First Man

by James R. Hansen

  Training continued with a mile-long swim in the base’s Olympic-size pool. Midshipman Thompson remembers, “I was not much of a swimmer beyond a basic dog paddle, but Neil was a strong swimmer. About ten laps or so into it, Neil literally swam right over me, and I sank. We all completed the mile, but some of us just barely.”

  Another torture drill was the Multi-Phase Ditching Trainer, called the Dilbert Dunker after a World War II–era cartoon characterization of “the screwup navy pilot.” As seen in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman, the fully clothed aviator candidate was fitted with a parachute then strapped into a simulated cockpit sent on rails into a swimming pool. The aviator candidate’s task was to unharness, knock out the flipped canopy, exit the sinking plane, and swim up to the surface before running out of breath. Many members of Class 5-49 required the help of frogmen to survive the Dilbert Dunker. Classmates remember that Armstrong was among those who handled the trial with ease.

  Class 5-49 finished its sixteen weeks of Pre-Flight on June 18, 1949. Armstrong’s specific marks—Principles of Flight, 3.62; Communications, 3.59; Aerial Navigation, 3.51; Engineering, 3.31; Essentials of Naval Service, 3.09; Aerology, 3.07; Military, 3.01; Gunnery, 2.94; and Physical Training, 2.90—averaged 3.27 on the navy’s 4.0 scale, which, according to classmates, would have ranked him near the top 10 percent of the class.

  On June 24, 1949, six days after completing Pre-Flight training, Class 5-49 moved to Whiting Field for Stage A of flight training. The largest of NAS Pensacola’s auxiliary airfields, Whiting (named in 1943 for Commander Kenneth Whiting, a pioneer in carrier aviation) consisted of North and South airfields located about a mile apart, each equipped with four 6,000-foot-long paved runways.

  Armstrong’s instructor at North Whiting was a man by the name of Lee R. P. “Chipper” Rivers. “He was a very good instructor,” Neil recalls, talkative in the navy tradition of a “chipper,” whose cockpit coaching was “quite authoritarian, but fun loving.”

  Stage A consisted of twenty “hops,” the first eighteen of which were dual instruction flights. “In basic training,” Tommy Thompson remembers, “we sat in the rear seat and the instructor in the front. Consequently, our visibility was somewhat limited. I expect that for Neil this was less of a problem, as he already knew how to fly, albeit in a much smaller aircraft.” A-19 became the “safe for solo” check flight and A-20 the first solo in the North American SNJ, the most famous of all World War II trainers, with retractable landing gear and a radial engine of 600 horsepower. “The SNJ was a big step up from both the Aeroncas and Luscombes for me,” Armstrong explains. Its greater “finesse and control force” flew “very much like the F6F Hellcat that was the predominant navy fighter in World War II.” All in all, the SNJ was an “ideal training plane.”

  Neil’s first hop in the SNJ occurred on Wednesday, July 6, 1949, and first solo (A-20) nine weeks later on September 7, 1949. Throughout Stage G, Chipper Rivers recorded Armstrong’s progress:

  July 8 (A-2): Average to above. Student looks around very good & appears to be at ease. Applies instructions above average.

  July 11 (A-5): Good hop. Satisfactory progress.

  July 13 (A-5): Good on procedures for stalls; however, he has difficulty maintaining constant attitudes. Coordination is weak.

  July 18 (A-7): Rough on coordination. Is slow to use tabs when attitude is changed.

  July 19 (A-8): Rough coordination, especially in turns. Tries to level off at90-degree position on approaches instead of making a continuous turn.Has a little trouble maintaining heading on touch and go takeoffs.

  August 5 (A-9): Doesn’t use tabs enough—coordination in general is rough.Poor speed and attitude control in landing pattern.

  Armstrong’s flight A-10, on Tuesday, August 9, was graded by instructor S. W. McKenzie as “Satisfactory,” with three areas rating “Below Average”: Taxiing (“too fast, too much throttle”), Landing Pattern (“weak speed control”), and Approaches (“cuts throttle and turns immediately into field”).

  Back with Rivers for the next four flights, Armstrong worked to improve on his deficiencies—most notably, landing:

  August 11 (A-11): Entire period with exception of spin and H.A. [HighAltitude] emergency was spent on landings, handled with all the different flap settings. Good hop.

