Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (2 page)

Neil was aware it was his final moment of sanctuary from those who would be trying to do him harm, and despite his age his older brethren of the air regarded him a competent flyer. He taught himself to focus on the reasonable and the plausible instead of imagined fears.

Neil would never lose sight of the fact he was a small town boy with 15 cents in his pocket. He was thankful he was flying jets for the Navy, thankful he had the get-up-and-go to study what made the machines he flew fly, and the good sense to hit the books until he roped himself acceptance into the Navy’s Aviation Midshipman Program.

He had selected Purdue University. The Navy’s seven-year program called for him to spend two years in the classroom studying aeronautical engineering. Then there would be flight training where he’d get his commission as a Navy ensign followed by active duty before completing classes for his degree.

But it didn’t work out that way. After he had studied for a year-and-a-half the Navy discovered they were short on fighter pilots and Neil was called early to flight training.

He got his wings in August of 1950, two months after the Korean Conflict had begun. Neil was one of those rare birds, a midshipman with wings. He had to wait a few weeks for his ensign bar.

“I asked for the Pacific Fleet and was given the Pacific Fleet,” he would later say. “I was first sent out to a squadron called FASRON, Fleet Air Service Squadron, which was a utility unit where I waited until there was an opening in Fighter Squadron 51 (VF-51). I’d be flying from the deck of the
Essex
with midshipman wages of 75 dollars a month plus flight pay calculated at 50 percent of my base wage.”

Neil had no regrets as the morning flight continued, suddenly feeling himself enjoying the new day. The sun was peaking over the horizon, spreading its warming rays. He studied the sky filled with VF-51 pilots and their planes. It was a togetherness that brought with it a certain sense of safety.

Better than being alone Neil agreed with himself as he suddenly saw one of nature’s stunning creations, Mount Fuji in the rising sun.

The magnificent volcano’s cone was perfect rising 12,000 feet to poke a hole through the clouds. Just as suddenly as Japan’s most recognized landmark appeared, Neil was aware the peace the great mountain brought with it was about to end.

Japan’s Mount Fuji shows its peak above the clouds at sunrise. (U.S. Navy)

Dead ahead, across the Sea of Japan, were the mountains of Korea—ugly mountains placed there by some ancient geological event that tortured them into jagged boldness—left them twisted and scattered, presenting no organized or logical face to visitors.

Neil judged them as terrible mountains—mountains of pain and death that ran in crazy directions. Their peaks formed no patterns. Their valleys led nowhere yet somewhere. Hidden from his view were today’s targets.

His group’s assigned duty was to fly into a hot zone naval intelligence called “Green Six.” It was the code name for a valley with gun sites, freight yards and trains, a dam, and one of those ever-loving stubborn bridges.

Neil was comfortable flying the F9F Panther. He thought of it as a very solid airplane—built by the Grumman team, the best airplane builders around. “But in retrospect,” he said, “it didn’t fly well. It didn’t have particularly good handling qualities. Pretty good lateral directional control, but very stiff in pitch. Its performance both in max speed and climb were inferior to the Chinese MIG by a substantial amount.

“I’m sure I would not have enjoyed going against a MIG in my Panther,” he laughed.

*   *   *

They crossed the Korean coastline. The guns were waiting. The
Essex
’s fighters began to descend in swift dips and dives to confuse the antiaircraft. Then John Carpenter, Neil’s group leader, pounced his Panthers upon the heaviest guns with blazing fire, raking the big gun emplacements through grey smoke and bursts of flak as they thundered straight down “Green Six”—lower and lower they charged, releasing their 500-pound bombs as five-inch and three-inch guns, even machine guns, fired at their jets.

Neil was instantly aware that a single shell could pulverize any of them. When he climbed up from the valley, heaviness was upon his legs and his face was drawn down upon his chin. The gravity gods were at work as he kept his Panther snug on John Carpenter’s wing.

Panthers cross North Korea’s coastline. (U.S. Navy)

Back upstairs Neil could see clearly the targets were essentially demolished with one exception—that damn bridge.

John Carpenter saw it, too, and their leader immediately recognized the job needed to be finished.

Carpenter rolled his Panther left and brought his group down again, jets screaming along the shimmering river. They were roaring toward the bridge like bats out of Hades, thundering straight for the stone and steel spanning the river. Neil quickly noticed it was historic—tall pillars rising above one of North Korea’s major waterways and decidedly vulnerable. Neil activated his nose guns and watched his heavy bullets rip into concrete and stone before releasing his last 500-pound bomb, which exploded, tearing and twisting the bridge into useless steel.

Time to reach for sky again, Neil ordered only himself. He hauled back on the Panther’s stick. Damn! He had only a brief instant to see an antiaircraft cable stretching hundreds of feet from mountain to mountain.

WHOMP!!!!!!

An ugly shock wave shook his fighter from nose to tail.

“If you’re going fast, a cable will make a very good knife,” Neil told me later, remembering how the tightly wrapped strands of steel had sliced through his right wing too swift to be seen. It cut metal, wiring, tubing, and his control connections. Instantly six to eight feet beginning at the wing’s tip was no longer there.

Quickly Neil judged he was about 500 feet from ground; his speed was 350 knots. His damaged Panther was flying at an angle that could aerodynamically compensate for the loss of almost half of his right wing—as long as he held the undamaged aileron on his opposite wing at an extreme that it could compensate.

