James A. McDivitt oral history (Doug Ward)

Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt
29 June 1999 12-3
somebody who’s that age is a lifetime! And I really didn’t want to do that for four years. So,
I got a lot more focused in what I was doing!
WARD: Were you one of these people for whom flying was just instinctive?
MCDIVITT: Well, it turned out it—that’s right. It was, really. Having never been in
an airplane and no idea what it was all about, and I think I was the first guy to solo in my
pilot training class—even though there were guys in there that had 100 hours of flying time
before they ever came into the Air Force. So, I did it very quickly. I just took to it.
WARD: After graduation at the top of your class in Michigan, you went in then in Test Pilot
School.
MCDIVITT: Right. I went right from school—right from the University of Michigan out to
the Test Pilot School, and I went through that in the class of—’59C I think it was.
WARD: What motivated the decision to go that direction as opposed to going off into civilian
life?
MCDIVITT: Well, first of all I had a commitment to the Air Force where I would take another
two or three years. I was a regular officer. I’d got selected for a regular commission when I
graduated from pilot training. I think there were two of us out of all those classes. And so, I
didn’t have a finite time that I was going to retire or leave or anything like that, unlike the
Reserve officers. And as a matter of fact, in those days there were very, very few Regular
officers in the Air Force. They were mostly Reserve; probably 90% Reserve. But every time
you went to a school or something, you took on another commitment.