Yeager: An Autobiography - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Chuck Yeager (COMMANDANT FOR SPACE) #32

COMMANDANT FOR SPACE

OTHER VOICES: Glennis Yeager

When I was ill carrying Susie, my folks came to Edwards to help out and stayed several months, until Chuck finally began to complain about a lack of privacy. I told him, "I'll make a deal. If you'll do the grocery shopping, I think I can manage on my own." He agreed. To this day, he still does a lot of our shopping. That is, he kept his word as long as he was at home to do it. But especially during his years as squadron commander, he was gone a tremendous amount: three months in Spain, two months in Tripoli, two more at the gunnery meet in Nevada, and several months flying all over the place with Jackie. I wasn't happy about it, although I certainly couldn't blame him for being away so much. That was the nature of his job.

Being gone, Chuck might be the one who missed out the most-watching his kids grow up-but he probably didn't realize it. The kids accepted the fact that he was always gone because they lived around military bases where most of the other fathers were away a lot too; so, it wasn't one of those deals where the boys would complain: "Jimmy's dad was at my game, why couldn't my dad be there?" Heck, Jimmy's dad was probably off flying somewhere with Chuck. On the other hand, my children were exposed to so much more than the average kid, in travel, living in foreign countries, and some childhood memories that are really unique. For example, when Jackie moved into our place to go for her speed record, I took the kids down to her ranch, with the exception of Don, who was still in school. He stayed with neighbors until school was over, then his dad sneaked him in a P-84 jet fighter, strapped him in his lap, and flew him down to Indio. Chuck taxied to a deserted part of the field where nobody would see and handed Don to me. That boy's eyes were like saucers. He told me, "Dad flew us right over the trees."

But I'd get mad because when Chuck came home he was like a favorite house-guest. The kids would say, "Hey, Dad's back! Great! Now we can have some fun." Mom wasn't so great; I was the one stuck with all the disciplining. But fathers who are absent a lot try to make up for lost time, and Chuck must've seemed like Santa Claus, taking them out hiking and fishing, building things with them, and doing what I didn't have the time to do. Then, too, he kind of lost touch with the kids' capabilities, and especially when the boys were very young, expected too much of them at times. When he said no to something they wanted to do, that was it. No appeals. And he never changed his mind. If he said he wouldn't take them fishing unless they cleaned their rooms in fifteen minutes, and it took them twenty minutes, they were out of luck. But they lived through it. The kids understood him, knew his faults, shortcomings, attributes, the whole nine yards. Their Dad was just stubborn as a mule.

Chuck never had a game plan for his career. When the time came we just went where he was sent. A few times he bitched and moaned about a particular assignment, but he never tried to get his orders changed, and was happy as long as he could keep flying. Before his career ended, we had some wonderful experiences overseas, meeting new people and learning their ways. Chuck was always the catalyst for doing things. In the Philippines, for example, he learned that some farmer was growing a new kind of rice and had to go out in the boonies and see for himself. Once I got out, I enjoyed it, but getting me to go was like pulling teeth. I was just cautious and methodical. With him, it was always a wild-goose chase to try something different, and he would goad me into going along. Just like his Air Force career: had it been my career, I would have planned each step of the way. Chuck just let it happen, and somehow things always fell into place.

But an Air Force wife's life is an emotional rollercoaster. The military life is rough on marriages, and fighter pilots are not ideal husbands. I got to know the wives in Chuck's squadrons and helped them handle personal problems. The men were away an awful lot and many took advantage of the situation. The wives told themselves it didn't mean anything and went along by keeping their mouths shut, until something happened they couldn't ignore- maybe a perfumed letter arrived for a husband, or lipstick discovered in the wrong place and the wrong shade. They had to convince themselves it wasn't important or get out. That's what it came to.

Over the years in the military, I saw a heck of a lot of wrecked marriages. I've seen wives dropped by the wayside; I've known some who had affairs of their own, either because they were lonely or wanted to get even. I've also known of three suicides among abandoned wives who had no place to go and no prospects. I couldn't understand women who put themselves in that kind of helpless position. If you raise a man's children and run his household, you're an equal partner and deserve to share equally in his income. I just decided, half is half and that's how it's going to be. I insisted on having my own savings account and had property in my own name. It wasn't much, but if I had to I could hack it on my own. I didn't expect to be dumped, but I couldn't stand the idea of being helpless and beholden.

