MEN FOR THE MOON—I Armstrong’s Life-Long Interest In Flying

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32036, 10 July 1969, Page 20

MEN FOR THE MOON—I Armstrong’s Life-Long Interest In Flying

(From

DMRYN HtNCH.

in New Ydrlt)

A teen-ager with aviation fuel in his veins he could fly an aeroplane before he could drive a car. At five years of age he made his first flight; at 10 he was building intricate model aircraft; at 16 he had a pilot s licence.

And now, at 38, the extra-terrestrial childhood dreams of a blond-haired country boy are about to be fulfilled beyond all expectations.

This month Neil Alden Armstrong will walk on the moon.

He’ll step out of a strangelooking space machine and step into history—as the first man ever to stand on another planet For Armstrong those historic steps will provide an incredible climax to a life that has been even more devoted to the world of aeroplanes than the Wright Brothers. It is obvious to even the most blase space-watcher that the epic Apollo 11 moon mission—of which Armstrong is commander—is the most perilous space adventure ever attempted. Armstrong and bls fellow astronauts Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins will fly 250,000 miles up into lunar orbit in readiness for Armstrong and Aldrin to make their historic landing spot aboard the lunar module. The risks are big but the prize is bigger. And in Neil Armstrong, American Space Agency officials have selected a real “professional,” a man who is as familiar with speed and danger as a duck is to water, and a man who has proven himself in crises. Before he joined the N.A.S.A. team in 1962, in the second bunch of astronauts, Armstrong was known as the best test pilot in America—a human guinea pig who had flown every modern American fighter except the controversial F-111. In fact, Armstrong seemed so oblivious to the hair-rais-ing risks he was forced to take in test flights that he gained a reputation of being a walking computer. “Flying Bomb ” Such is not the case. Evidence that Armstrong is as human as anybody else surfaced earlier this year when NA.S.A. leaked the news that bis team-mate, Aldrin, would be the man to take those first few historic steps on the craggy lunar surface. Aldrin practised the manoeuvres needed by the first man out of the lunar module and several newspaper reports labelled him as the man who’d wear the crown.

But according to sources in Houston, where the Apollo mission control centre is located, Armstrong showed he had feelings, too. He is reported to have “pulled rank" on Aldrin and there were some stormy behind-the-scenes negotiations before Armstrong’s “Commander’s prerogative” prevailed.

After all, Neil Armstrong had gone through a lot to get where he was and this honour was to be his.

In the fledgling days of the American space effort he’d flown the “Flying Bomb,” the half-rocket-half-plane X-15 to the verge of space—4o miles from land. And at 4000 miles an hour he intentionally crippled the electronic controls just to see if a pilot could fly the speeding craft manually as it plunged to earth in a series of crazy roller-coaster hops from 100,000 feet up. That sort of training came in handy for Armstrong when he commanded the ill-fated Gemini 8 flight in March, 1966. Tin Goose He and his fellow astronaut, Dave Scott, successfully met an orbiting Agena rocket and then nosed up to it for the first docking in space of two vehicles. The experiment was vital to any future plans to put men on the moon and the Americans were jubilant. Their ecstasy was shortlived. A small thrust rocket short-circuited. Unexpected, erratic bursts of power sent

both Gemini 8 and the Agena into wild gyrations. As mission controllers waited helplessly on earth Neil Armstrong got to work. He backed away from the Agena and as the command module with the two spacemen inside spun madly at a revolution a second he tried to curb the space-ager bucking bronco. It took him 30 minutes but at last Armstrong had the reins and the cool-headed astronaut safely brought the errant spacecraft down in the Pacific for an emergency landing. It was probably Armstrong’s level-headness in that incident that made N.A.S.A. officials put his name near the top of the list for when the big one came up. And none can be bigger than being the first man on the moon. Ironically, if it hadn’t been for Henry Ford, this honour might not have come Armstrong’s way. Henry Ford was responsible for a tri-motor plane called the “Tin Goose” that hedgehopped its way around the country in the 19305. It sort of flew into Armstrong’s hometown of Wapakoneta in north-western Ohio one Sunday morning and the

pilot offered sight-seeing rides.

Neil’s father, an auditor with the Ohio State Government, decided (with a little arm-twisting from his son) they should skip Sunday school and take a ride—the flights were cheaper in the morning.

It was a momentous occasion for the Armstrongs—the father was air-siek, five-year-old Neil was not (The two novice flyers thought they’d successfully kept that exploit a secret from Neil’s mother but she revealed just before Gemini 8 blasted off that she knew about it all the time.) That flight pointed the young daredevil towards the heavens, a direction he hasn’t veered from since. Fast Car

As a child his hobby was to build bigger and better model aeroplanes and though his parents were not overjoyed with the prospect he started taking flying lessons. The young aviator was a brilliant student when it came to learning about wing stresses and things like that By the time he was 16 be had a private pilot's licence—and he couldn’t even drive a car.

When he’s on the ground now incidentally—and that isn’t often —he drives a snappy super-charged sportscar.