Mackey called Kramer to “get up there fast” because Kramer was closest. Already heading that way at 100 percent power, Kramer could see Cheshire’s plane in flames originating right behind the cockpit, where the plane’s 1,000-gallon tank of high-octane fuel was located. Gaining a little altitude, Cheshire blew off his canopy in what appeared to be preparations for ejection. But he did not eject. Instead, he turned toward Wonsan harbor and brought his plane down as though he was going in for a water landing. Kramer, who was nearest the flaming airplane, called Cheshire several times to eject, but Chet never answered. “By this time,” Kramer remembers, “I was flying right off his starboard side with a clear view of his cockpit and he never moved. I believe he was already dead at this point.”
As Armstrong tells it, “It was clear he was going to ditch, but for some unknown reason, just before ditching, at a very low altitude he ejected—too low for his parachute to open. He hit the water, but I could not see that clearly from my position. When we got in a good viewing position, I thought he was on the surface. By the time the rescue helicopter arrived, however, he was nowhere to be seen.”
It is Kramer’s view that Cheshire’s ejection seat went off, not because Chet was still alive to trigger it, but because the intense fire engulfing his cockpit set it off. Perhaps Cheshire had tried to eject back when he blew the canopy. Powered by a 75-millimeter shell, the cartridge fired the same type of ejection seat that had launched Armstrong to safety from his damaged Panther back in September 1951. This time it must have misfired, then ignited later when Chet’s plane was gliding in just above the water.
In his journal, Bob Kaps recorded the tragic news in words that mirrored what Armstrong and everyone else in VF-51 so deeply felt: “It happened again today. Chet this time. Hit and burning—bailed out too low in Wonsan Bay. Just don’t see the justice of it all. Chet, of all people. Poor Dorothy—what words could possibly explain. He had so much to live for. Heaven help this world of ours on judgment day.”
That evening over the ship’s PA system, Chaplain J. J. Buzek said a prayer, as he always did, for the men who lost their lives or had been reported as missing in action: “O God, we humbly beseech thee for the soul of the pilot, our shipmate, Leonard Cheshire, who died this day. Deliver him not into the hands of the enemy, but command that he may be received by the holy angels and conducted into paradise. God bless you all, men.” Since the ship had left Hawaii for Korea back in August 1951, Chaplain Buzek had said this prayer for Marshall Beebe’s men twenty-eight times.
James A. Michener wrote poignantly (but also incorrectly) about Cheshire’s death in an article entitled “The Forgotten Heroes of Korea,” which appeared on May 10, 1952, in The Saturday Evening Post. It is Armstrong’s belief that Michener used several stories derived from the life of Chet Cheshire in The Bridges at Toko-Ri as the basis for the novel’s doomed hero, Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, who was also a married, thoughtful, older man from a western state. It is little wonder that Michener’s book remains one of Neil’s favorites. And little wonder that Neil also eventually finished reading Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, to himself, though it took him many months before he had the heart to pick up reading where his good friend Leonard R. Cheshire had left off.
At 1330 hours on February 1, 1952, the Essex left Task Force 77 for Yokosuka, ending tour number four after thirty-seven grueling days out of port. Bob Kaps’s journal entry spoke for everyone: “Happy day…. Sure glad to have that one over.” Flying well over 2,000 sorties during that stretch (441 of them done by VF-51), Air Group 5 had fired nearly 400,000 rounds of ammunition, dropped almost 10,000 bombs, shot off approximately 750 rockets (the majority by the Banshees), and hit the enemy with just under 3,000 pounds of napalm. This resulted in 1,374 railroad track cuts, the destruction of 34 bridges and damage to 47 more, along with a multitude of damaged or destroyed war matériel and infrastructure. In accomplishing these attacks, CVG-5 lost five men, two of them from VF-51, and the services of more than a dozen aircraft.
Armstrong’s fifth and final tour of combat started on February 18, 1952. Mercifully, it lasted only two weeks. Neil was in the air every one of the days that flying was done, for a total of thirteen flights. The first, on February 20, involved gunnery training, and six were CAPs. The others were armed reccos. On the morning of the twenty-fifth, Neil finished the work of the night hecklers in a morning attack that destroyed both locomotives and forty cars on a long train.
