touch the

first one front gear down, then it had a tendency to porpoise. If you touched the back

one down, it could put too much of a load on the front gear. But if you had the speed

down right it just touched down nice.

Q: Can you describe how, as technology evolved, the work and life at the Flight
124

Research Center changed? In other words, how did technology change the life and

work you did out there?

A: Well, I think the technology evolved kind of with the speed in which we were

advancing airplanes. Particularly I think of the recording systems that we had. Early

on, like I said, we had no radar. All we had was a guy sitting in a room talking to you.

Then later on we had a very simple plotting board that gave you an XY plot of where

the flight was. Then, of course, when the X-15 came along, we started developing that

control room upstairs which was just very simple to start with. There was no radar plot

display on the wall. It was just dials in front of you. I think the technology and that sort

of stuff was as big a boon to the pilots as it was to the gathering of the data. You had

somebody to help you look over the gauges and watch to see what was going on.

Q: You were a contributor to several research papers while you worked at —

A: Well, the only one that comes to mind mainly was the work on the KC-135. And

that was all aimed at looking at the KC-135 as a civilian transport. It was basically the

same airplane as a 707. The airlines were going to introduce the 707s in the fall of ’58.

I think American [Airlines] got the first ones. And there was a lot of discussion about

how they were going to fit in with traffic — how the pilots were going to be able to

transition to them from props, and deal with the different flight characteristics of a

swept-wing airplane. So we used the KC-135 as a civilian transport in the work we did

with it. The papers that were given that fall back at Langley — I gave one and Jack

Fischel gave the other one. He gave a talk on the low speed end of it and the handling

qualities. I gave the paper on the high speed end of it. Of course it was to a lot of the

airline representatives there.

Q: What type of aviation activities have you been involved with since your retirement

— any at all?

A: Nothing other than keeping up my activity and my active participation in our Test

Pilot’s Society. I was a charter member in the Society when we started in ’55. We

finally got chartered in ’56. There were 65 of us that were charter members, and now

there’s about 1,800 or so. They’re all over the world. We’ve even got Russian pilots in

now. It grew from just a handful of us starting. I think there were five fellows who

went to lunch one day back in ’55 and talked about it. This one fellow had a vision of

what he wanted that was — what it was going to be like to form this Society. The next

week a few more of us joined in. Then word got out and we had probably at least 65.

We spent almost a year having a dinner every Thursday night, and then assigning

sections of the Constitution to different people to write up. It took us about a year to

put the whole thing together. But it’s become a very worldwide prestigious organization.

Q: Looking back at your career, what are the main research contributions that you have

been involved in? And what major technical innovations resulted from projects you

worked on?

A: I don’t really know. I think a lot of the work we did in those early days was pitch

up’s. It was a problem — it was a very serious problem with the airplanes. And we

tried to find ways to alleviate it or to live with it. And that was the work I did on the X5, that’s what I did on the F-100, on the F-86.... it was 36 years of flying. And it was all

interesting, up to the last.
125

Epilogue

The early years of the NACA’s High Speed Flight Station concluded with the

demise of the NACA itself. The era ended for several reasons. By the early 1960s,

Mach 2 performance had become the norm for fighter aircraft, and – from a military

viewpoint – not much could be gained by increasing speeds further. Also, during most

of the 1950s, one generation of aircraft succeeded another by only a few years. By the

end of the decade, this pattern changed. The fighter aircraft introduced during the late

1950s continued in service for a decade, and not until the mid-1970s did a whole new

generation of fighters appear.

But as one frontier closed, another opened. This change involved a landmark

event in human history. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the

first artificial satellite, an event deeply troubling to the American people. Spaceflight -

an idea that many scientists had dismissed as fit only for Tom Corbett: Space Cadet or

other children’s television shows — suddenly became part of the rivalry between the

U.S. and the Soviet Union.

As a result of Sputnik’s launch, the NACA became the core of a new organization: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The change-over

became official on October 1, 1958. Less than a year later, on September 27, 1959, the

High-Speed Flight Station became the NASA Flight Research Center. The new emphasis on space became clear. In 1955, research attention focused on such issues as inertial

coupling, roll rates for Mach 2 fighters, and transonic airloads and drag. By 1958,

emphasis had shifted to hypersonic boost-gliders, reaction controls, satellites, and

winged spacecraft. The amount of time devoted to space-related activities increased by

two or three, while research on aircraft technology dropped by that much or more.

The X-15 represented the signature space activity of the Flight Research Center

during the 1960s. Conceived during the mid-1950s, this aircraft carried the nation into

the space age, flying as fast as Mach 6.7 and achieving altitudes above 50 miles, the

realm of space. The X-15 stimulated another transformation of the Flight Research

Center; most of the facility’s personnel now supported the X-15 program. Moreover, by

its final flight in 1968, the X-15 had provided data and experience critical to the design

of the space shuttle.

