Falling to Earth (10 page)

Pam and I decided that all four of us would live in England while I attended the Empire Test Pilot School at Farnborough, in the south of the country. We also decided that if we were going to spend time in a foreign nation, we would not hide in an American compound and pretend that we were still at home. Since I was on exchange to the RAF, I would live as an RAF officer. The whole point of the program was to create good connections between the two nations, and living in the English community, rather than segregating ourselves like most American pilots, seemed like the best way to do it.

When we first arrived in England in a military aircraft, a very helpful and friendly air force officer from Oklahoma met me at the bottom of the steps. His name was Bill Pogue, and he was also in the exchange program. Bill had been asked to welcome us to England and make sure we got to our destination in one piece. After a brief chat where he shared some helpful tips about the school, Bill put us in a car. That was the last I saw of him until a couple of years later, when he turned up again at the astronaut selection physical tests.

Some of the officers who had gone over earlier paid hundreds of dollars a month in rent to live in an American enclosure, a huge amount of money back then. Instead of living with Americans, I asked my RAF counterpart who made my moving arrangements to find us an English house to rent. He located a beautiful five-bedroom bungalow in Crookham Village, with a large vegetable garden in the back. It was quite close to the air base at Farnborough, in the pleasant rural county of Hampshire, and cost about a fifth of the rent for the American compound. In such beautiful surroundings, I no longer felt sad about missing out on an Edwards assignment in the dusty California desert.

My family became completely immersed in the British way of life. We went weeks at a time without seeing another American except in my classes. Our two daughters started school, and because they were still so young, they picked up English accents amazingly fast. To our amusement, Pam and I found that we now had two children who sounded like they were born and raised in Hampshire.

It was a fascinating time to be in England. In 1964, after years of austerity following World War II, the country was coming to life again. You could feel it in the music; the Beatles were really making a big splash. Every Friday night we would have a party at the officers’ club. They’d pack a hundred people into a tiny room, play Beatles records, and we’d party all night long. I still consider my British friends to be the best I ever had.

Even though we lived in England, we threw a Fourth of July celebration at my house. A little insensitive, perhaps; after all, the British lost that war. However, I wanted to show my English colleagues how we Americans could throw a good party. My whole class came over to my home, as well as all the instructors. We had cold American bottled beer, hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad exactly as we would have served it in the States. At that time in England, these dishes were pretty exotic. Although the English pilots insisted on calling us “colonials” that day, they had a great time. The commandant of the school even showed up, in a full dress uniform with white gloves. He probably regretted that when he began to run around, playing a game where we threw raw eggs over the bungalow while others tried to catch them on the other side. Those white gloves didn’t stay clean for long.

The British taught test flying very differently than Americans. We had to do everything by hand; there were no electronic recording devices. Back in the States, a big control room recorded the test data. In England, I measured data myself, took my own notes in the air, and wrote my own reports.

Some may have thought the American, more high-tech approach was better, but I didn’t. I had to really
think
about what I was doing while learning to test fly in England, rather than rely on the ground to record everything for me. Perhaps because I enjoyed a hands-on relationship with cars and other mechanical things, I found this approach far more interesting. A handheld gauge told me precisely how much force I exerted on the stick when I pulled it, and I would use this in the air together with a tape measure and a notebook while carefully testing the aircraft. I could directly measure what happened whenever I made the slightest adjustment to the airplane. It sounds old-fashioned, for a pilot to be fiddling with a handheld force gauge while flying a jet, but by personally reading off the forces I placed on the airplane, I felt even closer to the machine. It was incredibly valuable, because I learned what it took to make each aircraft perform at its best.

I don’t recall any of my American colleagues looking down their noses at this more direct testing method. In fact, we all really appreciated our time in England because, if we had been in the United States, we would only have been allowed to fly two different types of aircraft, maximum. At Farnborough, I flew at least thirteen varieties, from a tiny de Havilland Chipmunk propeller airplane all the way up to a Vickers Viscount airliner that could seat around fifty passengers. We flew a wonderful diversity of unique aircraft with intriguing names like Provost, Devon, Dove, Canberra, and Skyhawk. We even flew gliders: it was pilot heaven. The British philosophy was that we were pilots, so we should be able to fly anything. It was quite different from the American mindset of specializing in one kind of fighter jet.

Most of the time, we flew Hawker Hunters or Gloster Meteors. The Meteor was the first operational British jet fighter and a potentially deadly airplane—not only for the enemy, but also for the pilot. It was tricky to fly, and in certain flight conditions the Meteor would become unstable and almost uncontrollable. The Hawker Hunter, on the other hand, was one of the best airplanes I ever flew. It was smooth, comfortable, easy to fly, yet very powerful. I loved to spin upside down and watch the world rotate around me. I fell in love with that airplane, and flew as many of my test exercises in it as I could.

At Farnborough we’d start the day with academic sessions, then have lunch, often with a pint of beer, before we suited up and went flying. There were some British flying practices that weren’t necessarily better—in fact, I am sure they don’t do them anymore—and drinking before flying was certainly one of them. But that beer accompanied some of the most wonderful lunches I ever had in the military. I learned to love eating fish while I was in England, and I have never had Dover sole as good as I had at Farnborough. We’d finish up the lunch with a traditional English brandy-soaked trifle dessert with custard, empty our beer glasses, and head down to the operations area to go flying. Once there, we had one more lunchtime treat before we’d take to the air. The cleaning lady at the flight line office always had a big mug of hot tea ready for us. It was the strongest tea I ever tasted: you could probably have stood a spoon up in it. It was the perfect refreshment before a long flight and probably also helped counter any bad effects of the lunchtime alcohol.