The weather stayed cold, overcast, with rough seas. On the twenty-first, the day Armstrong flew a recco to Yonghung, a Corsair pilot from VF-53, LTJG Francis G. Gergen, crashed while escorting a battle-damaged AD through a heavy snowstorm to a friendly field. It was the only death experienced by the entire air group during this final tour.
Armstrong says of the VF-51 aviators: “If they had that choice, on most days they’d say, ‘I ought to go fly, go face those guns again. I’d rather do that than stay here and read.’ Because they were that kind of people. They enjoyed the flying” and kept close track of how many missions they had flown, how many cat shots they had made, how many carrier landings achieved, and so forth, not wanting the other guys to get ahead of them. To the very last days of the cruise, as Hal Schwan explains, “It wasn’t a question of how difficult it was to fly so many missions; rather, it was more a question of trying to get out on more missions than you were scheduled.” The engineer in Armstrong regarded wartime survival primarily in terms of odds and probabilities.
Armstrong’s last flight in the Korean War came on March 5, 1952. On that day, the pilots of VF-51 transferred their flyable planes to the Valley Forge. The Panther jet that Neil flew was U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics No. 125123, a plane he had flown only twice before (photo escort to Songjin on September 17 and recco escort to Wonsan and Pu-Chong on November18). He flew BuAer Nos. 125132 and 125100 ten times and nine times, respectively. Overall, he flew every one of VF-51’s F9Fs at least once, except the few that were lost early.
Armstrong flew a total of seventy-eight missions. Thirty of them were CAP, fifteen were photo escort, and one was for gunnery training. In the other thirty-two, he flew recco, fighter sweeps, rail cuts, and flak suppression. In all, Neil was in the air for over 121 hours. Over a third of that time came in the extraordinarily tough month of January 1952.
On March 11, 1952, after a few days in Japan, the Essex departed for Hawaii and from there stateside—or, as Bob Kaps called it, to “the land of dreams.” Finally on March 25 came the glorious sight of the California shoreline. “Seems years since we left this very dock,” Kaps wrote in his journal. “May the Lord will that none will have to go through it again.”
As did his fellow aviators, Armstrong arrived home with a chest full of war medals. Neil typically downplayed his own achievements, saying, “They handed out medals there like gold stars at Sunday school.” His first award, the Air Medal, came in recognition of his first twenty combat flights; his second, a Gold Star, in recognition of his next twenty. With his mates, Neil also received the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star. As with most military honors and recognitions, Neil may have most appreciated his first, the Air Medal, which covered the series of flights that included his ejection over Pohang. This citation read:
For distinguishing himself by meritorious achievement in aerial flight as a pilot of a jet fighter in Fighter Squadron FIFTY ONE, attached to the U.S.S.ESSEX, in attacks on hostile North Korean and Chinese Communist forces. During the period from 21 August 1951 to 9 October 1951, in the face of grave hazards, Ensign Armstrong participated in twenty flights including strikes on transportation and lines of communication at HAMHUNG,MAJON-NI, PUKCHONG, and SONGJIN. He performed his assignedmissions with skill and courage. His devotion to duty was at all times in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
The person who most influenced Armstrong on the Essex cruise was, undoubtedly, Ernie Beauchamp. Neil developed “enormous respect” for the Skipper. “I thought he was a superi
or leader,” Armstrong states. “I learned from our skipper that it’s not how you look; it’s how you perform.” If Beauchamp’s eyes had not gone bad, he most likely would have become an admiral. But after losing his wings in the late 1950s for failing to pass an annual eye exam, Beauchamp left the navy for McDonnell Aircraft Corporation.
In naval aviation, “Almost everything we did, we did as teams,” Neil emphasizes. “Eight eyes [per four-pilot team] are better than two in looking for trouble and looking for targets.” “We just seemed to click together very well,” explains Hal Schwan. “We had the closest and best operating organization imaginable. All of the people were top-notch people. That was really all you thought about.” And still do. Most of its members have kept in touch for the past fifty-plus years.