Even as the X-15 set new altitude and speed records in the early 1960s, other

space-related activities began. The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) proved the

feasibility of a soft landing on the Moon. Additionally, the lifting body program tested a

variety of new configurations, much as the X-3, X-4, and X-5 had a decade before. In

concept, the lifting bodies continued the local initiative and can-do spirit of the early

days at South Base. Dale Reed conducted his initial tests with models, flown down the

hallways of the main building, launched off its roof, and carried aloft by remote controlled model airplanes. Construction of a full-scale prototype cost surprisingly little.

Built in the corner of a hangar, the M2-F1’s exterior was made of wood and its internal

framework consisted of welded steel tubing. For the next decade, the heavy-weight

lifting bodies — the M2-F2, M2-F3, HL-10, and X-24A/B — tested different configurations. Although the shuttle design ultimately had wings, the lifting bodies (as well as

the X-15) gave confidence that the Shuttle Orbiter could re-enter from space and make

a safe landing on a runway.
126

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About The Author

Curtis Peebles has been working at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center since

November 2000. He is employed by Analytical Services & Materials, Inc. A freelance

writer since 1977, he has written 11 books, including Dark Eagles, The Corona

Project, Flying Without Wings (with the late NASA research pilot Milt Thompson), and

Asteroids: A History, as well as more than forty articles on various aspects of Cold War

aerospace history. He received a BA in History from Cal State University Long Beach

in 1985. Peebles is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a member of the

Flight Test Historical Foundation.

Acknowledgments

I want to first thank the individuals who’s observations, opinions, and recollections

appear in this monograph, and for their willingness to share them. While documents

and official records record events, only recollections such as these can let us know

what it was actually like to be there when those events happened. Thanks also to Betty

Love, who contributed one of the accounts. She is an ex-computer who now works as a

volunteer at the Dryden history office, providing fifty years of living history. Thanks

also to Rick Norwood, the Edwards AFB archeologist, for the Air Force interview of

Walt Williams; to Jay Levine for scanning the Richard Day interview; the Dryden

photo lab for scanning the images used in the monograph; to Dr. Michael Gorn, Peter

Merlin, and Dr. Christian Gelzer for proofreading and fact-checking; and to Steve

Lighthill for his imaginative book design and page layout.
128

Index

Aircraft, research.

B-24, 48.

B-29/P2B, 4, 8, 80, 91, 101, 112, 114-119,

121-123.

B-47, 28, 31, 101, 114, 119, 123.

C-46, 48.

C-82, 48.

D-558-I, 3, 4, 39, 40, 47, 49, 50, 80, 84, 90,

91, 101, 106, 107, 112, 113.

D-558-II, 4, 5, 8, 44, 47, 50, 51, 59, 77, 79,

80, 84, 87, 91-93, 98, 101, 107, 112-114,

121-123.

F7U, 52, 53, 79.

F-84, 107, 108, 112.

F-100A, 63, 64, 67, 69-71, 77, 83-85, 93, 94,

118, 119, 124.

F-104, 74.

JF-107A, 64, 93-95.

KC-135, 94-96, 101, 119-121, 124.

Lifting Bodies, 125.

Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV),

125.

P-51, 45, 46, 112.

U-2, 66.

X-1, 3-5, 7, 25, 34, 43, 47, 49, 50, 52, 67, 77,

80, 81, 92, 108.

X-1A, 57, 114-118.

X-1B, 74.

X-2, 5, 53, 68, 71-73, 84, 92.

X-3, 5, 60, 64, 67-70, 87, 92, 93, 94.

X-4, 4, 5, 28, 39, 40, 43, 47, 51, 77, 79, 92,

101, 107, 112, 113.

X-5, 4, 5, 59, 77, 81, 92, 101, 107, 112, 113,

124.

X-15, 59, 64, 72, 77, 84, 85, 93, 94, 125.

XB-70, 59.

XF-92A, 4, 5, 67, 77, 81, 82.

YB-49A, 5.

Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival, 39.

Apt, Capt. Milburn, 53, 71-73, 84, 111.

Armstrong, Neil, 34, 61, 108, 109, 121-123.

Aviation Writers Association, 12, 13.

Bailey, Clyde, 18-46, 81.

Barnes, Florence “Pancho,” 2, 6, 9-16, 38, 43.

Beeler, De, 33, 38, 45, 49, 57, 59, 60, 69, 90, 96.

Bikle, Paul, 16, 60, 61, 70, 96, 97, 111.

Borchers, Don, 18-46.

Boyd, Col. Albert, 10, 11, 13, 64.

Buffet, vibration, and flutter, 59, 60.

Bush, George, 105.

Butchart, Stanley P., 95, 96, 101-124.

Car pools, 91, 92.

Champine, Bob, 47, 49, 78, 108.

Chance Vought Aircraft, 47, 52, 53.

Clark, J. R., 52.

Computers (electronic), 59, 67, 69, 71-74, 77.

Computers (human), 4, 39, 55-61, 91.

Cox, Richard, 18-46.

Crash research, 48.

