James A. McDivitt oral history (Doug Ward)

Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt
29 June 1999 12-11
MCDIVITT: Yeah.
WARD: And you really became kind of the core, as you look back on it—the management
core, the leadership core of the Apollo Program. And also, a lot of the leadership and
command responsibilities for Gemini. Did you have much involvement with Mercury at that
time? Or was it pretty much straight into Gemini and Apollo?
MCDIVITT: Oh no. See, when we got there the—by the time we got to NASA, it was around
the 1st of October of ’62. [Alan B.] Shepard [Jr.] , [Virgil I. “Gus”] Grissom, [John H.]
Glenn [Jr.] , [M. Scott] Carpenter had already flown. And we got there early in October. We
were told we were going to have like a month to sort of get settled in. But the second day we
were there, I think, we were told we were going to leave for the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]
that night for [Walter M.] Schirra’s [Jr.] flight. So, we went out down there and we watched
it. But we didn’t really contribute anything to it. And then, when [L. Gordon] Cooper [Jr.]
flew, we went down about three or four weeks before the flight and just watched the
countdowns but we didn’t—we made no contribution whatsoever. As a matter of fact, we
were probably in everybody’s way. But at any rate, we were down there on a learning
experience to see what it was like before the flight.
WARD: And of course, Cooper’s was the last of the Mercury flights.
MCDIVITT: It was the last of the Mercury Seven.
WARD: So, you focused very early on, on Gemini and, I presume, Apollo.
MCDIVITT: Yeah, yeah. Well, when we got there, we were all—the nine of us were assigned