I knew wives who went into a deep depression whenever their husbands flew off on a long deployment somewhere because they knew what would happen. True, the men were probably going to shack up every chance they got, if they were inclined to do that. But there was a big difference between having a fling and getting seriously involved with another woman, and the wives most fearful of desertion were those who didn't even know how to write a check, who let their husbands do everything for them. They were literal balls and chains around a husband s neck. They probably guessed right that he was of a mind to dump them, and they would find themselves out on the south forty.

I was only twenty-one when we had our first child, and twenty-six when the last one was born. I was only forty-three when the last one left home to go out in the world. When the kids finally left, I aimed to start a whole new phase of my life. I wanted to complete my education, really get into my music, maybe establish a small business. Chuck had his career, and I wanted a part of my life to be separate from my marriage and family. I would do it for me, not for some kind of insurance or security. Chuck respected me for that.

The kids were in school when Chuck was sent to the War College, so I stayed behind in Victorville. He flew home practically every weekend, so, in some ways it was just like the early days of our marriage when I was back in West Virginia. He was gone for ten months. He made full colonel while he was there, and when the course ended, the Air Force appointed him as commandant of the Aerospace Research Pilots School at Edwards.

Going back was really the most pleasant period of his career. One reason was that Eleanor and Bud Anderson were also stationed there and lived right down the street from us. This was the first time since the war that those two were stationed together. Also, because of Chuck's rank, we finally got good base housing for the first time. The children were in high school, and I took up golf and duplicate bridge. Jackie gave me one of those electric golf carts, and I was out on the course the minute the kids were off to school. Bud and Chuck would sneak off hunting and fishing every chance they got. The kids were happy and thriving, and it was an enjoyable time for all of us.

All told, we spent seventeen years living at Edwards, but those six years were the best of them. Chuck was happy and productive, too, even though for the first time, his primary assignment wasn't flying, but running a school. Heck, I had paid my dues years before out on the Mojave as a captain's wife living in a shack, wringing out diapers in the bathtub. Being a colonel's wife was a lot more pleasant, and I didn't let anyone or anything get in the way of my lifestyle.

Most of the students at the Air War College spent their spare time playing golf. I came out on top in the class because golf didn't interest me. There were all kinds of airplanes available to fly, but only a couple of us took advantage of the opportunity. Flying was our golf. But, then, in the middle of the academic year, Jackie went to the Chief of Staff and asked him if I could go to Spain with her to negotiate with the Russians on the rules of the Sporting Committee, the FAI group that sanctioned aviation records, like one-hundred-kilometer closed courses and straight-away courses for absolute speed records that would be recognized by all nations. She said, "Yeager is the only one who the Russians respect for his experience in high-speed airplanes. He can explain the problems and get them to agree." So, Gen. Tommy White said, "I don't see why Chuck can't go." He sent a wire to the War College, saying he wanted me excused to go to Spain for a week. The War College was outraged; the commanding general said, "Our classes have the highest priority. Colonel Yeager isn't going anywhere." It was the old man versus test pilot school all over again. General White was furious and gave them a direct order to let me go. He said, "Publish orders on Yeager in my name and send him." The school never forgave me for that. But I went with Jackie to Madrid and we got everything jelled on the FAI records, including a Russian agreement to recognize fifty-miles-high as space.

That week in Spain may have helped me to land a wonderful job, because after completing War College, I was appointed to head the new Air Force Aerospace Research Pilots School to train military astronauts. The school was getting started at Edwards. Here was an opportunity to pioneer the next frontier in flying. The Air Force had hoped to be the ones to put the first men into space, but the Eisenhower administration chose NASA a civilian agency which, ironically, selected all military pilots for its first group of astronauts. The Air Force wasn't interested in going to the moon. We had had plans on the boards since 1947 for orbiting military space stations manned with our own astronauts. We knew damned well the Russians had similar plans, and we aimed to beat them to it. All we needed was the green light from Congress and the-White House.

Our school was a historic first step for putting the Air Force into space. At that point, little was known about the rigors of space travel and the ability of astronauts to sustain long periods of weightlessness. These unknowns awaited future testing and evaluation, but in the meantime, we decided to train a first generation of military aerospace test pilots in the highly precise and disciplined flying demanded by orbiting space labs and transportable shuttles. The course work was high-powered engineering and flight mechanics, and the training would preview the new techniques demanded by piloting in space.