The Screaming Eagles was an amazing group of professionals. The early American astronauts are hardly more impressive. Eight members of VF-51 flew more than one hundred combat missions. One became a Blue Angel, the navy’s stellar flight-exhibition team. Two became captains. Another became the navy’s top admiral and chief of naval operations (CNO). Five became test pilots. Three were inducted into the Test Pilot Hall of Fame. The Golden Eagles, an elite association of naval aviation pioneers limited to 200 active members, at one time counted five men from VF-51 (Armstrong, Beauchamp, Hayward, Mackey, and Moore), perhaps the most ever from any one squadron. One can only imagine what sort of achievements might have been made by their other mates, forever young, who died over half a century ago in battle: Ashford, Bramwell, Rickelton, and Cheshire. From all of them, Armstrong learned a quiet, dignified pride.
Just under 34,000 Americans were killed in the Korean War, with over 23,500 of them dying in action. An additional 10,000 were wounded, and 7,000 became prisoners of war. The great majority of the casualties were U.S. Marines or soldiers in the U.S. Army. Compared to what the infantry went through in the ground war, the experiences of the men in the air—navy, marines, and air force—may seem comparatively inconsequential. Fewer than 500 navy personnel died in the war—492 to be exact. Twenty-seven of them fell during the Essex cruise.
At one point in Michener’s novel The Bridges at Toko-Ri, the admiral in command of Task Force 77 tells the doomed jet aviator, the fictional Harry Brubaker, “All through history free men have had to fight the wrong war in the wrong place. But that’s the one they’re stuck with.” Even more poignantly, Michener’s book concludes with the admiral looking out over the deck of his aircraft carrier, sadly pondering the young aviator’s death in combat and asking, “Where do we get such men?”
PART FOUR
THE REAL RIGHT STUFF
Aeroplane testing…demands for satisfactory results the highest training. It occupies no special place by virtue of this—it merely comes into line with the rest of engineering. Now, one can learn to fly in a month…but an engineer’s training requires years. It is evidently necessary, therefore, that engineers—men with scientific training and trained to observe accurately, to criticize fairly, to think logically—should become pilots, in order that the development of aeroplanes may proceed at the rate at which it must proceed if we are to hold that place in the air to which we lay claim—the highest.
—CAPTAIN WILLIAM S. FARREN, BRITISHROYAL AIRCRAFT FACTORY, 1917
In the end the accuracy of the results really depends upon the flyer, who must be prepared to exercise a care and patience unnecessary in ordinary flying. Get careful flyers whose judgment and reliability you can trust and your task is comparatively easy; get careless flyers and it is impossible.
—CAPTAIN HENRY T. TIZARD, TESTING SQUADRONOF THE BRITISH ROYAL FLYING CORPS, 1917
CHAPTER 11
The Research Pilot
One evening in a bull session aboard the Essex in 1951, Neil Armstrong told his bunkmates about the research of Dr. Robert Goddard, America’s leading rocket pioneer and founder of the American Rocket Society. During his freshman year at Purdue, Armstrong had joined both the American Rocket Society (ARS) and the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences (IAS), two organizations that would later merge to become the predominant aerospace engineering society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Though neither Goddard nor the American Rocket Society registered with Neil’s fellow junior officers, what resonated was Neil’s “amazingly prophetic statement” that “he would like to be the first man on the Moon.”
Unlike the apocryphal stories told by Wapakonetans Jacob Zint and John Crites—the truthfulness of which Armstrong categorically denies—Neil qualifies his alleged statement to his VF-51 mates. “I think Wernher von Braun’s book Conquest of the Moon did not come out until [1953]. I was interested in spaceflight but did not believe it would occur in my lifetime. Von Braun’s book proposed that if all the countries of Earth combined their resources, humans could go to the Moon by the year 1978. So I very much doubt that I made the statement.”
Armstrong’s contract with the navy expired three years from the time he started his flight training. That meant he should have been free to return to college in February 1952. However, Fighter Squadron 51 was still in combat: “My options were either to extend my time in the service or swim home, so I extended.” On February 1, 1952, while he was still serving aboard the Essex, the navy terminated his regular commission and reappointed him as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
Arriving back in the States with his shipmates on March 25, 1952, Neil spent the next five months based ashore in Southern California ferrying aircraft in and out of Naval Air Station San Diego for Air Transport Squadron32. His final fitness report, signed by VR-32’s commanding officer C. B. Cottingham, read: “ENS Armstrong…. is willing to learn and has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness, initiative, and industry. With broader experience in administrative responsibilities he should develop his talents as an officer and become of great value to the naval service. He presents a fine military bearing, and is recommended for promotion when due.”
