Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 110, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 17, 1961 Page: 35 of 44
forty four pages : ill. ; page 21 x 16 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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Family Weekly; December a, 1961
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Test pilot Joe Walker and his wife Grace have added
a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, to this family scene.
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They Walk Away—with Humor
On the ground. Walker admitted the rocket's
initial failure “was a cliff hanger—when the old
thing started kicking me in the butt, it sure felt
good." Other than that admission, he remained a
study in casualness.
As Walker walked away, though, one of the old-
time crewmen at Edwards recalled the base's
favorite story. A test pilot had experienced a prob-
lem like Walker's and, upon landing, was sked
how long it had taken before the equipment re-
sponded properly.
“Oh. I can t say for sure," the pilot said non-
chalantly, “but it was just about the time it takes
to say three ‘Our Fathers.’ "
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him from the cockpit and spread a heavy foam
extinguisher over the fire before further trouble
developed. In Cannon's case, not only was there
serious injury but $4 million damage.
Not all our rocket-plane pilots have been even
this lucky. In a 1953 captive test (one in which
the rocket plane is not launched from its mother
ship), the rocket fuel exploded in a ball of yellow-
white flame in the belly of the B-52 while in mid-
air. Skip Zeigler, a test pilot, and crewman Frank
Walko died.
On Sept. 7, 1953, Capt Milburn Apt took the
X-2, another predecessor of X-15, on the unlucky
13th test of rocket planes. He had just set a world's
speed record of 2,094 mph when the plane reacted
unstably, largely because of its stubby, five-foot
wing spreads. It tipped into a cartwheel and flat-
tened Apt under unbearable G-forces. The X-2
sereamed into an inverted spin with Apt desper-
ately trying to eject himself (salvaged films of the
fight against overwhelming gravity forces are now-
used in pilot training). Apt managed to eject the
nose capsule from the plane but couldn't free him-
self from the capsule itself. Trapped, he plunged
40,000 feet to the desert floor and death.
Despite troubles, test pilots have had an abiding
faith in the 10-year-old program—a faith which
paid off last month in a record flight nearly 50
miles up at 4.070 mph! (In this flight, White's outer
windshield shattered, obscuring half his visibility
for a 200-mph landing )
More important than this final record, however,
are the breakthroughs in space technology already
recorded by the X-15 and its predecessors: the Air
Force's Dyna-Soar, a winged orbital re-entry
vehicle, owes much of its advancement to lessons
learned in the X-15; our future 2,000 mph pas-
senger rocket planes, now on the drawing boards,
will be based on X-15 achievements; even our
Mercury space-capsule program has borrowed
from the X-15
Basically, the X-15 is a flying laboratory testing
types of hardware which future spaceships, trav-
eling at speeds approaching that of light, will use
in reaching distant planets. It is the only aircraft
that has left the earth’s atmosphere and returned
with the pilot in full control: the development of
control and stability is among the most important
discoveries in recent space technology.
It is this prideful sense of accomplishment that
B N
V;
Maj. Robert White takes risks as X-15 pilot
then comes home to play with son Gregory
overrides any apprehensions the pilots may have
about pushing the X-15 to its far horizons. "When
we go up,” says White, “we are aware that we can
get into all sorts of trouble. But we have prepared
extensively for every possibility in ground train-
ing, and we have hundreds of assigned tasks in
flight to assure a good flight. It's all worth it, the
satisfaction of contributing to knowledge.”
Joe Walker feels much the same. “It’s a demand-
ing task to get done what you're sent up there to
do, and when you’re flying you're too busy to
clutter up your mind with worry. And when you
set down, well, you feel so good about doing your
job, you forget to worry."
Not Every Flight Is Routine
Walker, though, can remember one time when
he couldn't help “cluttering" his mind with worry.
On March 30, he was sitting in the snug seat of
the X-15 listening to B-52 pilot Fitzhugh Fulton
count down for launch Midway through. Walker
had to hold the count "Lost our liquid-nitrOgen
cooler. Mixing chamber quit."