The work was certainly different from anything I had done previously. It was my first nonflying job, and unlike my years as a squadron commander, where I was constantly flying with young pilots, teaching them combat tactics and gunnery proficiency, I now left most of the instruction to our expert staff, half of whom had Ph.D.s, and like our students, were among the best and brightest pilots in the Air Force. Hell, most of the kids in our school could bury me academically, although there was plenty I could teach them about precision flying, and I made it a point to fly with each student once a month to monitor his progress. But basically I was an administrator and manager-the fate of being a bird colonel. I never would've believed I could be happy in that kind of role, and I probably would not have been, if the work had been less important.

But the school was laying the foundation for the nation's new commitment to space. I procured and helped to develop a six-million-dollar space simulator, far advanced for its day, that provided every facet of a mission into space, except for the experience of weightlessness. Our kids were the first generation of Air Force pilots to be proficient using computers.

All of us involved in starting the school knew we were breaking important new ground. Flying the X-1A I had flown to the edge of space and was one of the pioneers of extreme high-altitude flying. I was famous, and my name lent weight to the new project.

Having been used as the Air Force's showpiece for so many years, I knew most of the big brass in Washington, and I wasn't shy about pounding on their doors to get what I needed. I was a good salesman because I really believed in the product. No blue suiter wanted to surrender space to NASA, and the Air Force backed me to the hilt. In seven or eight years, we hoped to have manned labs in orbit, experimenting with lasers and particle beam weapons, and be ready to fly the X20, the Dyna-Soar, a lifting body airplane that was the forerunner of the space shuttle. Our graduates would be in the cockpits.

As a veteran test pilot I couldn't wait to fly weightless. To me, the promise of the Space Age was even more exciting than the transition from propellers to jets. I plunged into the new job, going fullthrottle. I flew back and forth to Washington so often that I began to feel like a damned lobbyist, which is really what I was. We needed money to find cheap ways of exposing a student to a space environment. I got Gen. Bernard Shriever, head of the systems command, to authorize the money for our computerized space mission simulator. We received four million dollars to convert three Lockheed Starfighters, the F-104, with six-thousand-pound thrust rocket engines and hydrogen peroxide reaction controls on the nose and wings-the cheapest way we knew to give a student a minute and a half of zero Gs. The airplane would get him up to 100,000 feet in an inflated pressure suit, and he could practice maneuvering with his reaction controls just as if he were in a space capsule.

I had a faculty and staff of thirty, which included Frank Borman, Tom Stafford, and Jim McDivitt before they joined NASA to become famous astronauts. Even before the doors opened in 1961, we were swamped with applications; I was on the selection board that met several times a year at the Pentagon, and we picked the top one percent. Initially, we had room for only eleven students; that was all the airplanes we had for them to fly and we picked only graduates of the Air Force test pilots' school. After two classes, we ran out of test pilots and put our students through six months of test pilot training and then six months of space training. And we had the cream of the Air Force enrolled. For example, in one class we had Maj. Mike Adams, who was so damned good he had his choice between flying the new X-15 or becoming a NASA astronaut-an envious position to be in. He chose the X-15 and was killed in it several years later. Col. Dave Scott was his classmate, and he chose NASA. He was with Neil Armstrong over the Pacific when the reaction controls got out of phase in the capsule. David took over, righted that thing, and got them back safely.

I remember one really impressive moment with David and Mike at the school. They were up flying together in a two-seat version of the Starfighter, running low-lift drag ratio landings, meaning they came in at a very steep angle and needed to flare the airplane, give it power, and go around and shoot another steep landing. On one of these runs, they lost their engine. The airplane hit the ground with a bash. Mike Adams in the back seat ejected just before that thing hit, but David Scott didn't. It was amazing to me: both guys made a split second decision that was absolutely correct. And both were opposite courses of action. The rear cockpit crunched, and if Mike had staved he would have been killed. If David had punched he would have been killed because when he hit, his seat was cocked sideways. To me, that incident indicated their capability and future.

NASA's Mercury astronauts had been chosen before our school geared up. But over the next six years, the space agency recruited thirty-eight of our graduates to their corps of astronauts. Because we had the most advanced experimental test pilot school going, NASA relied heavily on our recommendations. But some of our guys turned them down flat. They came back from their interviews in Houston and told me, "Colonel, we're overqualified for their program. All we get to do is take a ride like one of those damned chimps they sent up. We don't want to get involved because everything is controlled from the ground and there is nothing to fly." I said, "Hell, I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to have to sweep off monkey shit before I sat down in that capsule."