Crossfield, A. Scott, 43, 44, 50, 77-86, 101, 104,

 105, 108, 109, 112, 113, 118, 123.

Dampers, 68, 70, 71.

Dana, Bill, 94, 109.

Day, Richard E., 67-75, 93.

Drake, Hubert, 49, 53, 69, 70, 84, 90.

Dryden, Hugh L., 10, 66.

Duntley Ranch, 29.

Edwards, Capt. Glen, 5.

Escape capsules, 84, 85, 110.

Everest, Lt. Col. Pete, 64, 72, 80, 82.

Fischel, Jack, 70, 87-99.

Fisken, Tom, 59, 60.

Flight Research Center, 125.

Friden calculator, 58, 59.

Gilkey, Col. Signa, 8-10, 13.

Goodlin, Chalmers “Slick,” 10.

Gough, Eddie, 32, 33, 48, 49. 108.

Gough, Mel, 25, 26, 30-32, 49.

Gray, Bill, 45.

Griffith, John, 33, 43, 47-53, 78.

Hanna, Dick, 44.

Happy Bottom Riding Club, 2, 6, 9-16, 38, 43.

Harwell, Walter “Rebel,” 99.

High-Speed Flight Research Station, 6, 8, 67.

High-Speed Flight Station, 6, 63, 64, 67, 91, 125.

Holtoner, Gen. J. Stanley, 13, 14, 16.

Hoover, Bob, 83.

Hoover, Herb, 43, 49, 108.

Hope, Bob, 43.

Hughes, Howard, 8, 34, 35.

Icing research, 48.

Inertial coupling, 63, 64, 67-73, 77, 87, 92-94.
129

Instrumentation, 51, 98, 99.

Jensen, George, 112.

“Jet Pilot” (movie), 52.

Jones, Walt, 108, 109, 112.

Kerosene Flats, 2, 6, 9, 21, 55.

Kincheloe, Capt. Iven C., 72.

Knapp, Col. Howard C. 15.

Lake, Capt. Bill, 119-121.

Laminar flow, 45.

Lancaster, 1, 21, 36, 37, 41, 52, 58, 75, 91, 92,

Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, 1, 3,

 19, 20, 25, 26, 31, 42, 49, 69, 87-91, 97, 98.

Lewis Propulsion Laboratory, 47-49, 109.

Lilly, Howard, 43.

Lookout Mountain Air Force Station, 60.

Love, Betty, 55-61.

Ma Greene’s café, 25, 43.

Martin, Isabell, 4.

McKay, Jack, 95, 109, 119, 121-123.

Men’s Dorm, 22, 24, 56, 64.

Mojave, 1, 9, 20, 21, 29, 30, 37, 74, 90, 91.

Morris, Cliff, 14, 16, 17.

Muroc Flight Test Unit, 4-6.

Officer’s club, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29.

Palmdale, 1, 9, 21, 37.

“Pathway to the Stars” (movie), 60.

Payne, Dick, 28, 40.

Phillips, William H., 68, 69, 71.

Pitch up, 50, 64, 87, 92, 93, 98, 113.

Popson, Maj. Ray, 81, 113.

Power, Gen. Thomas S., 84.

Proctor, LeRoy, 25, 30.

Rattlesnakes, 36.

Reaction Control Systems, 53, 74.

Reed, Dale, 125.

Ridley, Jack, 81.

Shoop, Col. Richard R., 9.

Snow, 36, 37, 59.

Soule, Hartley, 32, 33, 89.

Sparks, Ralph, 18-46.

Sports teams, 26, 27, 64, 65, 110, 111.

Sputnik I, 125.

Stack, John, 3, 32, 33.

Starr, Kevin, 1.

Storms, Harrison, 85.

Structures, 59.

Tehachapi, 21.

Thompson, Milt, 101, 109, 119.

Tricresyl phosphate (TCP), 115-117.

United Airlines, 47, 53.

Vensel, Joe, 27, 28, 34, 41, 44, 45, 49, 51, 79, 96,

 106, 109, 111, 114.

Walker, Joe, 37, 44, 60, 81, 93, 94, 108, 109,

 112, 113, 114, 117.

Weil, Joe, 69, 70, 97, 98.

Welch, George, 63, 64, 118.

Westinghouse, 47, 53.

Wherry housing, 25, 38.

White’s Motel, 1, 29, 30.

Williams. Walter C., 4, 7-17, 19, 25, 26, 28, 30,

 32, 43, 44, 49, 51, 57, 59-61, 64, 69, 70, 78,

 84, 89, 90, 96, 111.

Willow Springs, 28, 29, 40.

Wolfe, Capt. Joe, 114.

Women’s Dorm, 55, 56, 64.

XLR-99 rocket engine, 85.

X-Press, 17, 22, 26, 27, 36, 45, 47, 61, 64-66, 70,

 72, 73, 86, 99, 108, 116, 122.

Yancey, Roxanah, 4, 39, 55, 58, 59.

Yeager, Capt. Chuck, 5, 10, 33, 38, 57, 108, 109.
130

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