Farnborough was my first time living overseas, and I loved it. I didn’t have to learn a new language, which made adapting easier. As part of the training, we students traveled all over the island. We would pile into the Viscount and head off to airplane manufacturers in towns like Blackpool and Edinburgh. We’d visit anywhere and anyone related to aviation. I also found time to take Pam and the kids on some great trips to places like Bristol, Lancaster, the beautiful castles of north Wales, and the lovely city of Chester with its impressive Roman and medieval city walls and buildings. Learning how to drive on the left was intriguing enough. But even the roads were different. Some followed the path of old Roman highways, which would cut across the landscape in a straight line. Others, English-style roads, wound around the contours of hills, so there were few rises and dips to negotiate.

To get around, I bought a Volkswagen Beetle. Like all cars in England, it was a stick shift. I drove to the store at South Ruislip Air Station every week to buy groceries and also to do something a little extra: I was the unofficial supplier of liquor for my British colleagues. With coupons from the American Embassy I could get it at the air force store for a dollar a bottle. English ladies had a particular liking for straight shots of tequila, so I had to buy extra bottles every week.

I soon realized, however, that Pam didn’t want to drive the car. In my haste, I had never asked what kind she would feel comfortable driving. When we finally talked about it, I learned that she was frightened to drive on the left-hand side of the road. She also didn’t want to learn how to change gears. So I compromised with her and traded the Beetle for an American Oldsmobile station wagon with an automatic transmission.

It was only a little thing, but it symbolized our growing disconnection. I found it strange: it seemed that she did not want to join me and fully adapt to British life. In fact, she felt a little intimidated by life in England. While I tried to do everything I could to make her comfortable, I increasingly felt I was alone in my interests and ambitions. The last thing I wanted to do was give up exciting opportunities and settle for comfort and familiarity, but I felt I was subtly being asked to do just that.

I graduated second in my class at Farnborough. Not long before I did, the class from the test pilot school at Edwards came over for a visit. Among them was Chuck Yeager, a legend in the test piloting world because he was the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Now, almost two decades later, he was the commandant of the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards, which trained pilots and engineers to test new and experimental airplanes. I didn’t know him personally at that time, but I had been told a lot about him. One of the stories was that he didn’t like pilots with a lot of education. Like a lot of World War II veterans, he’d never been to college himself. So it was a surprise when, almost as soon as Chuck stepped off the airplane, he tracked me down, introduced himself, and said that he needed me to come back and teach at his school.

It was a flattering offer, but I had to tell him that I didn’t know if I could accept: I was in a formal three-year exchange program. I was scheduled to leave soon for another British flight test center, RAE Bedford, where the British were developing vertical lift aircraft. I would test vertical takeoff maneuvers and equipment. I was looking forward to this two-year assignment, because they had some really interesting and innovative testing going on.

I could tell that Chuck wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He spoke with the commandant of the test pilot school, who in turn discussed it with the British defense ministry. They approved my return to the States, but the U.S. Air Force was still nervous about accepting. They didn’t want to do anything that might upset an international exchange program. I believe the discussion went all the way up to the secretary of the air force before it was agreed that I would return to the States. In the meantime, I had graduated from the school, and no one had any idea where to assign me.

While the decision was made, I marked time at the exchange office of the American Embassy in the center of London. I was placed in a small rented office above a Wimpy’s hamburger café, a couple of blocks from the embassy. It was frustrating: I wanted to keep flying, but instead I was stuck at a desk. There wasn’t much for me to do except for some nonsense paperwork, so I walked around and enjoyed London instead. It was Christmas of 1964, and the big stores gleamed with colored lights. It was the last calm moment in my career for a very long time.

I was commuting into London from Crookham Village every weekday by train. One morning, I spotted a familiar face at the station: Robbie Robinson. He was a British pilot who had been on exchange duty in the United States doing top-secret work before becoming an instructor at Farnborough. Years later, it was revealed that he’d flown highly classified missions in U2 spy planes over the Soviet Union’s rocket testing sites, which the British officially denied at the time. I always had a lot of fun with him, as we got along so well; he had a great sense of humor. This morning would prove no exception.

Robbie sidled up to me, we exchanged glances, and he whispered, “Follow my lead.” I guessed he had a prank in mind, so we entered the same rail compartment and pretended not to know each other. It seemed that no one ever talked on the train; they preferred to bury their faces in a newspaper. Robbie sat and read his paper, too. As the train started to move, he began to mutter to himself about the “damn Americans,” as if a story in the paper had angered him.

I guessed that this was my cue. After a few minutes of his grumbling, I announced that I was an American, that he was insulting my country and needed to stop. He immediately argued back. We kept this act up for a while, and gradually the other newspapers in the compartment were lowered and the passengers began to stare at us. As we neared London, the argument became more and more heated, and other people on the train joined in. Luckily, some took the American side, or I could have been in big trouble. As we pulled into our final stop, the other passengers were all arguing like crazy. With a final exchange of insults, Robbie and I jumped off the train and hid at one side of the track. We watched as the passengers came out, still quarreling furiously with each other. As soon as we were sure they were not looking, we laughed like hell. From then on, every time we rode a train together, we tried to pull the same trick.

After about six weeks, the British and Americans had worked out all of their paperwork. In the spring of 1965 it was time for me to head back to the States. My children, who by that time sounded completely English, went back into American schools. Surprisingly fast, they lost all traces of their British accents. We left the beautiful English countryside behind for the hot, dry desert of Edwards Air Force Base, northeast of Los Angeles. I felt a little strange: teaching at Edwards was an unusual arrangement. However, the test pilot school in England had taught me essentially the same skills I would have received in the basic flight test courses. I was given credit for the basic courses along with the students, while I wrote and taught the advanced courses. It was odd, graduating with the students I taught, but it suited everyone.