The aileron is the movable surface on an aircraft’s wings that controls roll and the amount of bank needed to work in concert with the rudder to turn the aircraft. Neil had to make rapid judgments. Not only had he lost almost half of his right wing and much of its aileron, his elevators that controlled up and down pitch had become sluggish.

Damn!
Neil spat. The ground was coming up, coming up fast, and he had to—
Oh, trim!
With lagging elevators, trim tabs would boost them so he could climb. As quickly as his thumb could move the “coolie hat” trim toggle atop his control stick he was rolling in trim to bring his jet’s nose up. But nothing was happening! Wait, there it goes! His nose was rising. “Move, move,” he shouted at the forward end of his Panther. And it did, just before he would have clobbered Korean dirt. He was headed back upstairs—a slow, steady climb—and he was instantly aware he was not breathing. He gulped in air. “Armstrong,” he shouted aloud. “20 feet above ground is no place to be at 350 knots.”

If Neil had had time to sweat he would have. Instead, the young fighter pilot radioed John Carpenter, “Hey, boss,” he stammered. “I’ve lost … I’ve lost about half of my starboard wing. I’m carrying a lot of aileron to keep from rolling, and if I get too slow she’s gonna’ roll on me.”

“Roger.”

“I’m regaining altitude slowly,” Neil told Carpenter. “I have all the trim back on its heels, and my elevators aren’t much use. I’ll have to make one hot landing.”

“How hot?”

“About one hundred seventy.”

“Too damn hot,” Carpenter shot back, realizing the carrier couldn’t handle 170.

“Yes, sir,” Neil agreed. “But she won’t fly any slower without rolling.”

“Understand.”

“Eject?”

“Eject,” said the group head quietly, “and I’ll stay with you all the way Armstrong.”

The two flyers reflected on the decision they’d just made. Then Carpenter asked, “Think about 14,000 feet will do it?”

“Should,” Neil agreed. “Just want to make sure I’m high enough to have time to complete all those ejection procedures before I hit ground.”

“Good idea,” Carpenter laughed, adding, “The nearest friendly territory is down south. It’s Pohang Airport, K-3.”

“The marines?” Neil questioned.

“That’s the one.”

“That’ll be good,” Neil agreed, adding, “But no bailout over North Korea.”

“Yeah, not too many come back.”

“If I miss K-3,” Neil told him, “I’ve always liked water. It’s a softer landing.”

“Roger that,” Carpenter agreed as the side-by-side jets climbed from Green Six located on a narrow valley road south of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan.

Neil wasn’t alone in his thinking. Both he and John Carpenter were aware they were planning what most pilots viewed as one of the most dangerous parts of their job—ejecting at jet speeds. That was the bad news. The good news was Neil had confidence in Carpenter’s judgment. He was an Air Force major, on an exchange with the Navy. He liked the challenges of flying off carriers, and Neil liked flying his wing—liked learning. But there was more—in his brief 21 years Neil had never really thought about bailing out or ejecting from a plane that could still fly. He had not trained to do such a thing. One of his classmates had gone over to parachute school in El Centro, California, for ejection training and had come back and told them how to do it.

That was the extent of Neil’s schooling on ejecting and he began thinking through what he was about to do as the two Panthers continued south. The farther they flew the more the mountains of Korea showed beauty. Gone were the tortured profiles and the senseless chaos of the north. To their right reservoirs glistened like fine pearls holding the hills. To their left snow hung upon the ridgelines. Before them the waters of the Sea of Japan held their carrier. But the ship would not be there for Neil.

He would be ejecting so he studied the hazards. He had a shotgun-shell-powered seat to blow him quickly away from his plane. He would instantly be clear of everything around him, but that instant speed would slam his body with such force he would suddenly weigh 22 times his own weight, or in pilot lingo 22 Gs. Not a lot of tolerance for error! The likelihood of some kind of injury was high—injury to the shoulders, arms, legs, and feet if he was not properly tucked in. He’d best be in the correct position or the ejection could cause him to create a new crater in Korean soil.

John Glenn, a marine fighter pilot flying combat in the Korean theater, tells the story of his famous wingman, baseball slugger Ted Williams. Williams suffered an engine flameout in his F9F Panther and opted, despite that his jet engine might explode, to fly to the nearest alternate landing field. Ted Williams knew of a pilot who ejected and suffered permanent injuries to his feet. Ted Williams vowed to never eject. He feared it would end his baseball career. Famed test pilot Chuck Yeager, the pilot who first broke the sound barrier October 14, 1947, called ejecting from a speeding jet “committing suicide to avoid getting killed.”

Neil smiled. He’d heard it all. But when you are left with one choice, you’re happy to have it.

The science of the day on ejecting made it pretty clear that being shot out of a speeding jet could severely compress your vertebrae. This is why the Navy had put a lifetime limit on the total number of times one of its aviators could eject. Neil had no plans to test the limit. He reached for his ejection seat instructions and began reading carefully:

One:
Reduce airspeed if possible. 250! Yep, that’s about as slow as I want to go.

Two:
Check that safety belts and harnesses are locked.

Three:
Pull pre-ejection lever inboard and push hard down until locked. This jettisons the canopy, dumps cabin pressure, lowers seat, releases knee braces, and pulls safety pin in seat catapult firing mechanism.

Four:
Pull your feet back and place them on their footrests.