  August 13 (A-12): Aileron and erratic rudder pressures on recoveries. Slow reacting, improper procedures on low altitude emergencies.

  August 15 (A-13): Shows very good progress on landing pattern & landings.Mixed up on wind directions on first two high altitude emergencies. Poor pattern.

  August 16 (A-14): Unsure of himself on high altitude emergency.

  Armstrong made his fifteenth hop on August 23 with yet another instructor, J. W. McNeill, who rated the attempt an overall “Unsatisfactory,” specifically “Unsatisfactory” for his approaches (“overshot wind-line every time”), and five “Below Averages,” on taxiing (“too much power, rides brakes”), stalls (“recovers nose too low, over controls”), landing (“levels off too high”), emergencies (“no flaps on low emerg[ency], too short on high altitude emerg[ency]), and headwork (“was not thinking enough”). D. J. Badger, the officer in charge, reviewed with Neil his entire flight training performance. Badger could have required additional instruction, ordered an A-15 reexam, or referred his case to the Student Pilot Disposition Board, but chose to return Neil to training “with no action.”

  Although Armstrong’s problems with altitude and speed control and judging his approaches to landings continued on hops sixteen and seventeen, Chipper Rivers gave Neil many more average than below-average marks. The eighteenth hop, on August 30, was again a check flight. Even though Rivers graded the flight below average in three areas (Transitions, Landing Pattern, and Approaches), he judged Neil “safe for solo.” The following day, Armstrong took off with Instructor Praete for the solo check flight, soon grounded because of bad weather. Still, Praete saw clear to award Neil an “up” for the flight. On Wednesday, September 7, 1949, Armstrong made his first navy solo without an instructor. Afterward, a couple of Neil’s mates observed navy tradition by cutting off the lower half of his tie, and Neil gave Chipper Rivers a bottle of his favorite whiskey. Armstrong’s Stage A evaluations totaled 1 “Unsatisfactory,” 27 “Below Average,” 192 “Average,” and 59 “Above Average.”

  Although his flying was not without its defects, it showed great promise, widely recognized by fellow members of Class 5-49. Classmate Pete Karnoski: “I remember walking out to my plane, the SNJ trainer, one morning as Neil taxied by. He looked very comfortable and sure of himself in that plane. He waved to me as he passed by.” Classmate David Stephenson concurs: “[He was] confident, but not cocky.” Bruce Clingan adds: “Neil had a head start on most of us by virtue of his experience as a private pilot. Beyond that, I think he had a tremendous natural talent. If it involved flying, he was very good at it.”

  Stage B of Basic Training—maneuvers—began the very next day after Armstrong’s first solo flight. Neil made seventeen flights in nineteen days and received eighty-six “Average” marks, twenty-eight “Above Average,” and only eight “Below Average” (five of them for wingovers). On none of the flights did Neil receive a “down.” Neil’s check flight instructor for Stage B, O. T. Menefee, on September 27, 1949, made the final evaluation: “Student obviously knew all work and was able to fly most of it average to above. Towards last of period he got so nervous it began to show up in his work. Should be able to continue on in program and make an average pilot [author’s emphasis].”

  Stage C—aerobatics—began the following week at Corry Field, a few miles northwest of Pensacola. Armstrong proved “above average” from the start at “inverted stall, wingover rolls, & loops” (Oct. 5, C-1); “All acrobatics excellent” (Oct. 15, C-8); “Acrobatics well above average” (Oct. 18, C-11); “Precision maneuvers very smooth” (Oct. 24, C-18). Three different C-stage instructors gave Armstrong a total of thirty-two “Average” marks, thirty-eigh
t “Above Average,” and only two “Below Average.” All seventeen of his flights were “ups.”

  Stage D had Armstrong and his fellows “flying” in the Link Trainer. Dating to the late 1920s, the machine (which would stall and spin if maneuvered incorrectly) was equipped with the stick, throttle, and rudder pedals of a single-engine fighter, as well as a layout of standard navigation instruments.

  But the real test came “under the hood,” in the rear seat of the SNJ. In Partial Panel flying, the instructor (in the front seat) could turn off the gyro horizon and directional gyro. Armstrong intuited by logic to trust only the instruments, an ability he would later apply to piloting a spacecraft through the vacuum of space.

