James A. McDivitt oral history (Doug Ward)

Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt
29 June 1999 12-4
And so, I really didn’t have much choice. And since I—when I was at school, I
thought I’d like to go on and get a Master’s degree. I’d been straight A’s all the way through
school. And I’d read a brochure that the Air Force had put out, or I guess it was a monthly
newsletter or something, about somebody who had really good grades and they were going to
allow him to go on to school for one more year. The Air Force policy was two years at a
time but no more than three years total. And since this other guy—I’d found out the other
guy was—another guy was going to do it, I thought, “Well, I’ll try that.” So, I was really
focused on getting a graduate degree; and I applied for that, and all of a sudden it was turned
down. And I had an assignment to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base [Ohio] into a Project
Office as an engineer, which is about the last thing in the world I wanted to do!
Ed [Edward H.] White [II] and I, the fellow I flew with on Gemini IV, were going to
school together. We lived just down the street from each other. And he was going on to the
Test Pilot School. He’d applied for it years before and been accepted; and normally it was
about a year to two-year process to get the application and get accepted. Well, this was
already like April or May. I thought, “Heck, I’ll do that!” I had a squadron commander who
had been through the Test Pilot School, oh, at one time and I liked the way he flew and stuff,
and so I put in my application, I think in either April or May. And I heard back in about two
weeks that I’d been accepted, which was a whole different route for my career!
WARD: Was Ed White a big motivation in your going that direction?
MCDIVITT: Well, no, he was going to do that. We were friends, and it was a better
alternative than going to Wright-Patterson as an engineer in a Program Office! But it was a
non-flying job, and it didn’t sound like a good deal to me. So anyway, we went out there.
We were in the same Test Pilot School class.