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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
“The Pentagon”3 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-102 So, I always based my decisions on how much risk that we had already invested in the mission up to that point. So that, towards the end, I got pretty aggressive in going forward. And it turned out, fortunately, I was right. I remember after Apollo 16, when I decided that we should go on and land on the Moon, I came home. I had already announced that I wasn’t going to be the Program Manager anymore. I came home and my wife said, “Why did you ever do that?” She said, “You could’ve brought them home and had a successful career. Now you’ve got your neck stuck out as far as it goes.” But we’d already made that risk, and it turned out it was a good decision. [Recorder turned off.] WARD: Jim, a lot of credit has been given to the technical success of Apollo. But the management of Apollo may have been an even greater success story. Let’s talk a little bit about how you managed that program during your stint as Program Manager. And in particular, how did you make the transition from becoming an astronaut to becoming a Program Manager? MCDIVITT: Yeah. Let’s talk about the management structure first. The Mercury Program was done as a Project. There was a Project Office and everybody who worked on Mercury was in that Office. It was just a—it was a small program really by today’s standards. And so, they all worked together. Gemini, we had exactly the same thing. We had the Gemini Project Office, I think it was called, and all the people who worked on Gemini were there. It wasn’t a very complex thing, but they were all there. We had a rocket guy. Of course that was different. We sort of got that thing from the Air Force by way of Martin. But all these people had a boss that was in the program. So if you were down here in the program, you worked for a guy who was in the Program Office, and he worked for a guy in the Program Office, he worked for a guy in
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