About half way through my Air Force career, I had an opportunity to enter the flight test arena. With the exception of a three year stint as a part of the Inspector General (IG -- another story), I spent the remainder of my 27 year career in flight testing.
From the Air Command and Staff College in 1984, I was hired to be the quality assurance (QA) officer in the test wing at Eglin AFB in Florida’s panhandle. My two-year stint in QA was a hybrid job. I worked in aircraft maintenance but also flew the F-4 Phantom with Test Ops. There were a handful of us who were not graduates of the Air Force Test Pilot School, but we were fit into the schedule to help with testing munitions, navigation and electronic warfare equipment.
Shortly after arriving at Eglin, I made my first visit to Edwards AFB in California’s Mojave Desert as a member of the B-1A Ship 2 accident investigation team. I spent three weeks taking apart wreckage and testing subsystems. It was a somber introduction to the hazards of flight test.
Several of the fellows I flew with at Test Ops were subsequently selected by NASA to become astronauts and went on to have distinguished careers in spaceflight, including Kevin Duffy, Tom Akers, Kevin “Chili” Chilton and Curtis Brown. Not surprisingly, they were outstanding test pilots and engineers. After piloting the shuttle three times, Chili returned to the Air Force and became a four-star general, the only astronaut to accomplish this so far.
The Test Wing at Eglin had a group stationed at Holloman AFB on the edge of New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). I made repeated trips to Holloman, both testing aircraft over WSMR and investigating maintenance activities at our test group. I also visited the test track and witnessed rocket sled launches – exciting stuff.
A few years later following the IG assignment, I was stationed at Edwards, home of the Air Force Flight Test Center. I reckon that more aviation records have been set in the skies over Edwards in the past three-quarters of a century than anywhere else on earth. While I didn’t fly at Edwards, I served in the test wing and deepened my appreciation for flight testing.
During this time (1991-94), I got to know the legendary Chuck Yeager who frequently visited the Flight Test Center. In those days, the space shuttle landed at Edwards rather than Cape Kennedy, so I witnessed many shuttle landings. On Endeavour’s (the replacement for Challenger) maiden flight in 1992, I stood adjacent to the approach end of Runway 22 as the vehicle flared and touched down. That’s where I learned that, even though the Shuttle is an unpowered glider, the combination of APU (the orbiter had three auxiliary power units) and aerodynamic noise is really loud.
NASA has a modified Gulfstream. Before every shuttle landing, an astronaut would repeatedly fly the landing approach in the Gulfstream to test the winds. For the Endeavour flight, the Gulfstream pilot was Dick Covey from Fort Walton Beach. Dick was the Capcom in Mission Control on Challenger’s 1986 launch and gave the final command, “Challenger, go with throttle up,” moments before the explosion.
One day, I was eating lunch at the Edwards Officer’s Club and I recognized an elderly gentleman at an adjacent table. I introduced myself to Dr. John Stapp, the flight surgeon who did so much experimental work on ejection seats and environmental systems in high performance aircraft following World War II. Dr. Stapp’s pioneering work on aircrew survivability was catch-up after the tremendous leap in flight performance during the war years.
Among his live experiments was the effect of high G-forces on the human body. The first tests were done at a sled track at Edwards, but the real high-G advanced tests were conducted at the longer track at Holloman. Always, it was John Stapp riding the sled. His final test in 1951 on the Sonic Wind sled set records by reaching 632 mph and experiencing 46 G’s during deceleration. Dr. Stapp’s work was instrumental in understanding crash effects of all types including automobile accidents.
Later, Stapp did pioneering work on high altitude environmental effects with Project Manhigh. His subject was a young red-haired test pilot, Joseph Kittinger. In 1960, “Red” Kittinger rode a balloon to nearly 103 thousand feet, and then stepped into the void of the troposphere for the longest free-fall in history, reaching a terminal velocity of 614 mph before the thickening atmosphere slowed his decent. At an altitude of 18 thousand feet, he slowed sufficiently for his parachute to withstand opening shock.
These were some of the famous engineering test pilots I rubbed shoulders with who paved the way for mortals like me. They “pushed the envelope” in remarkable ways.