Armstrong left the navy on August 23, 1952, in the month of his twenty-second birthday. He received $442.70 in separation pay and $157.20 in travel allowance. Promoted to lieutenant junior grade in May 1953, he remained in the U.S. Naval Reserve until he resigned his commission on October 21, 1960, all the while remaining “physically qualified for all duty with waiver,” the waiver being a “trick knee” sustained in a college boxing bout.
Back in school at Purdue, Neil flew regularly with Naval Reserve Aviation Squadron 724 at NAS Glenview, outside Chicago, under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Naval District based at Great Lakes, Illinois. LCDR Leonard R. Kozlowski, the commanding officer of VF-724, filed Armstrong’s fitness report dated June 5, 1954: “LTJG Armstrong has…already displayed a high degree of interest and initiative.” Six months later (and one month after Neil graduated from Purdue), Kozlowski reported: Neil “has frequently demonstrated outstanding performance in providing useful suggestions regarding Squadron tactics.” Later reports called Neil “an extremely efficient pilot” and “an outstandingly proficient Naval Aviator.” As a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at Edwards Air Force Base at Muroc Dry Lake, northeast of Los Angeles, Neil did his reserve flying with VF-773 at NAS Las Alamitos, near Long Beach. But his boss at Edwards, Joseph Vensel, put a stop to Neil’s committing his time to additional flying, prompting LCDR A. A. Johnson to note in Neil’s final fitness report: “This officer has been a good squadron officer and pilot. He has the ability to accept greater responsibility in the Naval Reserve Program, and it is regrettable that his civilian employment forced him to terminate his activities with this unit.”
Graduating from Purdue in January 1955, Armstrong entertained several tempting options for employment. He could have stayed in the navy. Interviews with Trans-World Airlines (TWA) and Douglas Aircraft Company led to job opportunities. Neil also briefly considered graduate work in aeronautical engineering.
Seeking a position in the small fraternity of engineering test pilots in early 1955, Armstrong c
ould have gone one of two ways. If he had taken a job offered by Douglas or a competing firm, he could have become a production test pilot. As such Neil would have test-flown each new aircraft of a given type as it rolled off the production line to demonstrate manufacture according to contract specifications.
His second option, and the one he took, was to become an experimental test pilot, as epitomized by the fledgling Society of Experimental Test Pilots, committing in 1955 “to assist in the development of superior aircraft.” Elite test pilots most often trained at either the U.S. Air Force school at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert of California, or the U.S. Navy school at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where Armstrong spent the summer between the semesters of his senior year in college helping to supervise carrier landing qualification tests and to analyze the performance of the navy’s new steam catapults. The SETP would welcome Neil as a charter member and later elect him one of its distinguished Fellows.
The position that most interested Armstrong was that of research pilot. A special class of experimental test pilot, the research pilot strove to advance the science and technology of flight across a broad front. Employment opportunities existed primarily at private research organizations or the federal government, most prominently the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. From boyhood, Armstrong had regularly followed the results of ongoing NACA research in Aviation Week and other aviation magazines, and NACA reports were part of the curriculum in his aeronautical engineering classes at Purdue.
In the summer before his last semester, Armstrong presented his credentials to the NACA. Specifically, he applied to be a test pilot at the NACA’s High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB, the facility where the X-planes were being flown. As Edwards had no openings, the NACA, unbeknownst to Armstrong, circulated his application to all of its research centers. Neil’s recollection is that an engineer from the NACA’s Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio, by the name of Isadore Irving Pinkel “asked if he could come down and talk with me.” I. I. Pinkel headed the physics division at Lewis; Pinkel’s brother, Benjamin, was in charge of the thermodynamics research division. Sometime during the fall of 1954, brother Irving interviewed Neil at Purdue’s Phi Delta Theta house. Pinkel could not offer Armstrong much money, but rather promised him the excitement and personal satisfaction inherent in the world of aeronautical research.
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