The Spoken Word : Recollections of Dryden History : the Early Years / Curtis L
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NASA SP-2003-4530 The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History The Early Years edited by Curtis Peebles MONOGRAPHS IN AEROSPACE HISTORY #30 NASA SP-2003-4530 The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History, The Early Years edited by Curtis Peebles NASA History Division Office of Policy and Plans NASA Headquarters Washington, DC 20546 Monographs in Aerospace History Number 30 2003 i Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The spoken word : recollections of Dryden history : the early years / Curtis L. Peebles, editor. p. cm. -- (Monographs in aerospace history ; no. 30) Includes bibliographical references and indes. 1. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center--History. 2. Aeronautics--Reserach--California--Rogers Lake (Kern County)--History. 3. Aeronautical engineers--United States--Interviews. 4. Airplanes--United States--Flight testing. 5. Oral history. I. Peebles, Curtis. II. Series. TL568.N23U62003 629.13’007’2079488–dc21 2002045204 ____________________________________________________________ For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328 ii Table of Contents Section I: Foundations ...............................................................................................................1 Walter C. Williams.....................................................................................................7 Clyde Bailey, Richard Cox, Don Borchers, and Ralph Sparks................................19 John Griffith.............................................................................................................47 Betty Love ...............................................................................................................55 Section II: A Second Wind ........................................................................................................63 Richard E. Day ........................................................................................................67 Scott Crossfield........................................................................................................77 Jack Fischel..............................................................................................................87 Stanley P. Butchart.................................................................................................101 Epilogue .................................................................................................................125 Sources...................................................................................................................126 About the Author ...................................................................................................127 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................127 Index ......................................................................................................................128 Monographs in Aerospace History ........................................................................130 The NASA History Series......................................................................................131 Front Cover: Ma Greene’s Cafe, Muroc, California Back Cover: Scott Crossfield, the D-558-II, P2B, F-86 chase planes and support personnel. Book design by Steve Lighthill, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. All photos of individuals are in the Dryden photo archives iii Editor’s Forward Since the founding of the Dryden Flight Research Center History Office in 1996, its staff has conducted nearly a hundred interviews with retired and serving employees. Their recollections represent a unique resource in under- standing the development of aerospace technology in the second half of the 20th century. Their personal experiences, insights, and opinions allow the reader to gain an understanding into what it was actually like to have been involved with some of the milestone events in aerospace history. These interviews have been edited and assembled into this monograph, so that a wider audience can also share in their experiences. This study covers the early years of what eventually became the Dryden Flight Research Center. It spans the period between the arrival of Walter Will- iams and the first group of NACA engineers at Muroc in 1946, and ends with the establishment of NASA in 1958. This timeframe encompasses the breaking of the sound barrier, the pivotal inertial coupling research, the first use of computer simulations, the transformation of the NACA facility from a pair of old hangars into a state-of-the-art research center, and the dawn of the space age. These events took place against the background of the end of World War II, the start of the Cold War, and the twin technological revolutions of jet propul- sion and supersonic flight. They are told by the people who participated in these events, in their own words. Curtis Peebles January 2003 iv Section I Foundations The foundations of the Dryden Flight Research Center date back more than a half century, to a time when aviation faced revolutionary technical changes. When the first NACA contingent arrived in September 1946, they found the Muroc Army Air Field to be an isolated and barren outpost. The post-war demobilization had left the hastily constructed base facilities in a poor state of repair. Palmdale and Lancaster in the late 1940s were rough desert towns lacking many of the conveniences to which the new arrivals from Langley (and their spouses) had been accustomed. Farther north lay Mojave, a desolate railroad stop with a gas station, White’s Motel, a nightclub, and a pool hall. Rosamond consisted of little more than several bars open around the clock. Agriculture continued to be the primary activity in the Antelope Valley: cattle and grain on the west side, and alfalfa farming on the east. The high desert was not the only roughhewn part of Southern California. Los Angeles-still a long drive from the Antelope Valley on a two-lane, winding mountain road-remained a hard-boiled city, despite its rapidly growing population and sophistica- tion. Kevin Starr, the State Librarian of California described this booming metropolis at the time of the first X-1 flights: “It was a Front Page kind of city, the Los Angeles of 1947: a city of cops, crooks, and defense lawyers; a demimonde of rackets, screaming headlines, and politicians on the take; a town of gamblers, guys and dolls, booze and sex; a place for schemers, also-rans, suckers and those who deceived them: the kind of city in which a private detective such as Philip Marlowe might make his way down mean streets in search of the ever-elusive truth and get sapped with a blackjack for his efforts by parties unknown.” The Muroc train station circa 1940, shortly before the Army facility on the lakebed was expanded to serve as a training base. (Air Force photo) 1 In contrast to the evolving young city to the south, the landscape around Muroc was an ancient one. Large dry lakebeds — scattered across the desert from southern California to eastern Nevada — were remnants of cooler, wetter times at the end of the last ice age. The largest of these, Rogers Dry Lake, covers some 47.3 square miles of the Mojave desert. During each brief winter, rains carried silt onto the Rogers lakebed, and the winds blew the mixture of water and sediment across its surface. With the arrival of each spring, the high temperatures dried out and hardened the now-smooth lakebed. The process, repeated each year, occurred over the millennia. The first permanent settlers in the vicinity of Rogers Dry Lake were Clifford and Effie Corum, their two children, and Clifford’s brother Ralph, who arrived at the site in 1910. They settled on a homestead on the west side of the lakebed, and were soon joined by a few other hardy souls. The small farming community–named “Muroc” (Corum spelled backwards)–consisted of a one-room school house, a general store, and scattered homes. It also served as a watering stop on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. For the next two decades, Muroc remained a tiny cluster of buildings in the midst of the desert. In September 1933, destiny caught up with Muroc, when a U.S. Army Air Corps detachment from March Field arrived to set up the Muroc Bombing and Gunnery Range on the east side of the lakebed. For the next decade, March Field squadrons undertook training activities and war games, while a small group of noncommissioned officers and enlisted men at East Camp, on the opposite side of the lakebed from Muroc, maintained the targets. They lived in tents and slept on mattresses stuffed with straw. During the exercises, Army Air Corps squadrons landed their aircraft on the lakebed, and the crews also lived in tents during the week or so they underwent train- ing. A second camp was established on the west side of the lakebed in 1934. Muroc’s role expanded in July 1941 with the arrival by train of 140 troops, who set up a tent camp on the southwest edge of the Rogers lakebed. They began construction of a training field, later called Muroc Army Air Field, to meet the increased need for pilots following the outbreak of the war in Europe. West of Rogers, another part of the area developed. In March 1935, Pasadena socialite and aviatrix Florence “Pancho” Barnes bought an alfalfa farm close to the shore of Rosamond Dry Lake. Pancho soon worked out an arrangement to supply the Muroc personnel with fresh milk and pork. As the base expanded in the 1940s, she added a roadhouse restaurant