Neil Armstrong - Test Pilot

Test Pilot

Following his graduation from Purdue, Armstrong decided to become an experimental research test pilot. He applied at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base; although they had no open positions, they did forward his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, where Armstrong began working at Lewis Field in March 1955. Armstrong's stint at Cleveland lasted a couple of months, and by July 1955, he returned to Edwards AFB for his new job.

On his first day at Edwards, Armstrong was tasked his first assignments, which were to pilot chase planes during releases of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. He also flew the modified bombers, and on one of these missions had his first flight incident at Edwards. On March 22, 1956, Armstrong was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which was to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. He sat in the right-hand pilot seat while the left-hand seat commander, Stan Butchart, flew the B-29.

As they ascended to 30,000 feet (9.1 km), the number-four engine stopped and the propeller began windmilling (rotating freely) in the airstream. Hitting the switch that would stop the propeller's spinning, Butchart found the propeller slowed but then started spinning again, this time even faster than the other engines; if it spun too fast, it would break apart. Their aircraft needed to hold an airspeed of 210 mph (338 km/h) to launch its Skyrocket payload, and the B-29 could not land with the Skyrocket still attached to its belly. Armstrong and Butchart brought the aircraft into a nose-down alignment to increase speed, then launched the Skyrocket. At the instant of launch, the number-four engine propeller disintegrated. Pieces of it damaged the number-three engine and hit the number-two engine. Butchart and Armstrong were forced to shut down the number-three engine, due to damage, and the number-one engine, due to the torque it created. They made a slow, circling descent from 30,000 ft (9,000 m) using only the number-two engine, and landed safely.

Armstrong's first flight in a rocket plane was on August 15, 1957, in the Bell X-1B, to an altitude of 11.4 miles (18.3 km). The nose landing gear broke on landing, which had happened on about a dozen previous flights of the Bell X-1B due to the aircraft's design. He later flew the North American X-15 seven times; his penultimate flight reached an altitude of 207,500 feet (63.2 km).

Armstrong was involved in several incidents that went down in Edwards folklore and/or were chronicled in the memoirs of colleagues. The first occurred during his sixth X-15 flight on April 20, 1962, while Armstrong tested a self-adjusting control system. He flew to a height of over 207,000 feet (63 km), (the highest he flew before Gemini 8), but the aircraft nose was held up up too long during descent and the X-15 bounced off the atmosphere back up to 140,000 feet (43 km). At that altitude, the air is so thin that aerodynamic surfaces have almost no effect. He flew past the landing field at Mach 3 (2,000 mph (3,200 km/h)) at over 100,000 feet (30 km) in altitude, and ended up 40 miles (64 km) south of Edwards (legend has it that he flew as far as the Rose Bowl in Pasadena). After sufficient descent, he turned back toward the landing area, and barely managed to land without striking Joshua trees at the south end. It was the longest X-15 flight in both time and distance from the ground track.

Four days later, Armstrong was involved in a second incident, when he flew for the only time with Chuck Yeager. Their job, flying a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake for use as an emergency landing site for the X-15. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote that he knew the lake bed was unsuitable for landings after recent rains, but Armstrong insisted on flying out anyway. As they attempted a touch-and-go, the wheels became stuck and they had to wait for rescue. Armstrong tells a different version of events, where Yeager never tried to talk him out of it and they made a first successful landing on the east side of the lake. Then Yeager told him to try again, this time a bit slower. On the second landing, they became stuck and according to Armstrong, Yeager was in fits of laughter.

Many of the test pilots at Edwards praised Armstrong's engineering ability. Milt Thompson said he was "the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots." Bill Dana said Armstrong "had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge." Those who flew for the Air Force tended to have a different opinion, especially people like Yeager and Pete Knight, who did not have engineering degrees. Knight said that pilot-engineers flew in a way that was "more mechanical than it is flying," and gave this as the reason why some pilot-engineers got into trouble: their flying skills did not come naturally.

A few weeks later on May 21, 1962, Armstrong was involved in what Edwards' folklore called the "Nellis Affair." He was sent in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter to inspect Delamar Dry Lake in southern Nevada, again for emergency landings. He misjudged his altitude, and also did not realize that the landing gear had not fully extended. As he touched down, the landing gear began to retract; Armstrong applied full power to abort the landing, but the ventral fin and landing gear door struck the ground, damaging the radio and releasing hydraulic fluid. Without radio communication, Armstrong flew south to Nellis Air Force Base, past the control tower, and waggled his wings, the signal for a no-radio approach. The loss of hydraulic fluid caused the tail-hook to release, and upon landing, he caught the arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, and dragged the chain along the runway.

It took thirty minutes to clear the runway and rig an arresting cable and Armstrong telephoned Edwards and asked for someone to collect him. Milt Thompson was sent in an F-104B, the only two-seater available, but a plane Thompson had never flown. With great difficulty, Thompson made it to Nellis, but a strong crosswind caused a hard landing and the left main tire suffered a blowout. The runway was again closed to clear it, and Bill Dana was sent to Nellis in a T-33 Shooting Star, but he almost landed long—and the Nellis base operations office decided that to avoid any further problems, it would be best to find the three NASA pilots ground transport back to Edwards.

Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 from November 1960 to July 1962. He reached a top altitude of 207,500 feet (63.2 km) in the X-15-3, and a top speed of Mach 5.74 (3,989 mph (6,420 km/h)) in the X-15-1; he left the Dryden Flight Research Center with a total of 2,400 flying hours. Over his career, he flew more than 200 different models of aircraft.