  Armstrong’s D stage was marred by “weak transitions” (Oct. 26, D-2) in trim and heading. His worst flight (Nov. 14, D-9) produced four “Below Average” marks, and his Partial Panel instructor, E. C. Reddick, commented, “Altitude control is poor. Climbs during turns. Airspeed is erratic during glides. Does not coordinate rudders properly during rollout to a level attitude.” For his ten Stage D instrument flights, however, Neil received nothing but “ups.”

  Armstrong’s next five flights (completed from November 15 to 18) involved the Radio Range Phase of D stage, where he received 43 “Above Average,” 28 “Below Average,” and 138 “Average” marks. His instructors continued to focus on Neil’s poor altitude control.

  Armstrong made his two mandatory night flights (Stage E) on Friday, November 4, both of them resulting in “ups” (eleven “Average” marks and seven “Above Average”). Instructor Martin commented, “Student has a very good mental attitude” and “knows procedures.”

  By Thanksgiving 1949, Armstrong had completed the first five stages of Basic Training. He had made forty hops with 39.6 hours in dual instruction and 19.4 hours solo.

  Saufley Field, an outlying landing field (OLF) northwest of Pensacola off Perdido Bay, was the site for formation flying (Stage F, eighteen hops, November 28, 1949, through January 30, 1950), conducted simultaneously with Primary Combat (Stage H, January 18 and 21, 1950) and Cross-Country Navigation (Stage I, January 23 and 25, 1950), for which he received very favorable evaluations.

  Armstrong received two Stage F “downs”: on December 5, 1949 (F-5), when “Student was sucked far behind on most of rendezvous. Wing position was very erratic. Failed to pass signal on break up,” and on January 7, 1950 (F-12), when “Rend[ezvous] and join-ups badly sucked, continually fouling up people behind. Lags behind in position. Doesn’t know sequence very well.” Following the F-5 review, Armstrong was given “one increment” of extra instruction; following F-12, he was “returned to training with no action,” no doubt because LCDR R. S. Belcher believed Neil possessed too much potential to delay his progress. Neil repaid the trust by experiencing no significant problems in his last six F hops. For the last four he received seven “Above Average” marks and only one “Below Average.”

  For Stage G’s sixteen gunnery flights (January 30, 1950, through February 15, 1950, at Saufley), Armstrong turned in thirty-five “Above Average” scores, only thirteen “Below Average,” and not a single “Unsatisfactory.” Though ground strafing and dive-bombing proved challenging, his marksmanship was superior—with eight of his “Above Average” grades coming in the Firing category. “One great afternoon after a gunnery mission,” Pete Karnoski recalls, “Neil and I came back to Saufley together. He was on my right wing and we flew along like a couple of aces, almost wingtip to wingtip. Dangerous you think, but, hey, at that age, you’re indestructible!”

  “I enjoyed the training immensely,” Armstrong reminisces, “but they had a way of adding a degree of intensity to it. There was always a lot of pressure to try to do things with perfection.” Not that Neil disliked competition. “It was every man for himself,” according to David Stephenson. “One person might advance along his track faster than someone else in the same class,” Armstrong explains.

  Those students who made it to Carrier Qualifications entered the crucible in which naval aviators were made. In late February 1950, Armstrong began final Basic Training at Corry Field. Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) occurred on a 500- to 600-foot runway painted onto an OLF twenty-three miles west of Pensacola, known as “Bloody Barin” for the large number of accidents that occurred there during World War II.

  Neil’s class of ten spent the next three weeks learning to follow “a landing signal officer completely,” Armstrong explains. “The LSO had a paddle in each hand and he would, just by the arrangements of the paddles, tell you that you’re a little high or a little low, a little fast, or you need to turn a little more.

  “If the LSO deems you cannot complete a successful landing or a safe landing,” Armstrong relates, “he will wave his paddles at you—a so-called wave-off—and you’re immediately commanded to add full power and ‘go around’ and try again.” At Barin Field, Neil learned “to keep both eyes open.”

