Fighter Pilot's Heaven: Flight Testing the Early Jets

474 Pages·1995·2.23 MB·English

by  Donald S. Lopez

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Page iii
Fighter Pilot's Heaven
Flight Testing the Early Jets
Donald S. Lopez
Page iv
© 1995 by the Smithsonian Institution
All rights reserved
This book was edited by Lorraine Atherton and designed by Linda
McKnight.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lopez, Donald S., 1923
Fighter pilot's heaven: flight testing the early jets /
Donald S Lopez.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-56098-457-0
1. Airplanes, MilitaryUnited StatesFlight testing
History. I. Title.
TL685.3.L67 1995
623.7'464'097309044dc20 94-21061
British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.
01 00 99 98 97 96 95 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
Publisher's note: The descriptions of otherwise undocumented
personal incidents and the recollections of episodes and persons are
entirely the author's. Every effort has been made to verify details and
ensure correctness; inaccuracy if it occurs is regretted.
Page v
For my lovely granddaughter
Laura Victoria
who can see air
Page vii
Contents
Foreword ix
by Frank Borman
Preface xi
Prologue 1
1 3
Fighter Pilot's Heaven
2 10
Bombs Bursting in Air
3 19
Tigercat Performance
4 28
Top Guns in Texas
5 37
Fighter on First Base
6 49
Unstuck in a Shooting Star
7 60
Travels by Yo-yo
Page viii
8 72
Snow-Bound
9 81
Cold-Weather Testament
10 92
Characters in Flight
11 104
Gunsights and Highball
12 118
Head-on Passes
13 127
An Education in Flight Testing
14 144
The Joy of Flying Low
15 152
Firepower Demonstration, May 11, 1948
16 159
Big Airplanes, Big Year
17 168
The Test of the F-84B
18 177
Sonic Booms and Radar
19 191
Target Practice in 1949
20 206
The Last Year of Heaven
Epilogue 217
Index 219
Photographs appear after page 100
Page ix
Foreword
During the Gulf War of 1991 the entire world was amazed at the
sophisticated weapons used by the American forces. Television
captured vivid pictures of bombs literally flying down ventilation
shafts, and there were stories of airplanes that were invisible to radar
detection. The conflict displayed wonders of technology put to a
destructive purpose. The roots of that technology go back many, many
years.
America, between the two great wars, was almost backward in the
development of military weapons and certainly primitive in the
airborne weapons arena. Civilian airliners of the thirties were faster
than bombers. The most sophisticated aircraft of the era were often
civilian racing planes. World War II changed all of that. That ultimate
effort may well have represented the pinnacle of the American
civilization. Vast changes were wrought in the tools of air warfare.
Don Lopez has written one book, Into the Teeth of the Tiger, that
describes his part in World War II. As a newly commissioned,
nineteen-year-old aviator, he fought in China, became an ace, and
participated in the early evolution of American air weapons
supremacy. Upon his return to the States, before the end of the war,
Lope was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base and began a career as a
test pilot, proving and improving the aircraft that had done so much to
win the war. His days at Eglin were spent in that slow and often
dangerous process of test and evaluation. He was one of the first
American pilots to fly the Bell P-59, America's first jet aircraft. He
par-

Page x
ticipated in every fighter development in the immediate postwar era
and, in addition, was selected by the Air Force to attend one of the
first classes of the Air Force Test Pilot School at Wright Field in
Dayton, Ohio.
In these pages Colonel Lopez describes the beginning of the modern
Air Force as only one who has participated in the process could. We
fly with him on missions as varied as shooting down captured V-1
missiles to cold-weather testing the P-80 in Alaska. We meet the
unwashed characters who silently flew their missions and did their
dangerous jobs, often losing their lives in the process. All of this
drama is recorded in Lope's engaging style and dry wit. He is, after
all, an unusual fighter pilot, with an advanced degree from Cal Tech, a
nondrinker, a devoted family man, and a keen observer of his times.
One can only hope that Fighter Pilot's Heaven represents the second
in a series of books and that the sequel will describe his career from
Eglin to the present.
FRANK BORMAN