Liquid nitrogen cools the cockpit and flight suit:
its failure could turn the X-15 into a baking oven.
Walker jiggled the mixer handle ‘ I ve worn out
a finger," he said discouragingly after a long
silence, and then with lifting voice, “Oh I got
it on again. That was touch and go."
Fulton completed the count down, pulled the pin.
and the X-15 kicked off Walker grasped a small
white knob to his left and pushed it to IGNITE
Nothing. The plane was powerless. "I don't have
a start,” Walker complained.
At ground control, Jack McKay radioed "Shut
down Try again."
"Restarting procedure,” Walker replied. The
lever went back in the gearbox then onto ignite
again Almost 14 seconds ticked off before Walker
could report: ‘It caught!”
At a 35-degree angle, Walker soared to 100,000
feet, tested eight small rockets for upper-atmos-
phere control, then glided toward a dead-stick
(powerless) landing, thinking the day's work
done. At 80,000 feet, however, he was in trouble for
the third time. Unaccountably, the plane went into
violent convulsions, bouncing Walker up and down
like a human piston
"My God," Walker radioed, "we re shaking to
pieces . .
Almost breathless, his instrument panel a dizzy-
ing blur before him. Walker clutched the stick and
let the plane ride out the brutal buffeting Slow ly
the instruments steadied in his vision; everything
read correctly, and the shaking was subsiding. The
X-15 was coming through its most violent struc-
tural assault in perfect shape so was Joe Walker,
except foi a sore seat.
Fire crews were ready, but they couldn t help re-
calling a similar incident 10 years before involving
the X-15‘s granddaddy, X-1, and test pilot Joe
Cannon The mother plane set down successfully
with Cannon anti the fully fueled X-1 and taxied
into an emergency area. As fire squads rushed
forward, an earthshaking blast rocked Edwards,
and the mated planes were enveloped in a burning
fog of vaporizing liquid oxygen (Lox).
Cannon hurtled from the plane, yelling—“Get
out! She’s going to go!" He had almost run from
the danger zone when he slipped and fell face for-
ward into Lox spilling on the runway. It ate away
his flight suit and froze his skin, incapacitating
him for a year.
. In Joe Walker's case, the same fate seemed in-
evitable As the B-52 inched toward the runway,
its pilot let loose the braking parachute. It disin-
tegrated in the backwash, and the B-52 screeched
onto the runway at top speed. The pilot hit his
wheel brakes, but the speed caused sparks which
ignited a fire in the wheel carriage next to Walker
and his explosive load of Lox and ammonia.
Fumes and whining sirens are what Walker re-
calls most vividly, but rescuers quickly extracted
York, Joe comes from a farm near Washington,
Pa. He served with a P-38 squadron in Italy during
the war. He met his wife Grace at a “matrimonial"
Sunday school for single people, and the couple
now lives in Lancaster, Calif., where Joe fights a
losing battle trying to grow grass in arid soil. Last
summer, shortly before he set a world's speed rec-
ord of 3,645 mph. Grace presented him with their
fourth child, Elizabeth Ann Others are Tom. 11,
Jim, 9, and Joe ( “don’t call him Joe. Junior!”), 2.
Like White’s children, they’re more interested in
cowboys than test pilots.
“Grace has learned to accept the dangers of my
work," Joe says— although later he will claim
there’s little danger. "She knows how much it
means to me. I don't know what I love about flying,
but friends tell me I’m in my best humor after
being up it must be in my blood."
One of Joe Walker’s close calls on the X-15
occurred last March when an electrical malfunc-
tion prevented the rocket plane from detaching
from the B-52 The pilot of the B-52 was forced
to set down gently with the X-15-"a flying tank
of 94,000 pounds of volatile fuel." as one engineer
describes it tucked under his Wing
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Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 110, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 17, 1961, newspaper, December 17, 1961; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1478893/m1/35/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Denton Public Library.