But as time went on, NASA made its program damned attractive to recruits. They were in a tough spot, needing outstanding pilots who were little more than Spam in the can, throwing the right switches on instructions from the ground. Even then, they had trouble landing precisely and it sometimes took half the Navy to locate a capsule bobbing in the Pacific miles from where it should've been. Also, they had many more astronauts than available rides, and a lot of guys never flew or had to wait for years to get their opportunity. So, they sold their program like one of those fly-by-night land developers selling tracts in the desert. For signing up, a guy got a free expensive house, donated by a local realtor in Houston and a cut of a lucrative contract with Time-Life. The glamour, splash, and money made it attractive to some pilots. The guys came back from their interviews and told me, "All the talk in Houston is about how much money we are going to make."

My attitude was they shouldn't get a dime for being selected for the space program, especially when the risks involved weren't half as great as some of the research flying done at Edwards over the years. It rubbed me wrong and I said so: "Forget that crap. Don't ever make a decision whether to be an astronaut based on damned perks. Either the program is right for you or it isn't. And if it isn't, stay the hell out of it.

After a couple of years, the Navy and Marines began sending us pilots to train, as did several NATO countries. By then we had room for twenty-six students, and NASA, feeling the political heat for picking too many blue suiters, was relieved that we were teaching pilots from other branches. But I had my own political problems. From the moment we picked our first class, I was caught in a buzz saw of controversy involving a black student. The White House, Congress, and civil rights groups came at me with meat cleavers, and the only way I could save my head was to prove I wasn't a damned bigot.

In late 1961, we were ready to start screening applicants for our first class at the space school, and because they would be the first bunch, the screening process was particularly thorough. We wanted only the very best pilots, and our first couple of classes consisted of experienced military test pilots, who had graduated from Edwards's test pilot school, and whose abilities and academic background were demonstrably outstanding. Our space course was six months of intensive classroom work and flight training. My staff at Edwards culled the applications, pulled out the most promising student candidates, conducted preliminary checks of their records, and forwarded their recommendations to a selection committee at the Pentagon, which carefully reviewed the background of each applicant, conducted personal interviews sought evaluations from their superiors, and further winnowed the list.

I was a member of the final selection committee, and after several months of interviewing and tough deciding, we published our list of the first eleven students. Actually, we had twenty-six names in order of preference, but we didn't publish our list that way: we just named eleven guys alphabetically as the members of our first class, and listed the first three or four alternates, in case any of them dropped out.

The quality of those selected was such that they added tremendously to the prestige of our new school which was our intention all along. I was thrilled with the choices. But when our list was published I received a phone call from the Chief of Staff's office asking whether any of the first eleven were black pilots. I said, no. Only one black pilot had applied for the course and he was number twenty-six on the list. I was informed that the White House wanted a black pilot in the space course.

The Chief of Staff was Gen. Curtis LeMay, probably the most controversial personality in the Air Force since his days as the tough, cigar-chewing head of SAC. I knew him pretty well. I remember briefing him at SAC headquarters after I had tested the MiG 15 on Okinawa, and he was very interested in the MiG's directional instability while climbing. "Yeager, how bad is that snaking motion?" he asked. I told him, "Well, sir, just about right to hit a B-36 wingtip to wingtip if you were shooting at him." My answer really tickled him, and he told it all around. And during my tour in Germany, he sent for me while he was in Spain, to show me off a little during a hunting trip with Franco. General LeMay wasn't what I would call a smoothie. He was blunt: you didn't have to read between the lines dealing with him.

He got on the phone and said, "Bobby Kennedy wants a colored in space. Get one into your course." I said, "Well, General, it's gonna be difficult. We have one applicant, a captain named Dwight, who came out number twenty-six. We already published our list with the fifteen who made it, and it's going to be embarrassing to republish the list with Dwight's name on it because now everyone knows who the first fifteen are." He said: "Okay, I'll just tell them they're too late for this first class." But a 150-millimeter shell came ripping in from the White House, and LeMay was told: "By God, you will have a black pilot in that program-now!" He called me back: "Do what you have to do, Yeager, but get that colored guy in." I said, "Okay, General, but what I think we ought to do is take at least fifteen students in the first class, instead of eleven, and make him number fifteen. Give me a little more money and I can handle this many in the school."

He agreed, and we brought Dwight in. Ed Dwight was an average pilot with an average academic background. He wasn't a bad pilot, but he wasn't exceptionally talented, either. Flying with a good bunch in a squadron, he would probably get by. But he just couldn't compete in the space course against the best of the crop of experienced military test pilots. In those days, there were still comparatively few black pilots in the Air Force, but Dwight sure as hell didn't represent the top of the talent pool. I had flown with outstanding pilots like Emmett Hatch and Eddie Lavelle; but unfortunately, guys of their quality didn't apply for the course. Dwight did. So we brought him in, set up a special tutoring program to get him through the academics because, as I recall, he lacked the engineering academics that all the other students had.

