Magnificent Desolation (14 page)

I enjoyed sharing with the test pilots some of the lessons I learned during that time, most notably, a healthy respect for Russian built aircraft—a grudging admiration that I still maintain today. While it was commonplace for many Americans to deride the Soviets’ technology as grossly inferior to our own, I did not find that to be accurate. While their airplanes weren’t as fancy or elaborate as ours, they certainly got the job done. The same could be said of their spacecraft. Every time we have underestimated the Russians, they have surprised us.

Although the Korean War will never receive as much space in the history books as World War I or II, besides keeping the communists from overrunning South Korea, it served American interests in a
manner that often goes unnoticed. Namely, most of America’s early astronauts were veterans of the Korean War, and the experience of aerial combat left indelible impressions on all of us. Gus Grissom flew one hundred combat missions in Korea; Wally Schirra flew ninety; Jim McDivitt flew 145 missions, some in F-80s and some in the Sabres similar to what I flew. John Glenn was a Marine pilot attached to our Air Force wing, and he shot down three MiGs.
Apollo 11
commander Neil Armstrong served in Korea, too, as a Navy pilot aboard the aircraft carrier
Essex.
Neil flew seventy-eight combat missions and once had to eject when his wing caught a cable stretched over a bridge as a protective device. Fortunately, he was able to make it back to American-controlled territory before his plane went down.

For me, the experience as a fighter pilot was great training for my future role as an astronaut. Making quick decisions, many of which were life or death, as well as seeing the best way to rendezvous with friendly aircraft and to avoid the enemy, all played into my future studies at MIT, and my later contributions at NASA. For all of us, flying combat missions in Korea required concentration and skill far beyond anything we could have experienced otherwise. We had to face our fears and overcome them; we had to remain calm in the face of dangerous, high-altitude, high-speed situations. Our experience in Korea also immersed us in the competitive U.S.–Soviet conflict that would permeate the space race during the next several decades.

I returned home a hero—especially according to my father—with a renewed sense of patriotism and with confidence that I could do anything I put my mind to. So when the Air Force offered to pay for my graduate studies at MIT, I jumped at the opportunity. My mettle had been tested and found solid. My Air Force training and experiences would color everything I did for the rest of my life. Now that I had resumed my Air Force career as commandant of the test pilot school, it seemed I had come full circle, and my students never tired of hearing my fighter pilot combat stories.

E
ARLY IN MY
tenure at Edwards, I learned that a trip to Europe for 1971 had been approved, and that I would be leading a group of our upper-class test pilot students, as well as instructors, to visit test flight schools in England and test centers in France, Italy, and Germany, to study how they ran their schools in comparison with ours. While we were gone, I left our school in the capable hands of my deputy officer, Ted Twinting. An accomplished test pilot himself, and well up to the job of keeping the program running without a hitch, Ted really set the tone for the place, whether I was there or not, and he did an excellent job. I had no qualms about leaving him in charge.

My only reticence about the trip was dealing with the media swarm that was sure to surround us. Although I had grown accustomed to being inundated by questions, blinded by camera flashes, and besieged with autograph seekers, my personality still did not gravitate naturally to such clamor. During the world tour, Neil, Mike, and I at least had some help in fending off the more aggressive members of the media. On this trip I’d be handling the press largely on my own.

We began our trip in Rome, where we had a vigorous schedule of briefings and testing aircraft, as well as a full social card. At the test center, they had a G-91 single-seat Italian fighter, and our hosts offered to allow me to fly it. “Since you’ve been to the moon, we want to give you the honor of flying our new airplane,” the commandant said.

I’d never trained on such a plane, and there was no time to learn. Since it was a single-seater, I’d be on my own, with no instructor or copilot. Several of my instructors and students looked at me as though to say, “Are you really sure you want to do that?” I talked to the operations officer, and he gave me a quick rundown on how to start the plane and how the controls worked. It seemed similar to the T-38 airplane that we flew from Houston, so I said, “Sure, I’d love to take it for a ride.” The rest of our group went back to town, but I stayed over and studied the plane’s manual a bit, then took it up for a whirl. Flying a plane like that without hours of instruction would never happen in the U.S. Air Force, so it was quite a treat to fly the G-91 with just an
overview. The plane had a quickness that inspired me, so I pulled some precision maneuvers—and did so with glee.

Later that afternoon, I called the sultry Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, and told her I was in town. I had met Gina during the world tour following Apollo 11, and she sounded delighted to hear from me. “Come on by,” she said, “I’ll be here this afternoon.” A staff driver and I began searching for her villa on Via Appia. We were about to give up when we saw several television vans parked in front of the entrance to a villa. Sure enough, the paparazzi told us that we were at the right house. I had changed out of my uniform before leaving the air base, and was wearing casual clothes, so I didn’t think anyone would recognize me.

“Drive up as close to the entrance as possible, and wait for me here,” I told the driver. As soon as I got out of the military staff car, one of the media people saw me and said, “Hey, I know you.” I kept walking and didn’t respond. “I know you!” the guy said again, following after me, his face beaming with the excitement of presumed recognition. “You’re Neil Armstrong!”

I smiled to myself and kept on walking.

Gina greeted me warmly and we spent a marvelous few hours getting reacquainted. I would have preferred to stay right there, but the U.S. embassy attaché had informed us that our hosts had planned an escorted tour of Roman night life. Our hosts meant well, but they hadn’t anticipated the press of paparazzi following us everywhere, blocking our path, trying to get pictures and statements from me. It had been only two years since I walked on the moon, so the interest level was still high, especially for photographers who specialized in capturing celebrity photos.

