• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Early-Day Test Pilot Visits Bartlesville, Okla., Flight Expo

Posted on: Thursday, 2 June 2005, 00:00 CDT

Jun. 2--BARTLESVILLE -- In "The Right Stuff," a Tom Wolfe book -- later a movie -- about the space program's early days, test pilots and their wives are sitting in a bar near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

One of the wives, noticing photos of pilots on the wall, asks how her husband can get his photo with the others.

"He has to die," says one of the pilots.

Scott Crossfield, 83, avoided that distinction but practically no other in a 60-year career that has taken him from roles as a pilot on a Navy aircraft carrier in World War II to experimental aircraft test pilot, commercial airline executive, manufacturing consultant with North American Aviation (later Rockwell International Corp.) and advisor to the House Transportation Committee.

Crossfield, who lives in Virginia, is the guest of honor at the 19th Annual Biplane Expo, being held Thursday through Saturday at Frank Phillips Field in Bartlesville. He flew into Bartlesville this week, piloting a Cessna 210.

After World War II, Crossfield became a test pilot when he found out his aeronautical engineering degree was good for a $120-a-month job.

"So I looked for work as a pilot," he said. "That's when I heard about the NACA work."

In 1950, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics -- now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- was beginning the work that transformed U.S. aeronautical research from World War II fighters to spacecraft.

During the 1950-60 period at Edwards, Crossfield flew tests in the Bell X-1, the Convair XF-92, the Northrup X-4, the Bell X-5, the Douglas D-558-1 and the Douglas D-558-11 Skyrocket.

He was the first man to fly the North American X-15 and the first to fly at twice the speed of sound, 1,291 mph, on Nov. 20, 1953, in the Skyrocket. He also was the first to fly at three times the speed of sound in the X-15 on Dec. 10, 1960, although unofficially.

"It was dream flying," Crossfield said. "Any good aviator would prefer to fly those X-planes. Not even Howard Hughes could afford to fly one of those.

"It was a good professional opportunity to be on the edge of aeronautical development -- and for $500 a month in 1950."

Crossfield said he dreamed of flying since he took his first flight at 10 or 11 years old. He scoffs at the idea of an inspirational figure.

"Anybody that needs a role model doesn't have a mind of his own and wouldn't get anywhere," he said.

But there were colorful colleagues and friends: Chuck Yeager, the monosyllabic West Virginian and test pilot rival; Pancho Barnes, the female barnstorming pilot of the 1930s who established the Happy Bottom Riding Club bar where Edwards pilots gathered; and John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit Earth and later was a U.S. senator from Ohio.

"They were the finest people I ever worked with in my life," Crossfield said. "We made a lot of progress -- we went from World War II fighters to outer space. I helped conceive, design and demonstrate those aircraft. Not too many people have done that since the 1930s. The Wright brothers did, of course.

"But it was what I wanted to do, and I had the opportunity to do it."

Crossfield said piloting experimental aircraft was hard, short work.

"You went to work, you didn't have time to think about it," he said. "I would be taking notes on tape. The tape was for the benefit of the flight test program for North American. We didn't do research -- we just did what we had to do to prove the airplane.

"People took the work seriously -- not themselves."

Crossfield said he's tired of bureaucrats and do-gooders -- "weeping people with nothing else to do" -- trying to make the world safe.

"We haven't done anything in the way of progress in aerospace in 40 years," he said, referring to the bureaucratization of NASA and congressional meddling. "At NACA, we disdained public notice. We had a chance to make decisions and we had a chance to make mistakes, but we did a lot of things we can't do today.

"We developed 13 basic airplane designs that yielded 30 aircraft and cost less than $500 million, from the X-1 to the X-15, and translated everything we needed to know to go into space. You can't even build an airplane like the X-15 today for $500 million."

Crossfield said testing the boundaries of aerospace is dangerous work, and the deaths of the crews of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, though regrettable, are inevitable.

"But we have lost so few people in the space program," he said.

As for President Bush's proposed mission to Mars, Crossfield, a Republican, says, "Forget Mars."

"We need to make life better on Earth," he said. "From the space station, we have the ability to look inward to earth and see what minerals there are, view oases in the Sahara Desert. If we can watch the rest of the world, we might never have a Japanese fleet launching a surprise attack or a German military buildup.

"We haven't scratched the surface of what we could know about aerodynamics and space. I ran into a dean of the college of engineering one time who said we know practically all there is to know.

"I said, 'You're pulling my leg.' It reminded me of the guy who wanted to close the U.S. Patent Office in 1846 because there was nothing else to patent.

"I envy this younger generation. These young people are going to get restless and explore a tremendous store of knowledge that lies ahead."

-----

To see more of the Tulsa World, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tulsaworld.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Tulsa World, Okla.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Tulsa World

More News in this Category