United States Navy
Upon completion of pilot training Lovell served at sea flying F2H Banshee night fighters. In January 1958, he entered a six-month test pilot training course at the Naval Air Test Center (now the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland (also known as Pax River), along with Charles (Peter) Conrad and Wally Schirra. Lovell graduated first in his class.
Later that year, Lovell, Conrad and Schirra became three of 110 military test pilots selected as potential astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven, but Lovell and Conrad failed to make the cut for medical reasons: Lovell because of a temporarily high bilirubin count in his blood; and Conrad for refusing to take the second round of invasive medical tests. Lovell continued for four years at Pax River, using the call sign "Shaky", a nickname given him by Conrad.
Read more about this topic: Jim Lovell
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or navy:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Hollywood ... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.”
—William McKinley (1843–1901)
“I wish to reiterate all the reasons which [my predecessor] has presented in favor of the policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace with other nations and the best means of securing respect for the assertion of our rights of the defense of our interests, and the exercise of our influence in international matters.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)