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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.
“Mission Control”9 pages
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
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