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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.
“Nevers”36 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-14 MCDIVITT: Yeah. WARD: How did all that go? MCDIVITT: It didn’t mesh and it was very, very awkward. When I was a test pilot, I was an Air Force Captain. I don’t remember exactly what I was making, but it was less than $10,000 a year. I had a full set of uniforms: mess dress uniform, a class A uniform, a lot of working uniforms. And so, my wardrobe was a military wardrobe. I think I had one or two obnoxious-looking sport coats and maybe two pairs of slacks. I think I might’ve had a suit! But I certainly didn’t have a wardrobe that that I’d call a civilian wardrobe. As soon as we got selected, we were told that, “No more uniforms.” We were never supposed to be in uniform. And we all of a sudden, you know, here we are, 95% of your wardrobe is extinct! And so, now you have to re-equip. And we didn’t have a heck of a lot of money to do that. We had to have tuxedos and suits and all that other stuff. And we were the representatives of our country to the foreign countries and to all the people who were paying for the program. We represented what the program was. So, that was—we really scrambled around. And then to top all that off, we weren’t living on base housing. I moved from a house—a really nice house at Edwards Air Force Base into the civilian community of Houston. Fortunately, things were not too expensive in Houston in those days, and so we could afford to buy a house and things. And I must say that we ended up with a contract, ultimately, with Life and World Book for our exclusive stories, which provided a little extra money. Very little extra money! But at least it gave us enough money so we could afford a wardrobe. But it didn’t didn’t occur until we’d been in the program for a year or two. So, it was kind of tough. I remember one really stupid thing that we got involved in, where the Air Force guys
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