Hell, I felt for Dwight, remembering my own academic problems in test pilot's school. It's really a rough situation, and he didn't have a Jack Ridley working with him-a genius in explaining the most complicated problems in understandable language. He worked hard, and so did his tutors, but he just couldn't hack it. And he didn't keep up in flying. I worked with him on that, and so did other instructors; but our students were flying at levels of proficiency that were really beyond his experience. The only prejudice against Dwight was a conviction shared by all the instructors that he was not qualified to be in the school.

So we had a problem. General LeMay had asked me to keep him informed about Dwight's progress and knew what was happening at Edwards. About halfway through the course, I flew to Washington to attend an Air Force banquet and was seated next to General LeMay. He asked me if there was any improvement with Dwight. I said, "No, sir. We're having a lot of trouble just trying to keep him from getting so far behind the others that it will be hopeless. He's just not hacking it." The general grunted. Then he looked me in the eye and said, "Chuck, if you want to wash out Dwight, I'll back you all the way." I about fell out of my chair.

But it didn't come to that. Dwight hung on and squeezed through. He got his diploma qualifying him to be the nation's first black astronaut, but NASA did not select him and a few powerful supporters in Washington demanded to know why. The finger of blame was pointed at the school and I was hauled on the carpet to answer charges of racism raised by Dwight and some of his friends.

All hell broke loose. A few black congressmen announced they would launch an investigation of the incident, and the Air Force counselor, their chief lawyer, flew to Edwards from the Pentagon to personally take charge of the case. Man, I was hot. I told that lawyer, "You do have a case of discrimination here. The White House discriminated by forcing us to take an unqualified guy. And we would have discriminated by passing him because he was black." Maybe "discrimination" was the wrong word, but I made my point. Anyway, the decision was made to fly in a group of black civil rights attorneys and a few congressmen and show them Dwight's school records.

I met with them. I said, "I'm the commandant of this school, but the truth is that I lack the college education to qualify as a NASA astronaut. It so happens, I couldn't care less. But if I did care a lot, there isn't a damned thing I could do about it because the regulations say I must have a college degree. Captain Dwight may care a lot about getting a diploma from this school, but the fact is he lacks the academic background and the flying skill to do it. Anyone with his grades deserved to be washed out, or it would be discrimination in reverse. Now, here are his complete school records from day one. Let's review them page by page." The group had no idea that he had received special tutoring and was shocked to see his poor grades; they were satisfied that prejudice was in no way involved in this case. But that wasn't quite the end of it. I was so damned mad that I told the Air Force lawyer, "Hey, I want to file some charges of my own. I'm a full colonel and he's a captain, and I want to charge him with insubordination. If he brought charges against me and couldn't make them stick, I want that guy court-martialed." I was told, no way; the Air Force would not allow that to happen because they had taken enough heat over this matter already.

I was disgusted. I knew damned well that Dwight had taken a cheap shot at my West Virginia accent to try to save face. Hell, if I had been from Philadelphia or New York, he wouldn't have even tried. He was prejudiced against me, figuring that anyone from my part of the world was a redneck bigot. Many Southern whites who are honest will admit having problems about race in a general sense, but I didn't have to be the type who thought of all blacks as niggers to flunk Ed Dwight. And what really hurt was that the guy called into question not only my professional integrity, but also my most basic loyalty to the Air Force, which had allowed me, an undereducated country boy, to climb as high as my talents would take me. Ignoring the fact that I was a raw kid, often made fun of as a hillbilly, they gave me a chance to crawl in the cockpit of an expensive airplane and prove that I had what it took to fly that thing. I knew prejudice. I ran up against officers who looked down their noses at my ways and accent and pegged me as a dumb, down-home squirrel-shooter. But, damn it, the Air Force as an institution never let me down for an instant. In spite of where I came from or what I lacked, they trained me and gave me every opportunity to prove myself. Nowadays, it has become fashionable for some companies to advertise themselves as "equal opportunity employers." The Air Force practiced that with me right from the start, and I would never deny to anybody else the chance to prove his worth no matter who or what he is. There never were black pilots or white pilots in the Air Force. There were only pilots who knew how to fly, and pilots who didn't.