  Neil’s principal instructor for K Stage, R. M. Sullivan, rated Armstrong’s performance at Barin: “Ruff [rough] altitude control” (K-3, February 24); “Drops nose in turn…Overshoots…Very ruff landing. Ruff” (K-4, February 24); “Showing great deal of improvement” (K-6, February 25); “Long. Not lined up.” (K-7, February 27); “Ruff rudder control” (K-8, February 27); “Average work” (K-11, March 1). Still, Sullivan awarded Neil 97 of 110 marks “Average” or above; of the 13 below-average marks, 6 were problems that Neil experienced with “Final Approach.” Following the K-12 check flight, Neil was “field qualified” and ready to make his first landing at sea.

  Thursday, March 2, 1950, was one of those indelible days for a naval aviator. Armstrong headed out over the Gulf of Mexico to make Stage L’s required six landings on the USS Cabot, a light carrier (CVL designation) steaming a short distance off Pensacola. “The SNJ was a relatively low-speed airplane,” and, he remembers, “even if you had thirty knots across the deck, you could take off easily, without a catapult.” Landing, of course, was the major challenge. Naval wisdom holds that “a good carrier landing is one from which you can walk away. A great carrier landing is one after which you can use the aircraft again.”

  Armstrong likens his first carrier landing to his first solo back in Wapakoneta, another “very emotional achievement” in his flying life. Grounded as he is in technical details, Armstrong is more comfortable speaking about “we” or “you” rather than “I”: “It is certainly a highly precise kind of flying. It works because you, in a very precise manner, get the airplane through that very small window that will allow it to land successfully on a very short flight deck.”

  He relates that he received no wave-offs on his first carrier landings, a showing worth nine “Average” marks and two “Below Average” grades—one for Final Approach (“poor line up—flat”) and one for Speed (“fast starts”), solid enough that he “Qualified this date in carrier landings aboard the USS Cabot.”

  Carrier qualifications ended Basic Training and punched tickets to Advanced Training.

  “I requested fighters and fortunately was assigned to fighters” at NAS Corpus Christi. “The fighter pilots always said that only the very best men got to be fighter pilots,” Neil admits, laughing. “My own guess is that a large part of it had to do with what needs the navy had at the time you graduated, because in my particular class, most of my classmates happened to get what they asked for, while I can recall people from a different generation saying nobody got what they asked for.”

  According to his mother, Neil “chose the single-motor fighter plane,” because, in his words, “‘I didn’t want to be responsible for anybody else. I’d better just watch my own self.’ He thought if he had more motors, why then he’d be hauling more people, taking more people, and he said, ‘I’d better just be responsible for my own self.’”

  Viola’s maternal projections may have caused her to misunderstand Neil’s motives for wanting fighters: “I was assigned the F8F-1 Bearcat as my advanced training aircraft, which I was delig
hted with because it was a very high performance airplane.” First flown in 1944, the Bearcat, with its full “bubble” canopy, was the last propeller-driven fighter aircraft built by Grumman for the navy. Many consider it the finest piston-engine fighter in service with the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II. A small plane with an outstanding power-to-weight ratio (provided by a 2,100-horsepower Pratt & Whitney eighteen-cylinder radial engine), the F8F-1 offered both great agility and great speed, up to 434 miles per hour (377 knots). Compared to anything that Armstrong had ever flown (the SNJ possessed only 600 horsepower and flew to a top speed of 178 knots), the Bearcat was a hot rod, with fantastic acceleration and climbing ability.

  At Cabaniss Field, one of Corpus Christi’s six outlying auxiliary bases, he began his indoctrination with VF ATU (Advanced Training Unit) No. 2 on March 28, 1950. In the three months ending June 21, 1950, Neil made thirty-nine flights and logged over seventy hours in the air, all but one hour of it solo. Only once did he receive an unsatisfactory mark, on June 6, 1950, during Gunnery & Tactics, when instructor H. W. Davis was unhappy with Neil’s Air Discipline for taxiing to the parking area before going out to the weapons dearming area. His other two weak flights, both during gunnery runs, came a week earlier, on May 31, when Neil “recovered too sharply & blacked out. Lost sight of flight & unable to find them until after many radio transmissions,” and a week later when he “reversed toward tow too late & sucked back often times never getting into firing range” and “recovered slightly to side instead of ahead, lost banner so no gun results.” His last five flights at Cabaniss showed considerable improvement—with ten “Above Average” marks and only one “Below Average” (on June 20) for not flying sufficiently straight and level on instruments.