The next night during our visit, Italian general Giorgio Santucci invited me to join him for the premiere opening of the Number One Club in Rome. It was a celebrity-laden event, and Giorgio and I arrived early, before most of the stars showed up. In an attempt to remain inconspicuous, we sat down at a table off to the side of the room. The
paparazzi proved particularly relentless. They were far more than annoying; they were downright obnoxious. Before long, a photographer recognized me, then another; soon we were surrounded by paparazzi. Giorgio looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, Buzz, but I think it is time to leave.”

We got up and headed toward the door, when a photographer jumped in front of me, purposely blocking the way. I pushed him aside and he tumbled backward onto the floor. Giorgio and I elbowed our way out of the building; I was careful not to spill my Scotch on the rocks that I carried along with me. Outside, the paparazzi continued to swarm around us until we finally made our way down the street to the car. Giorgio jumped in the driver’s side and I hopped in the passenger’s side, and he revved the engine. One overly zealous reporter planted himself in front of our car, refusing to budge while snapping photos of me through the windshield. In exasperation, I raised my hand and gave him the finger. As soon as I saw the flash go off, I knew that I had made a gigantic mistake. When we got back to the hotel, my first call was to the attaché at the embassy to see if he could quash the picture. He must have been successful, because the photo never showed up in the States.

Our reception in France was much more subdued, though I had to watch out for the Swedish flight attendants my students managed to meet up with. In Germany, a large crowd and a slew of reporters and television cameras greeted us upon our arrival. I answered a few questions, but made it clear that I was visiting with a group of students and would not be granting interviews. This was supposed to be a quiet, educational trip; the last thing I needed back home was my name in the papers.

Overall, the trip was fascinating and we developed a tremendous rapport with our fellow pilots. One major difference was that the Europeans quickly clamored around any and every new plane that landed on their airstrips, hoping for a chance to inspect the plane and possibly even fly it. By contrast, our American test pilots were extremely restricted as to what planes they were allowed to fly.

While in Europe, we were exposed to more than twenty-five new aircraft, and each of our pilots flew seven or more European planes. My group of students and instructors arrived back at Edwards tired but enthusiastic. From an educational standpoint, we all regarded the trip as a tremendous success. We were excited to make our report to our immediate superiors, General Bob White and his staff, who would in turn pass on our recommendations to the top brass in Washington. Basically, our report suggested that we could improve our military pilot training program by doing something similar to what the British did, allowing our test pilots to train on a wide variety of aircraft. Unfortunately, our report advocating a greater variety of training planes came at a time when the Air Force was about to announce a draconian cutback in the number of planes test pilots could fly. It was a self-defeating measure. We were, after all, training
test pilots
at our school. We weren’t teaching them how to
fly
planes; we were teaching them how to
test
planes. How could a good test pilot feel confident to test new types of aircraft, not to mention future spacecraft, if he or she was permitted to fly only a few types of planes over and over again?

It was ludicrous. But the Air Force was insistent on reducing the variety of planes on which pilots trained, thereby making crashes less likely.

When our report suggested using a broader variety of planes, General White’s staff balked. They thought it might draw unwanted attention to the test pilot crashes at Edwards and urged the general to nix the report. I countered with the case of the British, who tested a variety of planes and did more hazardous spins during their training exercises, yet their safety record was similar to our own. General White and his staff didn’t see it that way, and the report was filed away in obscurity.

The disappointment that the Air Force was not even going to submit the report of what we had learned in Europe sapped our students’ and instructors’ morale, and sent me into a personal tailspin. If my own commanding officer did not see merit in my ideas and suggestions, why waste our time and the taxpayers’ money playing silly airplane games? What good was I doing here, anyhow?

Throughout September, after returning to Edwards from Europe, I struggled with my role as commandant. When I went to my office, I looked at the stack of paperwork on my desk and it seemed overwhelming. I could fly fighter jets and I could walk on the moon, but none of my training had prepared me to run a test pilot school. What was I really accomplishing if I couldn’t change anything for the better as commandant of these test pilots? I felt no purpose, and I was having difficulty performing my regular duties. I was distracted, discouraged, and disappointed. I was sinking into despair, and I did not see any hope or reason to try. Maybe I needed a fresh challenge, and the test pilot school was
not
the answer.

Gradually, I could sense myself slipping into a blue funk, but I felt powerless to thwart the downward slide. At home, I became a recluse. I hardly talked to Joan or the kids. I did nothing but sit in front of the television set, watching the news aimlessly for hours on end. I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up late each night, which only exacerbated my edginess the following day. Some days I’d go in to the office, only to leave early, bringing home a pile of work that I would then let sit untouched on the counter. Emotionally, I felt like a mass of tangled wires inside, and physically there was an inexplicable pain in my shoulder and neck that seemed to be intensifying with each day.

I considered going for help, but I didn’t know where to go or what to ask for. The Air Force provided medical care, so they might be able to help my neck and back problems, but if I sought treatment for my mental and emotional traumas, a report would surely make its way into my official permanent records, thwarting any hopes I might have for future promotions. The public’s perception regarding rehabilitation programs in the early 1970s was quite different from what it is today. Now, when a high-profile celebrity seeks help to overcome an addiction or depression, we pat that person on the back. In the early 1970s, certainly in the military, to let it be known that you were seeking professional help for mental illness or alcoholism or drug addiction was a death knell to your career and certain to ostracize you socially. No, I decided, I’d suffer through on my own, hoping things would get better,
and that I could weather this colossal midlife crisis. But, in truth, I had little confidence that anything would improve.