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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.
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-15 were invited to participate in an Air Force dining-in at Patrick Air Force Base, which is the Air Force facility at the Cape. And so, we got out our mess dress uniforms; and we were going to go down there and act like Air Force officers. And just before we left, we got a phone call—NASA got a phone call from the White House instructing us that we were not to go to the dining-in, in our Air Force uniforms. We were going—we were supposed to wear tuxedos. Well, here we are. I think there were three of us went down; maybe four. But anyway, say, three or four Air Force officers show up at this Air Force dining-in, in tuxedos, and everybody else is in military mess dress uniform. And a dining-in is a very formal, traditional military get-together and you—there are certain things that you do. You have a toast to the President. You have the chairman of the mess, and a whole bunch of things. And so, the four of us looked like real jerks sitting around in our tuxedos! I mean, that part of it was very difficult. As far as working together, I mean, the Air Force guys and the Navy and all the rest of the people, they blended in very well. We’d worked together in big teams before. So, there wasn’t a problem there. WARD: And the differences in civilian management, chain of command, esprit, all those sorts of things? MCDIVITT: It was a little—it was a lot looser. The chain of command was a lot looser. There was no rank. I mean, Air Force Captain or Air Force Major, and the Navy Captain, I mean the rank didn’t play a part in it. Our rank was what our job was, not what our military rank was. We had civilians, and where would you stick them? Although I guess they were the equivalent of full Colonels! We always used to like to fly around with Elliot [M.] See
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